Why I (Should) hate 'Chobits' (and you should, three)
A third entry of a prescriptive on hating Chobits.
So far we’ve covered Chii’s childlike features and behavior, and the fact that Hideki was always going to be weird for trying to find romantic love in silicon. Again, no amount of cute gloss and romantic mood was ever going to change the fact that its all headed to man-on-machine action. I also said a word or two about the perspective within that setting that allows everyone in that world to let it happen. This is, for me, a decent jumping point for moving on from the main character, and onto Hideki’s friends and neighbors.
#3. Hideki and Chii’s Friends and Neighbors
Hey, did I tell you that his friends and neighbors are actually enablers?
I would like to return the the idea of wanting to “Have it both ways,” — both being aware that Persocoms are not people and so outside of normal human concerns, but persisting in viewing them as human enough for their subjective emotional purposes, in order to minimize the discomfort and awkwardness that comes with being one or the other. Almost every one of Hideki’s friends and neighbors does that same thing, except they don’t have as good a time of it.
If anything, they’re slightly more miserable for it personally, but are happy to let Hideki and Chii carry on under the impression that theirs is a working relationship.
For an example of this, we can start with-
A) Yumi Omura
Yumi is one of Hideki’s young co-workers in the restaurant they work at. He once held some romantic interest in her, but what he found particularly attractive about her was the fact that at the age of 17 she possesses a rather large bust. Again, its one of those things that Hideki would lose face for if anyone other than him knew about it. Although, I guess, it relatable enough to not be so strange, since she is an actual woman after all. And fortunately for him no one is a mind reader.
Yumi herself longs for Hiroyasu Ueda, who also happens to be their employer. However, She doesn’t feel capable of actually being open about her feelings for him and starting a relationship. This is because she knows that Hiroyasu was once in a relationship to a persocom that was also coincidentially named “Yumi”. So, she’s weighed down by feelings of inadequacy, fears of never measuring up in comparison to the seemingly perfection companionship this robotic Yumi used to give him. Since almost everyone has a persocom in the setting Yumi also has a persocom, but its more like a small, immobile, and almost purely functional pocket computer on a keychain in the shape of a bunny. The point for her was to avoid the humanoid shape of the non-human thing she can’t help but compare herself to. So for half of the show on top of normal anxieties of young-adult love, she puts up with absurd technologically induced worries of displacement. Yumi’s doesn’t have the wisdom needed to really manage these fears. Her desire for Hiroyasu isn’t cooled by any question about the mentality of the sort of person who decides to marry their robot.
Yumi can be forgiven for wanting to “have things both ways”, because she’s rather young. She’s still doing it, though. To her, Persocoms are non-human enough for her to have a certain wary attitude about all them as a non-human species, yet human enough that she can’t separate herself from the fact that a long defunct machine with a human shape once shared a name with her. The little persocoms she owns are the tense link between those two sentiments, feels threatened and insecure enough about to only keep versions of those machines that can’t do any of what she does. If she didn’t see them as human enough but simultaneously not actually human, she would’ve simply been indifferent to persocoms existing, or probably would’ve gone full on Ted Kaczynski and ripped Chii’s head off.
As for Yumi’s motive for having things both ways, it could be innocent. Like most young people, it could simply be the case that her natural insecurities about herself, her relationships, and her future were amplified through her views of those machines. So that her worries about her usefulness at her part time job morph into how Persocoms might do her work better. Yumi’s feelings of not being worthy of love or not knowing how to approach her crush are converted into how that Persocom named “Yumi” was a more enticing prospect. And through this, in some small way, the matter isn’t totally about how much she thinks she sucks, but how much the persocoms are making life harder for her. In other words, by seeing persocoms as human enough she doesn’t have to fully deal with the burden of personal insecurity by herself. But a side affect of that is that it encourages her to view them as human enough as a consequence of seeing them as competition, or as “somebody else”. However, it also mentally protects her from one more thing: Her eyes being open to the fact that her crush is a sort of delusional pervert — some freak who married his computer. And also from digesting the fact that her co-worker friend is equally crooked.
What makes Yumi an Enabler, though, is that for all the grief she gets out of Persocoms existing, when the time comes she never once tells Hideki that Chii isn’t an appropriate goal for his affections. Hideki may not play the same part in her existential concerns that Hiroyasu does, but as a friend maybe she could’ve encouraged him to not be weird and not to waste his energy in that direction.
B) Hiroyasu Ueda
Hideki and Yumi’s employer, and the owner and head chef of the restaurant called “My Pleasure”. He was once famous and a subject of media interest for having married a persocom. We’re told it was a love story for the ages, ending in a tragedy that would rock the soul and redefine the role and meaning of AI in society. His original purpose for getting and owning an AIYumi was for calculation and bookkeeping for his business. Over time, her function morphed into that of a help-meet, thats to say a wife, and they gradually built a life together. Tragically for him, AIYumi had a hardware problem that affected her ability to store memory, including memories of their lives married as man-and-machine waifu. And over time, she became something like an Alzheimer’s patient and operated as if she were on a constant factory reset. What destroyed AIYumi was being hit by a car, while using her last bit of accessible memory to save Hiroyasu from being run over after he absentmindedly wandered into the street.
