Chobits takes place in the near future, where Personal Computers (or Persocoms for short) are no longer boxes on desks, but walking talking androids...with inexplicable cat ears. In other words, persocoms are laptops, tablets, smartphones, GPS system and a lot more, in a human-like cybernetic body, with the power of a supercomputer. It's a sight straight out of the "Uncanny Valley".
At the beginning of the story, we meet our protagonist, Hideki. A plain farmer boy from a rural village, who decides to ditch the pitchfork, leave the family farm, and go to a college in the big city. His ultimate dream is to buy his own persocom. Growing up in the middle of nowhere he only ever seen them (and modern technology in general) in magazines, so he doesn't really know what to expect. Imagine his surprise, when the first day walking home from shopping, he finds a seemingly completely intact persocom, with the looks of a hot high-school girl, thrown out in the trash. Seeing it as a divine gift, he lugs the thing back to his apartment and ushers it to life.
Enter Chi, our second protagonist and poster girl of the series. She is unmistakably a persocom, but apparently she lost all her programming somehow, so aside from basic motions the only thing she is capable of doing is saying "chi" a lot. She does have a learning software, so it seems it's up to her new owner Hideki to teach her everything about everything.
As far as story goes, we've seen this master-disciple (or senpai-underdog) dynamic in tons of other anime and movies already. But, given this premise, one would expect hilarity and fun times to ensue, as Hideki, the clueless hillbily, tries to teach the oblivious android about life in the big city. It's the typical "blind leading the blind" formula, which can be a really fun concept when done right. And it also could be a heartwarming coming-of-age story, as Hideki and Chi go on a journey together, to experience and learn about life. Or, more precisely, could've been, since apparently the creators of this series had a wholly different thing in mind.
Instead of letting this pretty damn good premise loose to run it's course, they forced the story into a quite uncomfortable scaffold of high moralizing and pretentious "deeper meaning". In the first half of the series, there is tons of fun to be had, as both Hideki and Chi are struggling to adjust to life in the futuristic big city. But as the series progresses, the story and the tone unapologetically starts to weer off course from the fun hijinks, and shoves a lot of needless drama and hard questions in our faces, like human rights of androids, persocom addiction, dependency on technology and the whole argument about whether or not android could have real feelings or what constitutes being "alive" or "human". I had flashbacks to the Bicentennial Man from Asimov, since this is the same exact story, sans the cute nekomimi android chick. Don't misunderstand me, I was always a proponent of anime having many layers and a meaningful story that deals with real problems. Even in Chobits, there are a number of pretty well made arguments about said things, and it asks a few hard questions to think about. But sadly, it doesn't stop there, and goes beyond to the point where it started to feel extremely forced and tacky. Especially the last few episodes, where the anime completely goes off the rails to force in a vapid, self-serving "big reveal" about some secret conspiracy and a forced tear-jerker backstory. Add some unnecessary action scenes, a pedantic life lesson about the power of love or something, and it all congeals in an ending that just makes no sense whatsoever. Trying to pull a half-"Elfen Lied" and half-"Do Androids Dream Of Electic Sheep?" was the wrong move here.
(Honestly, I would've been fine just watching Hideki and Chi learning things together, experiencing many things for the first time and trying to both find their ways in a quasi-unexplored world of high-tech city life, and life in general. Seeing things and situations from both Hideki's (human) and Chi's (android) point of view would've made for some very interesting moments and things to think about. This duality in their relationship could've been explored way more, and would've made for a really intriguing series. But alas, nothing in life is perfect.)
In closing, I would still recommend Chobits, despite all the criticism I just laid on it. It's a really fun anime through and through, with laughs, emotions, drama and some hard questions. The art design and animation is top notch, Chi is super cute and the whole story is charming and endearing, despite falling apart in the end. If you want to watch a really good anime with lots of personality, Chobits is the one for you. Just...try to take the latter half of the series with a grain of salt, and you'll have much fun :)
