~Ami Reviews~ (Currently text only) Ep3: Chobits

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Remilia Scarlet
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Re: ~Ami Reviews~ (Working Title, currently text only) Ep2

Post by Remilia Scarlet »

Spoiler : Death Note :
Light's character is the most debatable of all of them. Some would say he barely changed at all and simply showed how willing he was to follow his ideals. Such as me. But in most cases such debates last forever so I won't go into that.

I agree with you about the character development otherwise. Misa actually seemed independent in her first scene so I was really disappointed that she never once opposed Light. And Aizawa had an impressive amount of development. Although the conclusion to his character is better handled in the manga(like most of the story.)

The thing with the fake bottomed drawer... it was just to show how ultra prepared Light is. The whole thing is a battle of minds where both sides have taken loads of precautions and thought of many plans. The fact that some go unused just goes to show that they were actually more prepared than necessary.

The filler in the Death Note anime is insanely silly. About a quarter of episode 25 is filler too. And the worst part is that the creators didn't decide they'd only need 37 episodes, they were just told to make it 37 episodes long. So instead of fitting in as many important scenes as possible, they instead added filler galore. They even created plot holes by leaving so much out, such as Mello magically knowing the names and faces of SPK members, Light magically knowing about Sidoh... about half of volume 8 was actually completely left out.
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Re: ~Ami Reviews~ (Currently text only) Ep3: Chobits

Post by Ami »

*blows dust off of the thread* Jeez, I should review something, shouldn't I? Hm... I think another anime review is in order. I choose you, Chobits!


Chobits, for those not in the know, is about a young college applicant (Hideki) that moves to the big city to prep for college, and is hit by the culture shock from his sheltered life. Especially when he doesn't get into ANY college with his application test (or whatever it was supposed to be) and that there are humanoid robots that act as servant humans called "persecoms". Wanting one, but not having the cash to pay for one, he walks home one night to discover a persecom thrown in the garbage. Instead of thinking about the moral quandaries of going through someone else's trash, trying to activate a thinking machine that is probably defective (cue Skynet looming over our heads), et cetera, he picks it up and takes it home. It is Chi, who starts out only knowing how to say "Chi", and is basically a machine with the body of an adult with the mind of a child that is set apart from other persecoms by having feelings. If you didn't see that coming from the moment the word "humanoid robots that act as servant humans", please go read a library, you fail at genre awareness. Oh, and he's inexplicably surrounded by what is (by now) a harem of attractive women (but then again, that describes 99% of non-shonen-ai anime).

From the get-go, this show has one joke it loves more than anything else: Hideki thinks about sex a lot and has porno mags, but is somehow awkward and virgin-like towards ANYTHING that can be construed as sexual. On the one hand, I can understand how buying panties might be embarrassing, and that one would want to keep one's porn hidden. However, the show lingers on the subject so much that it tends to overtake the plot. Three episodes are dedicated to the epic that is buying panties. Three. The actual episode where he does it was MORE than enough. To abuse an old adage, the horse is dead, burnt, and thoroughly killed in every aspect of the word. Not to say that the show didn't have some legitimately funny moments- there are quite a few. But the whole "Hideki is embarrassed about sexuality" wears VERY thin VERY quickly. It's like if Master Roshi got his own show, but had all the raunchiness of Mr. Rogers during his "wild years" (and I think we all know how that went. Mt. Rushmore will never be the same again).

As soon as you see the opening credits, you also figure that Chi is the main love interest. It's not even a surprise after love interest after love interest suddenly gets thrust into another relationship with barely ANY build-up. In fact, when the prep school teacher and Hideki's best friend hook up, it's a legitimate surprise. Now, you might say "But Ami, surprises are a good thing!" True, a surprise is nice, but only when it is based in development and mystery beforehand. It's a surprise that the mother is actually dead in Psycho. It's a surprise that what's-his-face sees dead people. It's a surprise that James killed his wife. All of these twists came from development, mystery, and build-up. But when one is unceremoniously slapped with a twist like M. Night Shayamalan with a fish that is actually the first human in the body of a fish after it was imprisoned as such by aliens that were actually vampires that actually didn't exist because the air made everyone kill themselves already because of global warming, it is both unpleasant and insulting to the audience's intelligence.

Looking upwards, I'm mostly kicking this show around without praising it. Some of the scenes are legitimately suspenseful, mostly the scenes surrounding the discovery of what the Chobits are, and who is behind everything, and why. The episode where Chi accidentally puts on the wrong uniform is both intense and heartwarming, since the two exes were both in this quagmire of miscommunication, stalking, and the creepy dressing-up of an underage girl (when considering the flashbacks), and for a moment, I actually didn't think there would be an anticlimactic "this is how I actually feel, now we're together again like nothing had happened" ending.