You may ask how is it that someone like him, who clearly suffered for his love, tried to have it both ways? In what way was he realizing its a machine for some purposes but seeing it a human enough for other purposes, and what motivated him? The answer is, He noticed long before AIYumi’s decline that he could’ve repaired her, at the risk of all memories being lost, or he could’ve gotten another AIYumi body with the same memories transferred over, at the risk of the end result not being the same personality. Yet, he chose not to. Actual people never get the possibility of the chance to be able to replace or replicate loved ones or their bodies, not that anyone civilized or truly loving would take it if some magic would allow it. Nor can people ever be made over again once they’re gone, and can only enjoy existence beyond their bodies in the hereafter or in the abstract. Part of the sorrows of life are that those you love are impossible to replace, and that we all only have one body to live our lives in. But AIYumi was to some degree replaceable in ways that people, even within the world of Chobits, could barely touch. Considering that this understanding about the Persocom was always at the edge of his mind, it means he didn’t totally lose sight of the fact that she was a machine. And if he knew this, then he could’ve avoided a lot of this grief by keeping an active awareness of this knowledge, no matter how sweetly his temptation gazed on him. Just how lonely and starved for affection was this guy that he considered the robot to be an option?
Ask not why an addict or a pervert enables others. Simply take it for granted that he will. For all the trouble that falling in love with a Persocom caused Hiroyasu, he had no interest in even warning Hideki to avoid making the same mistakes with Chii.
C) Hiromu Shinbo
Hideki’s friend and school-fellow, and the owner of Sumomo the little Persocom. Shinbo is usually the first person Hideki turns to whenever he has some questions or doubts about what to do with Chii. At first Shinbo’s role in the story is to act as a sounding board for Hideki’s thoughts, assist him in dealing with practical issues, and sometimes connect him with other helpful people and resources and some basic knowledge. He also exists to sleep with his and Hideki’s cram-school teacher after her husband abandons her for a Persocom. And when he elopes with the teacher he leaves Sumomo with Hideki. Mostly because he sympathizes with his present-girlfriend’s aversion to the machines, and also in part to have the miniature give Chii some company, whatever thats worth. Through this we can see that, clearly, Shinbo doesn’t have an especially deep or unusual attachment to his robot. And, mercifully so, considering some that modes of attachment are possible. So, unlike the other two, he doesn’t seem as obviously interested in “Having it both ways”, and isn’t as deviant as some others.
Still, he’s an enabler. He himself can live with the idea of leaving a persocom behind for a relationship with an actual woman, and living like a normal human being. Yet, he doesn’t seem concerned with stopping his friend from “walking an alternative path” with. So he doesn’t offer advice to Hideki against thinking erotic love is truly possible with a machine.
D) Chitose Hibiya
Landlady (or Landlord, whatever) of Hideki’s apartment, and also Chii’s mother. Supreme Enabler. Her late husband was the scientist in question that created Chii to act as a surrogate daughter for her. So, she had the most understandable reason out of the rest of the cast for seeing Chii as quasi-human. That is, only in the context of Chii’s backstory. Beyond that, a normal parent would want to know why a strange man has taken her daughter into his home, and wrest her back from him the moment she discovers that this is the case. As opposed to handing her books and dresses a fostering her development in the environment and semi-private abode of the stranger.
The main idea seems to be that this arrangement would protect Chii from the pain of unfulfilled love. As before her first deactivation and discovery by Hideki, she had once fallen in love with her creator. Still, considering that Chitose ought to see Chii as her daughter, and considering that the persocom herself looks more like someone’s kid, its more likely that she’s not in the expected degree of parental denial of the fact that her daughter is an advanced program. Because no parent’s answer to an actual child of theirs, living with “the pain of one-sided love” is “let her live with some dude on the chance that she’ll gain feelings for him instead” Knowledge of the actual situation, though, is what allows Chitose to simply accept Hideki’s relationship to her seeming daughter and keeps her from reacting as a mother naturally would: “Keep your hands off my daughter, creep!”
Near the end of the series, she nearly gets it “right” in a convoluted way. She comes to believe that Chii would struggle to find happiness, and orders her programming to shut her down. This nearly works, but with a bit of techno-magic and a silly speech from Hideki, Chii is revived and ready to live with who she thinks is the one made for her, and only for her. And Chitose is ready to accept that.
Enabler.
E) Minoru Kokubunji
Behold, the only sane man.
One of the experts in persecom technology who helps Hideki with some of his more complex computer problems, when the assistance of others falls short of his expectations. He happens to be rather knowledgeable about the obscure and legendary model line that Chi belongs to, namely the “Chobits” series of persocoms.
However, only Minoru is (initially) Clear-headed enough to look around him, realize that the Persocoms aren’t really persons, and that they can’t replace actual people in any context. And finially, he was honest and had enough integrity to tell Hideki what he needed to hear in order to be less of a pervert, which is to not fall in love with his robot.