Well, you’ve trekked through this series with me, and this journey of hatred is coming to an end. We laughed, We cried, and we’ve had some fun getting that venom out of our systems. However, its not about the journey, but the destination. No, I’m not fumbling an inspirational quote because that sentence means exactly what was written. I wrote this article series with a few mission goals in mind.
One of these goals was to fulfill a want to write, hence my presence on substack, but also to satisfy a want for self-aggrandizement. When it comes to writing and the want to write, it can’t be that strange to know there’s a fair bit of attention seeking and self-promotion involved in doing so. After all, who needs fiction really? Who needs essays about entertainment and about completely subjective experiences? And what sort of person wants to provide those things, in the hope that someone might be interested enough in such unnecessary things to read up on their creation?
Another aim of mine was to imitate a favorite online read, and use it to create the sort of work I’ve anticipated but never received. As I’ve mentioned at least a few times before in previous articles, I’m doing it because the author of the “Why I Hate ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’” article series wouldn’t be creating the article on Chobits I was waiting for. Or, better put, I have no true right to expect him to do so, yet I want it. So, logically, I could only attempt it myself and hope that I enjoy the process and result.
More relevant to this entire article series is my interest in looking at the more abstract and more profound problems with this series, which were much the same as the issues pointed out in the ““Why I Hate ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’” series. As the existence of similar problems within Chobits and Cardcaptor Sakura are owed to the fact that they’re from the same creators in Studio Clamp and laced with some of their philosophy. DGD Davidson asserts that this philosophy is what makes Cardcaptor rather repulsive, so logically something similar could be said of another work of their making. And maybe, with a measure of morbid enjoyment, I could attempt to elaborate on that. There is something about Chobits that is contemptible, and part of my mission is to play at bringing that hate-able element to light.
So, if by the end of all this, you see a figurine or artwork of Chii and don’t feel at least a bit awkward about it, I will have failed in my mission.
Being that its the end of the article series, it should end on a detail that best serves its subject, and captures some underlying problem that affects the whole anime.
Besides being an anime, what was the greatest crime that Chobits has committed?
#6 Chobits: The Ode to Masturbation
Whenever an algorithm is released upon the public for profit or in the service of its enjoyment, what it does is reflect back onto the user. The ad algorithm trains itself by tracking visitors and users, their clicks and site visits, and builds a profile in order to better divine what products the user might be more interested in given their online habits. I can’t be the only person who eventually ended up with anime and manga related ads across different sites, and sometimes even other devices on the same network, because of my interest in the medium. More or less ideally, The search algorithm records a users searches, keeps a log of a search history, and loads “cookies” for websites visited, in order to allow for faster and more specific results to any future searches. For better or worse, that usually means a narrowing down of the results, because the algorithm is tailoring them to be more in tune to the expressed interests and preferences of the user.
In some ways, eventually, you get a less novel experience out of your online inquiries. At some point, what you are discovering when you search for something online is less new and more you. Its another one of those small, but varied ways we all retreat sometimes further into ourselves.
It can’t always be helped, and definitely can’t be utterly eliminated, because its part of the nature of being a self. Although, a lot of good society and morality encourages people to overcome the worst of it, resist the pull to do worse, and not indulge in the aspects that mislead us by being normal. Imagine a kid wanting a cookie. If he just goes takes a cookie from another kid, he’s being selfish and is made and trained by good parents to not do this. If the kid is well trained and good manners are imparted to him, he’ll always remember not to steal cookies from others and why he shouldn’t, even though the temptation might remain. Its not wrong for a kid to want a cookie, or even a few cookies. But he’ll end up encountering another set of problems the moment he figures he should have a couple dozen of them. In doing that, He found another way to retreat further into himself by his extreme focus on his tongue and stomach, and became a glutton. However, at least cookies have some nutritional value. This was a discussion on algorithms.
