This week’s Anime fashion post is all about Chobits, a comedy/drama anime series created by the Japanese manga collective, Clamp — the same creators of other famous anime like Cardcaptor Sakura, xxxHolic, Angelic Layer, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and more! Originally broadcast in 2002, Chobits was an early series that explored the relationships between humans and artificial intelligence — while at the same time being adorable and hilarious.

Chobits is known as a classic anime, and it has a huge following in Japan. You can watch the English dubbed promo video here:

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Chobits Crash Course

As the video shows, the Chobits story takes place in the future, where personal computers have developed into “Persocoms,” or mobile computers taking humanoid form. Hideki Motosuwa, a prep school student, desperately wants to buy a Persocom but can’t afford it. One day, he finds a female Persocom presumably thrown away in a garbage dump and decides to keep it for himself. When Hideki turns on the Persocom, the only word she speaks is “Chii,” so he names her after the word and slowly teaches her to talk and perform other tasks. 

After some time, it becomes apparent that Chii is more than an average Persocom. With ultra high performance, it seems that Chii might be what’s called a “Chobit,” a type of advanced Persocom rumored to have independent thought. As the series progresses, Hideki and Chii explore the mysteries of Chii’s origins and further question the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence.