Chobits/Headscratchers

Chobits

• Why is Chii's reset-button placed in her private parts? Wouldn't it have been more practical to have it placed elsewhere, if at all? Also, couldn't it be moved afterward by a technician?
  • For that matter, why even have a button at all? Why couldn't she be voice activated?
    • Voice activation only works if a device is on to hear it. If the device is completely shut down, it can't hear the activation command.
      • In the anime, her reset button is voice-activated. The button in her naughty parts is an on-off switch, and once she'd been activated that's apparently all she wrote; at one point, someone tried to, in her words, "come inside," and she went crazy. Apparently "only the one that is just for me can ever come inside." When Hideki came to rescue her, she took his hand and pressed it right into her crotch.
        • Yes, but I was talking about the manga. Also, she's never seen activated on voice-command in anime. You must press the button to work.
  • The reset button is there to discourage the owner from using her sexually, something that apparently happens a lot with the ordinary models, even though few are willing to say it out loud. Chii is a special case and trying to randomly have sex with her would equal rape; thus the little safety feature.
    • I know that's totally squick territory, but... In the manga, it's clear that the reset button is on her... ahem... female private parts. Side A, so to speak. If the goal was to prevent rape/to have her find true love... wouldn't some kind of device be needed also on side B?
    • It's possible her side B simply wasn't designed to accommodate a penis.
    • No, it was to make sure her owner truly loved her. Actually preventing rape is just a matter of not including that part, and as long as she's anatomically correct, the reset button is not going to discourage the sort of person who would rape her. The manga specifically has it as a test for her owners. They find out and dump her. Repeat until she gets to Hideki, who, in reward for passing the test, will have to settle for oral for the rest of his life.
  • couldn't it just be a program that Chi is rewritting herself as she goes by with Hideki? I'm sure there is some program thats there to detect a sexual attempt and shut her down, but certain recieved and written in data could override.
    • • The button prevents her from experiencing the rape. Also, I find it highly improbable that people would keep computers, even cute, sexy computers solely for their sex-appeal. What if it had been picked by a straight woman who just wanted something to use for net-browsing or work?
        • There are MALE looking persocoms too. No one is safe.
        • The only possibly male Persocom I saw was awfully bishonen if it was male.
          • Yeah, but the point was if Chii was picked up by a woman who wouldn't dream of using her for anything but the usual computer stuff.
            • Someone who picked up Chii to do regular computer stuff would probably discard her once they found out that she had no built-in data/OS/normal Persocom abilities and that she actively resisted any attempt to find out why or change the situation.
              • It's CLAMP. It's meaningful.
  • What I wonder is, if her creator didn't want her to be used sexually, why did he program her to WANT to "become one" with the special someone. Chii keeps going on about that if she gets what she wants she will lose it (i.e. get reset)...
  • Freya explained, I thought, it WAS a test of character for the owner. Chii/Freya were designed to be attracted to that special someone, to fall in love if not come as close as possible for a computer. Chii's creator saw Chii as a daughter, and just too extreme measures to prevent his "daughter" to be in a relationship only for sex.
• Couldn't there still be another way to have intercourse?
  • Why would you want to? It's not like she can bear babies, the only thing a Persocom will NEVER be able to emulate.
    • But then, in Kobato, there is something that makes you think about that...
    • Some people don't want kids but like sex. Some people hate kids and love sex. Just because they can't do vaginal, for fear of wiping Chii's memories, doesn't mean Hideki can't get a blow/hand job. However, I'd think Hideki would try to find a way to pleasure Chii as well, since he's a nice guy like that.
    • Should I... should I explain it to you? Diagrams, perhaps? There are a number of places on the internet that will explain why, exactly, they would want to very well. Seriously, though, Chii (anime Chii, anyway) is remarkably human and advancing in leaps and bounds towards sentience, if she's not there already. It's implied that she might be capable of sex; perhaps she'll just want to.
    • Not all of us work with a borrowed Rule34 brain.
      • Lies.
    • Let me rephrase that, please. That troper was trying to say that if Persocoms existed in real life and... this attitude towards them was the rule (like in that Futurama episode with the robot girlfriends) then I give humankind only one more generation to exist. At the very much.
    • Remember Mr. Ueda? Was he thinking about the repercussions of marrying an infertile woman, er, woman-thing?