When you embody an algorithm, you get a “learning machine”. There’s some value to that, creating a complex and flexible tool that’s able to read patterns, and use them to solve rather complicated problems, discover inefficiencies, or perfect on some tedious, repetitive, and singular task. But what do you get when you decide to embody an algorithm to be a Companion or Friend? Well, you get an Electric Demon none of those things. At “best” what one eventually gets is a machine reflection of oneself, all too easy to “love” and relate to, because it cannot truly inconvenience or challenge you. In the worst case scenario, you awaken to the common sense that the “Companion Algorithm” can be replaced for a less burdensome model. That less difficult model will inevitably end up reflecting you to yourself. Its hardly the proper subject for love outside of oneself, or a relationship. But there are terms for trying to accomplish that.
In Chobits, the purpose of the humanoid model Persecoms is to be ones “best friend and more”. The characters wouldn’t have trouble with perceiving them as human enough to keep company through, yet non-human enough to transgress norms with and ignore guilt about, had it not been the case that Persecoms are built and programmed to attempt to fulfill a role of companion. If “companionship” wasn’t the unstated purpose it operated towards, Minoru would’ve been wasting his time warning Hideki to not fall in love with them. Notice how Hideki didn’t fall in love with Sumomo, the tiny persecom. I can’t imagine any character out of the cast being willing to marry a Tachikoma. However, as explained in the previous paragraph, all one could get from a Persecom in reality is an embodied program that aims to model the owner and is built to please. Its the attempted fulfillment of a fantasy. To love that, or try to form a relationship with it, bears more than a passing resemblance to masturbation.
As a wise man once put it, “…The real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.”
And, “Among these shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification is ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”
Of course, like many compelling errors and seductions, Chobits doesn’t clearly present its more distasteful aspects, nor does it even make itself to be as complicated. Instead, this comes about from a confusion, perpetuated unaware and carelessly by the philosophy of Studio CLAMP, and eased into the mind of the viewer by the cute-looking art. Its what annoyed the guy who inspired me to create this series of articles about Chobits, and about Sakura Cardcaptors: That Philosophy being the notion that “Romantic love, according to CLAMP, has no fixed purpose or object.” And so, according to CLAMP, a robot is fine too.
A proper Romantic love and relationship is the sharing of a mutual feeling between person of the opposite sex. And it blossoms and develops itself towards life-long union, erotic intimacy, and the conception and raising of children. Separating the component of Eros — that complex expression of sex and irrevocable union, and its consequences to the man and woman who’ve been bound into it — from its normal expression in the personhood of the opposite sex leaves behind a concept that no longer makes sense.
In simpler terms, Of course Eros or Romantic Love is meant to describe a Man and a Woman growing into knowing each other as people, and enjoying each other’s company for life as sexual beings. If those parts are not involved in the idea, then we’re probably talking about some other sort of love. No one got into marriage for Celibacy, and there no such thing in reality as “Just Friends” who have sex.
Its like… trying to describe cookies, but at the same time claiming that the ingredients that cookies are made of aren’t part of it, and that they’re not meant to be consumed, yet somehow still belong in the stomach.
Chobits, meanwhile, would have the viewer believe that all is well when the Man falls in love with female-shaped robot. One may object that Hideki’s relationship with Chii isn’t really a glorified self-pleasuring, and so a sort of true romantic love, because Hideki is forced to care for Chii in some deeper way, as a result of her being defective. Really, most of Hideki’s challenges with Chii in the show comes from the fact that she’s a defective model. I guess this is granting as true the idea that, had Chii been within her full capacity to please and algorithmically indulge Hideki’s fantasies, then it would’ve been masturbatory. But here’s the issue: even if the defects Chii has encourages in him a deeper regard for another life, the fact is that Chii will remain a female-shaped robot. She’ll always be a luxury item, who can simply be repaired if he ever wants that, and he’s just being sentimental over goods. Its just an indulgence to himself.
By making hash and trash of the concept of romantic love, through deciding that robots are somehow an appropriate target for it, Chobits in reality cutely and sweetly sings for its audience a song in praise of masturbation.
…And it doesn’t even do that right, because its been confirmed that if Hideki ever tried to consummate that “relationship”, he’d be rebooting Chi back to factory settings.