Chobits
Another CLAMP feature, Chobits is one of their newer series, with the same Gothic-style clothing of early titles but using neither the initial angst nor Magical Girl shoujo style they seem to have perfected in earlier successes. (Not to say that some angst doesn’t pop up eventually…this is CLAMP we’re talking about.) Instead, Chobits is more considered to be a guys’ manga, as it is the story of a young ronin (cram school, pre-college student) who finds a seemingly broken but beautiful female robot (a “persocom”, basically a walking computer) named Chii in the trash. As you probably might have expected, he immediately finds himself attracted to Chii, and can we go so far as to say that he…loves her?
Produced in 2000, the manga ran for eight tankubon before its completion, all of which are now available in English from Tokyopop. As you might expect, there is also an anime version, which is also commericially available.
Links:
(sorry about the cop-out links, my connection is to skippy to search properly! ;o;)
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July 20th, 2005 at 1:58 am
Sorry but Chobits is one of Clamp’s first manga runs. In fact, the anime is the first Clamp production before Tokyo Babylon.
And you got the publication date wrong. Try 1998, serialized before it was printed to tankoban.
And anipike is a nice info site but nothing compared to http://www.animenewsnetwork.com and http://www.animeondvd.com or The Anime Academy. Anime Turnpike is rarely updated, frequently has dead links and sometimes doesn’t load when the bandwidth gets shot.
I appreciate the fact you are bringing attention to this series but where are you getting your facts? Also tried to click to your site but got an Error 404. A problem on my end or is there something wonky when I try to access your site via 3yen?
July 20th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Thanks for your comment. Since you asked, I obtained my info from AnimeNFO.com which lists the year published as 2000. (Other Chobits fansites seem to say the same: http://www.wondermay.com/chobits/ ) I have found AnimeNFO to be a generally reputable source – I did also check Anime News Network after your comment (see the Chobits profile here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=1553 ) which lists the first tankubon as being published in 2001. If the serialization did begin in 1998, as you say, why is there a three-year gap in between that and the first collection release? Multiple other webpages cited the first chapter as having appeared in issue #43 of Weekly Young Magazine, also 2000. So I do appeaciate your input, though it seems our facts are clashing – where are you getting yours?
Additionally, Chobits is not one of the “first” runs, as you say…Rayearth, Miyuki-chan, Cardcaptor Sakura, X, Tokyo Babylon, Clover, CLAMP School Detectives, and probably others that I don’t personally know the vintages of came before. It seems safe to consider the year 2000 to be relatively recent for a group that has been publishing since the early 1990s, if 2000 is indeed the right year. I’m not entirely sure why you’ve mentioned the Tokyo Babylon anime either as the post concerned neither it nor the Chobits anime (save for a mentioning of it); only the manga.
Thank you for the links…although I regularly use ANN as a source, I’ve never tried animeondvd.com before. Generally I’m a bit less lazy in my linking (see posts previous to this week) but I was posting from Internet cafes and dialup thanks to some issues with my ISP. As a result, things really haven’t been up to spec. ^^;;
As for the site being errornous, I’m not sure whether that was a problem on your end or ours, but it seems to be working correctly at the moment at least. My apologies for the problems and any other misunderstandings on my end!
July 20th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Izumi, thanks for the informative reply. AnimeNFO is a great resource!
And, yes, I can see where you are coming from on the whole “is Chobits a newer release or not” issue. I also stand corrected! I am not too ashamed to be told I am wrong.
Chobits ran serially from 1998 to 2000. Kodansha published the graphic novels around the time the anime came out, 2001. I have one of the volumes of the shonen manga with Chobits. The artwork is outstanding and you can see why Clamp can go straight to tankoban now. They have the muscle to do it.
In fact, because of Chobits, Clamp can just about go to tankoban and have a series picked up for anime (Tsubasa…) at almost the same time.
Now, to put your research skills to the test because I don’t know if I can do it: was Chobits the last to be serially distributed before going to tankoban? Dunno on my end. In fact, even info on the shonen magazine is scant. My resident otaku friends have never even seen the title I have. Hmmm.
July 21st, 2005 at 4:50 pm
The shounen magazine? Weekly Young? Personally I had never heard tell of it, but then again previous to this CLAMP’s work was generally more geared towards girls, so it’s possible Chobits was their first and last publication in that particular magazine.
I believe Angelic Layer was serially distributed, but it ran simultaeneously with Chobits, did it not? Legal Drug was also serialized in the early 2000s in Asuka Comics DX. Then, according to ANN, Tsubasa appeared in Shonen Magazine before its tankubon release, but perhaps that was just a preview to get people interested. xxxHolic was the same.
It seems like a few were being serialized at once (Angelic Layer, Lega Drug, Chobits, maybe more) and then they went into xxxHolic, Tsubasa and the like in 2003.
What do you think of the Tsubasa anime, by the way, if you’ve seen it? I’m really impressed by the way they’ve imported the style; it seems like the not-quite-standard body proportions were transitioned well, and the music is excellent. The story seems to be moving a lot slower than it did in the manga, though – maybe that’s just me, but…