  • Making backups beforehand, maybe? Still, she'd get deactivated anyway, and be entirely nonresponsive...er...
  • Disable the button. She's not flesh and blood, just a extremely well designed version of persocom. She was built out of parts, and it's entirely possible to remove the switch or cut the wires.
    • Did you forget that she has other protective functions, as well? Do you really want to get strangled by wire-tentacles or electrocuted to death, or something in those lines by the Dark Chii? If a completely secure hardware has ever been made, it's her.
      • Was not 'Dark Chii' actually Freya, taking over her?
        • Yes, but the function seems to be there to protect her, considering that it tends to activate whenever she is in danger.
      • Well, now that she's found "the person just for me", she's probably not going to be averse to Hideki doing a case mod. (Possibly slightly more averse to him getting someone else to do the case mod, but ...)
      • It's a button that permanently wipes her memory. Someone who actually loved her would call it a liability, not just a barrier to getting a little action. Remember that subplot about the baker whose name escapes me and his persocom wife's hard drive failure? It was a traumatizing experience, and, to drive the point home, Hideki has been told this story from a first-hand source. Two Plus Two Equals F--(End of Series).
      • Maybe Ms. Hibiya will disable it after the series ending, as she seems to approve of the relationship... I guess.
  • Personally, I think the more pressing question is whether or not her creator- after installing a reset button in her crotch to prevent her from being used for sexual purposes- would have gone to the trouble of installing all the necessary nerve endings and emotional software for Chi to actually get something out of intercourse in the first place. The less you think about her creator- who treated Chi like a surrogate daughter- writing a program that lets her experience an orgasm, the better.
  • Buttons can be disabled by software, so extensive mods may not be necessary, as it's served its purpose.
    • Is it any less disturbing than the fact that he evidently built her to be completely anatomically correct? He's given her robotic nerves, the ability to feel pleasure at a kiss, nipples, for Christ's sake--why not orgasms? In fact, the idea that he would create an artificial human with the drive to improve herself and feel desire for another person and then not write a sex program because it squicks him out seems kind of selfish.
  • Chii's creator built her and her sister, originally, as Replacement Goldfish for kids they couldn't naturally have. One of those kids ended up falling in love with her creator until it killed her because she couldn't imagine that sort of love not having a sexual component that her creator (thankfully) would never go to. In the manga, that was a risk for every Persocom, and in the anime, any persocom her emotional programming was loaded onto. The Chii we see in the current timeframe was modified by that creator, who must have had some rather understandable hang-ups about sex. Even if Chii and her owner were to 'get along', there's no way every Persocom and their owners would match up, and the result would either be a lot of Persocoms dying because their owner was married/gay/straight/didn't like them/monogamous, or either emotionless slaves or emotional slaves physically and mentally altered at their owner's will.
    • Actually, in the manga at least, Freya "died" because her love was unrequited and the emotional strain on her systems was too great, not because she wanted sex.
• Why do the humans have the same blank eyes as the Persocoms? Is it just What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic or that people and persocoms are Not So Different?
  • Either that, or CLAMP didn't feel up to overly shiny headlights for eyes this time around.
    • Mayhaps its to show that humans are in the same boat as all Persocoms (as the manga notes, Chii included) - merely acting out some form of programming. Chii's program made her appeal to those like the usual protagonist in a shounen love manga, and the protagonist happened to have the program set that would eventually return her 'love' - as opposed to the guy who wanted 'to find out more about her' or any others (i.e. if she had wound up with the manager earlier in his life it would have worked out for them ..)
    • I did think it was odd that they used the art style that usually indicates Mind Control Eyes, getting realistic ones (well, realistic for anime, anyway) when Chii put her sentience whammy on them. (At least, that's what I think it was...)
• What would happen if someone decided to build persocoms that didn't look or act like all the others and instead looked like something that came out out Bostmaster?
• So Hideki is going to grow old, and Chi is going to look like a sixteen year old forever...
  • Yes, unless Hideki somehow becomes an extremely powerful mage.
  • Well, Hideki is in Tokyo for college.... And who said that he can't take Engineering?
    • Because the sheer amount of Engineering disciplines to rebuild Chii would be overwhelming? Off the top of my head, he'd need to be both an Electrical and Computer Science Engineer, plus have dabbled in Biology. And I'm probably forgetting some things too.
• Why does she have private parts in the first place? Her creator doesn't want her being abused, so why can't she have Barbie Doll anatomy?
