Manga
The manga that were hits in Japan in the 2000s.
2000S HITS
About
After moving from the countryside into the big city, poor college student Hideki Motosuwa finds himself down on his luck. All he wants is a good job, a girlfriend, and his very own “persocom” - the latest and greatest in humanoid computer technology. Hideki’s luck changes one night when he finds Chi - an adorable, but seemingly broken, persocom thrown out in a pile of trash. After taking her home, Hideki discovers that Chi is more responsibility than he expected - and that there’s much more to his cute new persocom than meets the eye.
Character analysis
Hideki moves to the city hoping for an ordinary adult life, a job, a girlfriend, a working computer, and instead finds Chii discarded on the street, a persocom who can barely speak. Caring for her, more out of basic decency than any grand plan, slowly turns into the central relationship of his new life in the city.
Chii starts the story essentially blank, capable of learning but carrying no memories of who she was before, and the mystery of her origins runs underneath the show's more everyday romantic comedy plot. Her gradual growth from a nearly wordless machine into someone with her own preferences and feelings is the story's emotional core.
Minoru is a young, extremely intelligent persocom engineer who keeps his own companion, Yuzuki, as his closest relationship, a dynamic the story uses to explore how isolating it can be to rely on an artificial companion instead of other people.
Yumi represents a more conventional human romantic option for Hideki, and her presence forces him, and the reader, to keep asking what it means that his growing feelings are directed at a persocom instead.
Hiromu has more experience navigating both the technology and the social reality of persocoms, and he becomes a mentor figure for Hideki as his bond with Chii deepens into something more complicated than simple ownership.
Status evaluation
CLAMP's signature elegant character designs give even the series' sillier comedic beats a polished, distinct look.
The persocom mystery and the human-versus-machine romance give the series a thoughtful hook, even as it stays fairly gentle overall.
Chii's childlike learning curve and Hideki's flustered reactions provide steady, light comedy.
Chii's search for her own identity and memories adds real emotional weight beneath the comedy.
This is a gentle romantic comedy with nothing frightening in it.
There is no violence in this series.
The science-fiction premise is easy to follow, with a small, focused main cast.
This is a completed, fairly short series. This figure has not been verified against a current source and should be treated as approximate.
“A broke student adopting a computer he found in the trash turns out to be one of the gentler love stories I've read.”