Talk:List of Chobits characters

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Umm, person at IP 68.113.208.230, why did you remove the perfectly valid information? -- Emperorbma 05:14, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I am replacing it unless you can explain this... -- Emperorbma

Contents

[edit] Naming

I redid naming according to this: http://www.tokyopop.com/dbpage.php?propertycode=CHB&categorycode=BMG&page=characterinfo WhisperToMe 03:02, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] First Persocom??

Where in either the Anime or Manga does it say Freya was the first persocom? Something about that seems logically flawed... why give her a program to give all persocoms emotions if she's the first persocom ever created? It would take years, even decades for normal persocoms to proliferate in the meantime, making such a program virtually useless. They never say how long Freya stayed activated, but it couldn't have been more than a few years, and if Freya was the first Persocom ever, there couldn't have been more than a few hundred thousand persocoms at the most, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Also, assuming that everything passed normally, and Freya didn't fall in love with her father, she most likely would have found the person just for her long before there was a large amount of persocoms in the world. Hell, it only took Chii a few months to go from a totally blank slate to falling in love with Hideki.

It just doesn't make sense. Plus, I remember the Anime like the back of my hand, and nothing is mentioned about Freya being the first persocom. The Manga might be different, however. I don't know, I haven't gotten around to reading it.PiccoloNamek July 5, 2005 23:00 (UTC)

Freya isn't the first persocom as far as I know, but her father/creator made the first. ---Isuzu, October 8, 2005

freya was only the first of the chobits series of persocoms --Ditre 07:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Real emotions?

"Chi (ちぃ Chii) is a persocom and a Chobit (a super persocom that possesses free will and genuine feelings and emotions)" It clearly states in the final volume of the manga *stop reading now if you haven't read it* that the Chobits do not have emotions. I personally didn't understand the ending too well, but I do know that Freya/Dark Chii says this herself. ---Isuzu, October 8, 2005

That doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you mis-read it. If the Chobits do not have emotions, then how was Chii able to fall in love with Hideki? Why was Freya so sad that she gave up her will to live? Perhaps the manga is different from the anime, but I don't think it's quite that different. In the anime, Chii says things like "When I thought you were ill, my heart was hurting like it was twisted.", and at the end she says "I am happy!". Ms. Hibiya herself states that they were designed so that they would be able to fall in love.

It's hard to look at Chii, smiling and laughing and being happy together with Hideki as not really having emotions at all. Something isn't right here. I haven't completely read the ending of the manga myself, but I do know that there is one scene where Freya takes over Chii's body and starts asking Hideki all sorts of odd questions. Is this when she said it? Perhaps you misinterpreted something. Saying the Chobits do not posess emotions goes against the plain sense of both the manga and the anime. There is also one scene near the end where Chii and Hideki are together and Chii says to Hideki with the most awesome smile on her face, " My 'Someone Just for Me'. At the end of the anime, Chii is literally crying, because the pain of being separated from Hideki is so intense. If that's a person with no emotions, then I just don't know what to say.

Anyway, I'm going to ask my friend Talon, who knows everything about everything about Chobits, what he thinks. Also, you should sign your name properly by using ~~~~ at the end of your statements. PiccoloNamek 15:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Well

And... I asked him, and he says you are wrong. Very Wrong. As he is someone who has read the manga in its entirety, and also someone that I have a great deal of respect for, and until you can prove he and I wrong, I will leave the article the way it is.

"Short answer: He's wrong, but it's his opinion, but he's wrong.

Answer for Namek: It's wrong, bar me getting my hands on the original Japanese books and finding out that a translator at Tokyopop-USA had an agenda he was acting on.

Granted, this kid could argue the difference between a robot's "fake"/"pre-programmed" emotions and ours, but personally, I would say that given robots as real as Chobits, their emotions are EQUAL in "fakeness"/"realness" to ours. He needs to quit kidding himself and get over the fact that humans themselves are nothing more than remarkable machines. And that part of our hard-wiring includes what we psychologically label as emotions.

But for Christ's sake, Freya shows pleasure with Hideki's decision. Zima flirts with Dita all the time. Chii hugs herself in episode 20 (Book 4) and whispers, "Hideki," lovingly holding herself even tighter. (If this does not suggest ROMANTIC INTEREST, and if romance does not equate EMOTION-RELATING, then I give up.)