  • THANK YOU! Seriously, I cannot believe this was not the very first question on this page. WHY does Chi have functional private parts? If her creator doesn't want her having sex/being abused/whatever, why give her the capability to have sex at all?
  • Her creator was a scientist. He didn't want her to be taken advantage of, and so built safeguards, but that doesn't change the fact that she was still a prototype for an artificial human. Besides which, we know that Chii and Freya's programming was capable of evolving and growing: presumably, the goal was for them to become fully functioning people. They were also capable of falling in love, or approximating it. In the anime, at least, it's not unimaginable that he built them with genitals so that they could choose to have sex when they were ready for it.
    • But they can't have sex, even if they wanted to, because doing so will wipe their memories. Chii practically throws herself at Hideki, but if he goes for it, she'll go back to being a mindless drone.
      • Well, that's the manga - I prefer to just think about the anime story (where they can have sex) and leave it at that, because to design Chi to have sexual needs but make fulfilling them tantamount to suicide isn't just a moral "test" for Hideki, it's a horribly sadistic form of lifelong emotional abuse towards Chi, somewhat analogous to the effects of female circumcision (except even moreso, in the "touch yourself the wrong way and you lose all your memories" way - at least FC victims don't have the ongoing threat of mental dissolution hanging over them). The manga is more obtuse on whether the persocoms are sentient, but it concedes that they're potentially no less so than humans, and the fact that her creator was thinking of Chi pursuing her "own happiness" means there's little moral justification for forcing a lifelong chastity vow, and a death penalty for breaking it, on her.
  • Her creator was a Mad Scientist AND borderline insane. Just look at his antics in Angelic Layer.
    • Chobits and Angelic Layer are two different series (Studio CLAMP tends to re-use character designs), so that doesn't count.
    • Actually, later in Chobits, it's specifically revealed that the Angels in Angelic Layer were prototypes for the persocoms. And since Chi's creator was the one who invented persocoms...
  • From above : Chii's creator built her and her sister, originally, as Replacement Goldfish for kids they couldn't naturally have. One of those kids ended up falling in love with her creator until it killed her because she couldn't imagine that sort of love not having a sexual component that her creator (thankfully) would never go to. In the manga, that was a risk for every Persocom, and in the anime, any persocom her emotional programming was loaded onto. If she developed a less healthy relationship, not having that part would be just as deadly as having it. Once the reset button was added, it also made the underlying test an actual test; there's no reason for temptation without having something to tempt with.
    • Again wrong yes Chii and Freya were originally built as replacement goldfish however Freya didn't want to have sex which professor Ichihara. She was emotionally torn between wanting her love returned and not because Ichiara was her father and happily married to the woman she considered her mother.
• Anyone else weirded out by the fact that the only difference between our modern world and Chobits' world is that they have perfected various forms of AI or "VI", and an obvious superiority in advanced robotics. One would think that in a world with such technological advancements, they would have other, transitional technology, and it wouldn't have gone straight from normal PCs to advanced completely autonomous entities capable of emulated human thought.
  • If you take Angelic Layer as canon for the Chobits universe, there are quite likely some significant cybernetics technologies and possibly limited human enhancements occurring. We don't see much of it, because it's not relevant to the plot, but it probably does exist within the setting. This also establishes some intermediate technology. Presumably most other intermediate formats have been subsumed into the persocoms, in the same way that modern people are unlikely to have separate car phones, land lines, PDAs, calculators, watches, internet tablets, and electronic calendars (and to a lesser extent, separate media or video players) as smart phones become more common-place. That actually leads to a bit of fridge horror, if less advanced persocoms were tossed out rather than upgraded, but it matches the development of technology as we've seen it in the real world.
• In the Anime (haven't finished just yet) the books Chi reads about the pink bunny looking for love. They're wonderfully appropriate at eerily mirroring Chi's own life and troubles... so who wrote it? And just how did they get that acid trip of Cryptic Conversation-laden children's book published not just once, but with a sequel?
  • Have you seen the current market for children's books? For all we know, the Cryptic Conversation made sense before the editors got to it!
  • As I understand it, though I can't recall where I read it, the books were written by Ms. Hibiya.
