Ooh-Ooh, Ooh-Ooh, Yeah

Sunday, September 20 2009 at 20:26 (Anime, Music, Reviews, School) (Chobits, Max's least favourite thing ever)

Let me be with you…

So Friday was a little bit dull. In double Physics that morning I found out (along with most other people, it seems) that I had TOTALLY frocked up my homework. *eats words about it being too easy*
To be fair, most of it was from tiredness and stupid mistakes, not to mention the confusing nature of micro- and nano- thingamajigs and trying to get everything to be in the right form… Well, I get it now… sort of. After that we did some tests of density using a Eureka can and then we tested the breaking stress of Chris’s hair… which wasn’t much. I can’t tell you exactly because I gave up after repeatedly getting ridiculous numbers out of my calculatrice.
Third period I finished my notes on Greek architecture then went outside onto the garden and helped Eliza write her letter from Odysseus to Telemachus, although how much of my input she actually utilised, I have no idea. In Classics we revised the story of the House of Atreus and also did timelines and such about the Greek civilisation, including the Mycenean, Dark, Archaic and Classical ages.

Lunch brought with it more talking to Luke about crazy things and other things, then I had Further Maths… except I didn’t. Mr McWilliams was still absent so we had the lesson off, effectively giving me a double free (something I never have normally) to occupy myself in. I went out onto the field and talked to Rose and Chloé until everyone else arrived, at which time I decided to walk across the field and back with Max. Unfortunately Nico followed us through the secret hole in the hedge, so I was forced to carry him across the field and dump him in a thorny hedge. I played the association word game with Nico, Rose and Adam for a while, but then Rose went away and Penelope was besotted by suitors, so I went and dozed on a bench for a bit, absent-mindedly reading Tom Cook’s discarded timetable that had come to rest in the undergrowth. I got bored of that so I listened to some Yui (I had been listening to it whilst making Classics notes earlier) then got restless, so I got up and went over to Eliza and Rose, who were dosing up on caffeine. I talked to them, then I talked to Tilly, Ellen and Megan for a bit. Then, blissfully, it was time to go home.

*WARNING*
Copious talk about ANIME ahead. Proceed at own risk.
The owner of this blog is not responsible for any injury or difficulty resulting from ignoring this warning.

When I got home, I had a purpose: find Chobits somewhere on the internet. Chobits is a manga (adapted into anime, obviously) made by CLAMP (the same group who did Cardcaptor Sakura) about a world where all computers are actually anthropomorphic and have installed personalities and abilities. The series focuses around the relationships between humans and these ‘Persocons’ and whether a romantic involvement between them is wise, or even possible. Despite these themes, it is a seinen manga (designed for young men). How does it do this without having massive battles with oversized swords and copious gore? Well, there’s quite a bit of near-nudity (but never explicit nudity) and porn is mentioned at least three times every episode. Hell, there’s a whole episode about buying knickers.

That’s right. It’s anime, it’s overwhelmingly Japanese, it deals with romance and pevertedness, it has allusions to nudity and all of the characters are incredibly cute and the first ending song is a combination of French and Japanese, i.e.

THIS IS MAX’S LEAST FAVOURITE THING EVER

He just doesn’t know it yet.

The main characters are Hideki, a student studying to retake his university entrance exam and a Persocon, Chii, whom Hideki finds abandoned in a rubbish pile. He takes her home and manages to switch her on (the switch is on her crotch) and he discovers that the only thing she can say is ‘chii’, so he names her that. Most of the story after that revolves around Hideki teaching Chii about naming things and how to behave in everyday life (it’s good to watch for learning about Japanese customs) and their developing relationship. Meanwhile, there are several other characters who are all later revealed to have tragic pasts related to Persocons: one married a persocon whose hard-drive slowly failed and then was killed saving her husband in car accident, and another was married to a man who became so attached to his android that he forgot about his wife entirely.
Almost all of these problems are resolved as you learn more about the characters, and alsosome of the characters investigate whether Chii could be a legendary ‘chobits’ series persocon and a seriously weird book series of unknown origin seems to offer a metaphor of Hideki and Chii’s relationship. It all gets REAL confusing towards the end, what with… well, you’ll have to find out because it would be really difficult and not really worth my time to describe.
But anyway, it’s a brilliant series with high production values (and great music) as well as being funny and heart-rending in equal measure. On the other hand, you could also call it a cheap I, Robot knock-off, but that would be shallow and miserable. They don’t have the Three Rules programmed into them, anyway. It’s also interesting to see the way CLAMP re-uses some characters: A twelve-year old persocon building genius called Minoru is almost identical to Eriol and a later introduced character, Kokoto, is very much like Meilin; both characters from Cardcaptor Sakura.
This comes highly recommended and is definitely better than ANYTHING that has ‘gelade’ in its name. It’s also only 24 episodes, so it’s easy to watch.

*L’fin de Anime*

I must now hastily write a letter to Odysseus before Waking the Dead. Methinks that this entry doesn’t quite have the content ratio to make posting a link on Facebook worthwhile…