As for endings? The series ends with a clip show. I kid you not. In fact, there is not one, two, but THREE clip shows in the entirety of this 27-epsiode series. These clip shows do nothing to further the plot, or add new context to anything. It's a "previously, on Chobits" segment that's stretched into a whole episode with a flimsy framing mechanism of two secondary characters having a conversation.

Crap, I did it again. Okay... something positive... positive... Ah! I legitimately love Sumomo as a character. Sure, she barely has anything to do with the plot, but I honestly don't give that much of a crap. The voice actress, couple with good writing, is silly without being annoying, and is a great sidekick throughout the show. There is nary a moment of Sumomo I didn't find myself overcome with the cute fuzzy cuddly wuddlies.

But that's kinda it. The show gives this feeling of "when will they?", rather than "will they, or won't they?" The opening theme barely features anyone but the two main characters acting shy and in love, Chi is the only one that keeps available and madly attached to Hideki, and the storybook sequences hit you with the blunt end of the pairing's premise. There's not much more to it than that.

On that note, this show's idea of love is very wishy-washy. Yes, while Chi is apparently able to have feelings, she only shows three emotions: childlike confusion, disappointment for not making Hideki happy, and elation that Hideki is happy. That's it. She is essentially a person whose entire life revolves around another, to the point of being entirely subservient. What's her hobby? Making Hideki happy. What does she do with her work money? Support Hideki and buy him gifts (apart from the two of the four storybooks in the "town with no people" series, which in turn only lead her to think about how much she loves Hideki). Of course she's easy to be attracted to, she looks and feels like a real person, but she has no true thoughts, feelings, or desires that are truly her own. Hideki loves Chi the same way that a desperate single person loves a character in a dating sim. Furthermore, Hideki only makes this decision once every other possible love interest is with someone else, a sort of "I love you because you're the last one on the list", if you will. This isn't love, it's far from it. It's an emulation of a few aspects of love. It's easy to "love" something that is only self-sufficient in surviving and supporting yourself, has a nice body, and entirely dedicated to you as if you were God. Love is formed between two beings that feel, of course, but the love that humans aspire to- the love that two people can share- is that which both mutually feel attraction, friendship, intimacy, trust, and a myriad of other things, but are still both separate people that have different tastes (even if two people claim they have the same tastes, they will differ somewhere) that have needs outside of making the other person happy.

And don't get me STARTED on the ending. Despite being deleted by the creator of the system, Chi somehow still exists. At first, I reasoned, "well, Chi wasn't active, and she was elsewhere", but that doesn't float- their systems had merged, and were hence cleaned out. The only feasible solution given to the audience was that the power of love somehow instantly recreated quadrillions of terrabytes of data that was deleted via the power of love? That's more of a stretch than Roger curing Mimi's AIDs with a song. Then the almost-conflict just walk away, and everyone is happy and is either in a relationship or had a wonderful relationship that ended already, but are still happy.

Speaking of almost-conflict, two hunter persecoms lurk in the storyline. At first, I was like "aw cool, stuff is actually happening!", but then they don't really act until the last episode, and they do is be superfluous to the plot (as their attempts at shutting Freya/Chi down have so little to do with the plot that they literally could have been cut, and nothing would have changed). I hate to whip this out, but this is on par with *shudder* Twilight *shudder shudder*, wherein every book is filled with fluffy, creepy, neurotic, unlikeable filler, only to have the conflict come and go as if it were nothing. In this case, the hunter persecoms sit around and flirt (while pointing out they don't have feelings) while events happen. They are the equivalent of Twitter, talking about the plot as it passes them by.

Speaking of persecoms not having feelings, NO PERSECOM BESIDES CHI HAS FEELINGS. However, other purportedly lesser persecoms have character development and desires. Where is this coming from? IF Chi's linking up with other persecoms via the shiny light did this, it wasn't explained, and I only inferred that as a possibility a couple weeks after viewing it. Even then, a plot hole like that needs filling.




Long story short, this is a comedy of errors. And by that, I mean that the people who created Chobits are that comedy of errors. Chobits is a jumbled mess of poor writing, lack of direction, and sugary fluff. The only redeeming factors of this show are the few legitimately funny moments- most of which are generated in the presence of Sumomo. I don't recommend this show at all, unless you can turn your brain off for 27 episodes.
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