  • "can't recall where I read it" -- You're kidding, right? :) Ms. Hibiya being the author/artist is first hinted at in book 3 of 8 (page 138 in the german translation, "... that the author of these books lives nearby."). It becomes blatantly obvious in book 5 of 8 (page 50, end of the 51st chapter), where Ms. Hibiya is shown drawing the cover of the next book.
  • and then she kinda... you know... tells Chi and Hideki she was writing the books for them.
• Two related things:
  • When Hideki first finds Chi, his friends plug in various other persocoms into her to try to figure out who/what she is, resulting in their spectacular failure. When she panics or freaks out, she makes all the other persocoms in the area stop dead in their tracks. Not to mention all the crazy that Freya causes when someone tries acting inappropriately towards Chi like making buildings explode but without actually hurting anyone. Later, Ms. Hibiya tells Hideki that there is no such thing as a "Chobit," Chi isn't a "true" AI, she is just a regular persocom but with special programming. So where did all that other stuff come from?
  • At the end when Freya is asking Hideki if he still wants to be with Chi even though they Can't Have Sex Ever, she asks if he wants to know what Chi can do that no other persocom can. Hideki replies with Crowning Moment of Heartwarming that unless it would affect their relationship he doesn't need to know. So... what was it? Is it the crazy persocom-messiah stuff that Chi had exhibited earlier in the series? The fact that she can make the top floor of a building explode? Or ... something else?
    • I don't know about the anime, but in the manga Zima and Dita have a conversation that tells what Chi's program would do if activated. It would cause all persocoms to lose their recognition capabilities. They would not be able to distinguish those who are special to them from those who are not.
• As the story goes on CLAMP starts hitting the readers with some heavy emotional issues. Such as a Persocom being reset and losing memories.
  • (Volume 4 around page 164) Ueda's persocom, Yumi, gradually malfunctions and starts to lose her memory due to being an old model to begin with. I must say, I did an occasional eye-roll at CLAMPS hammer-to-the-head attempt at forcing the readers to feel great sorrow for persocoms (in general) for losing memory and being scrapped, when a human can also gradually lose memory and not be replaced due to death. Yes I understand that it was trying to show that people can become emotionally attached to anything, and that "Robots are/can be people Too" et cetera. But it made it seem as if humans will never experience anything that a persocom would, that a humans experience is trivial by comparison. A persocoms memory can be transferred to new models (or models that look the same as their original one) while a human being doesn't get that option. CLAMP never addressed this fully and it just agitated me. Though it said " there are some things each can do because they are different "
  • (Volume 6 around page 75) If you take Ueda's personal opinion to heart (if I remember somewhat) he believes that persocoms have it worse than humans when it comes to memories. That human trauma is something that can be gotten over eventually, while a persocom is in danger because trauma is etched into their memory but can be gone if someone erases it. He states that Persocoms have it worse because they can lose their memories to an outsider at anytime (simply by reformatting or erasing).
  • But I say a human can also lose their memories to an outside source at anytime. So why make it seem like a machine would care? It is not the machine that would be sad, it is the human that would be sad.
    • And what are the chances that a human will lose their memory, at a young age. Amnesia isn't very common, and Alzheimer only happens later on in a human's lifetime. Ueda's persocom was an older model when he bought it yes, but she wasn't activated during that whole time. So you could say that she wasn't really "born" then. That's also a common thing for the persocoms as opposed to humans where it is very rare, and not easily done (it takes a lot to get amnesia). What makes it worse if that Ueda's persocom though she may not have remembered Ueda he was still her recognized "important person" which is why she chose to save him (persocoms are not three-law compliant remember that). There are also hackers to consider which unlike Amnesia is much more common and they can wipe out a persocom's memory.
• Hibiya noticed her daughter Freya falling for her husband, and instead of requesting her husband to build a male persocom or even let Freya go out and find a male persocom as partner (or anyone as a partner for that matter) she asked him to build a second daughter... just like Freya. Talk about illogical thinking.
  • Hibiya didn't notice Freya falling for her husband, she noticed that she was sad. She didn't realize that it was her husband Freya was looking at with those sad eyes for quite a while- as I recall, when Freya broke down.
• At the end of the anime Chi's so called special program effects all persocoms and they get "human-like" eyes, complete with a dilating iris. Also... Chi tears up. This basically counters the manga, where everyone is basically drawn in the same style, and persocoms express sadness by looking sad.
• If Hideki dies (either of old age or just dies) then what will happen to Chi?
  • Eventually like persocom Yumi (going by the manga) when a persocoms memory bank becomes too full because they are obsolete, the bank has to be erased, reformatted, or transferred to a new model. Because it will become so full that they began to break down and the program becomes corrupted.
• Okay so Ms.Hibiya writes the books that Chii reads through the series, where the light pink rabbit-thing is Chii and the red/dark pink rabbit-thing is Freya. When Freya is revealed to be alive inside of Chii Ms.Hibiya is shocked, so how did she know to add Freya to the books?
  • Was Ms. Hibiya shocked in the anime? In the manga she knew that Freya was there because Elda (Chi before she was Chi) told her.
    • She was shocked by Freya's appearance in the anime, thinking she had died instead of becoming a part of Chi.
    • The books were a way for Ms. Hibiya to communicate with Chi, even though she promised she wouldn't try to influence her after she lost her memory. It makes sense that she would want to tell Chi about her older sister. Since the whole shebang was an attempt to keep Elda from repeating Freya's mistake, maybe she liked the idea of Freya guiding her sister "from beyond the grave" even though she didn't know it was actually happening.
• Does anyone else get the idea that Chi's father was absolutely insane? A much simpler way to avoid Chi being used "that" way was to simply not "equip" her appropriately, but what really takes the cake is that he made Persocoms not bound by the three laws, meaning they could giddily slaughter humans if they wanted to.
  • Chi's father intended Persocom's to have A.I.'s on the same level as human intelligence, binding them to the three laws would go against that ideal. Not to mention in order to obey the the three law they would need to come with software that allows them to recognize humans and the myriad actions and circumstances where a human can be harmed, and they'd have to be designed so that they wouldn't function if that software wasn't present or had been tampered with.
• It may just be the culture of Japan and how they consider characters to act in fiction, and I may be the only one with a problem on this... but the characters Hideki encounters all act perfectly polite and sweet. ...initially. The character Shinbo confuses me. He's practically the perfection of Helpful- seriously, if Hideki hadn't have gotten him as a housemate, he would not be living in that apartment past a month's rent! Shinbo is Hideki's go-to crutch for anything he needs to know about lifestyle, technology and Persocoms.... meaning, everything... and he is in such a happy mood 24/7 that I thought he felt like more of an android than Chi! It's only near and beyond the episode 'Chi Doesn't Do Anything' where we see more depth to his personality, that he can be sarcastic, tired, worrisome, annoyed, and caring to the point of being lustful! I do love how this show throws you for a loop halfway through, but until then, Hideki's friends, not just Shinbo, act far different than how you usually see people in a big city!
  • Chobits takes place really far on the idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: note that there also isn't any real villain in the series, just various people whose misunderstandings bring them into conflict until everything's sorted out and they all get a happy ending. Japan also places a lot of value on social bonds and the value of cooperation, and so the Power of Friendship aesop generally gets played up a lot in anime. But also, I think it's a deliberate, realistic storytelling decision. At first, we only see things from Hideki's perspective, and how various people fit into his new life. It's only as he gets to know them better that he realizes they all have just as much going on in their own lives.
• So... what the hell HAPPENED to Freya at the end? Did she peacefully shut herself down or what?
• Aren't Yumi's parents going to have a problem with her being in a relationship with 1) a man over twice her age and 2) "that weird guy who married a persocom"?
  • This is a story from Studio CLAMP -- they don't seem to have problems with unusual romantic relationships, if Cardcaptor Sakura is any guideline.
• At the end of the manga, Freya tells Hideki "There's something Chi can't do...and it's not what you're thinking." Except it's EXACTLY what EVERYONE was thinking (because we're all perverts). So what did Freya think Hideki would think it was?
  • He was referring to how Chi couldn't really function as a home computer (she had an unknown OS and was incompatible with most software, couldn't network with other persocoms without crashing them, etc.). Hideki was just saying how he didn't care if Chi wasn't useful in that regard.
• The idea of the reset button strikes me as ridiculously dangerous, not just for Chi, but for all persocoms. With the push of a single button, the entirety of a persocom's data gets blanked out and reverts to its factory settings. And in about 99.9% of persocom models, that button is located within the ear unit, near the data ports. Imagine trying to hook your iPod up to your laptop and accidentally poking a little button next to the USB port. Poof, there go all of your files without so much as a warning asking you if you're sure you want to do this. Whose bright idea was it to make something like that standard issue?

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