What Freya says is that the Chobits are not able to operate outside their programming, they aren't true AI unlike the urban myth says they are. They are very advanced but their emotions are programmed to be there - so in that sense they aren't real emotions. I agree on the conclusion of humans not actually being all that diffrent but this need reflecting in the article.
Here is what the TokyoPop translation says:
Hideki: Minoru said that the Chobits series is special. That persocoms don't function without their programs, but that "Chobits" are diffrent. Does that mean that Chobits... that Chi has emotions?
Freya: No. We do not have emotions.
Hideki: What...?
Freya: Daddy used to call us "Chobits" but we're no diffrent from his other persocoms. We can't function outside our programming. That legend must have stemmed from someone's wish. If something not human has emotions it would be considered sentient -alive- just like a human. If it's the same as a human, it wouldn't be wrong to love that thing. It wouldn't be a sin. The Chobits legend is a lie that stemmed from peoples desire... and their guilt. Wishful thinking.
Later Hideki and Freya have the following discussion:
Hideki: Even though I've accepted my feelings- because I've accepted them- I love her too much. I can't erase all of Chi's memories.
Freya: Even though Chi isn't alive?
Hideki: Yes.
Freya: Even though Chi's heart is only a program?
Hideki: That's not true. Chi's heart is real. It beats inside me. If Chi looks sad, I'm sad. If she looks happy, I'm happy. Even if her expressions are all just a program, I don't care.
So the point is that Chi, other persocoms, don't have so-called true emotions. But this doesn't matter because the seem so real that Hideki isn't bothered, he just want's Chi to be happy. And the whole point of Chi and Freya's programming was for them to be happy by finding their "someone just for them" and Chi succeeds were Freya failed. So she doesn't exceed her programming - but she doesn't have to in order to love Hideki - as that is what she was programmed to do. GracieLizzie 12:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I still disagree. This is a semantic game centered around what constitutes "real emotions". This all depends on what your definition of what "real emotions" are. A Chobit's emotions might be defined by, caused by a program, but does that make the feelings themselves any less real? When Freya lay there in bed, dying, wishing to die, ("I wanted to stop.") was it because the pain she felt wasn't "real"? I could just as easily say human emotions aren't real, because after all, they're only neurotransmitters affecting the electrical activity of neurons, nothing more. They don't come from a soul, or from some other mystical, undefined source. I think that what we must ask ourselves is "Is the actual experience of the feeling itself "real" from the Chobit's point of view?"

And conerning neurotransmitters, perhaps a Chobit's emotional programming could be considered as "digital neurotransmitters" of a sort; that is: the execution of the program or program subset causes a change in the state of their CPU's functioning that they precieve to be an emotion. Of course this is pure speculation, but if that was the case, how could their emotions be any less real than ours?

Perhaps Hideki's love for Chi is nothing more than his pituitary gland pumping out oxytocin! The primitive part of his brain can't distinguish between a persocon and a human... to it, Chi is just a very pretty - and very desireable - human, and the programming given to him by the forces of evolution is causing him to feel this way. So much for real emotions.

As for sentience: A Chobit is clearly self-aware. The evidence to support this is overwhelming, and I fail to see how one could possibly disagree. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that the Chobits are philosophical zombies of a sort; that they have no real conscious experience; that they have no qualia; they they see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, physically or emotionally; that they are only pretending, and it is all nothing more than a grand illusion. This is clearly wrong and goes against the plain sense of the series.

What I think they're saying basically is not that a Chobit cannot experience emotion, but rather, that those emotions are less real or somehow lack legitimacy because they are derived from their programming, rather than from... well, whatever Freya happens to think human emotions are derived from.PiccoloNamek 13:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I am actually inclined to agree with you, (except for the Hideki thing because he chooses not to have sex with her because it would reset her hard drive) but what I'm trying to say is I'm not sure CLAMP agrees with you. That that is the way it is presented in the story. What gets me is how are the Chobits any diffrent from the other highly advanced persocoms in this aspect? Zima and Yuzuki seem to be able to love too, it's suggested that Yumi-the-persocom may have been able to too. I think that Chi's emotions are as vaild as Hideki's but I just wish I knew what CLAMP thinks "true emotions" or whatever are. One final thing, Chobits still have certian constraints - they are programmed to find there "someone just for them" and if the person they fall for is in a relationship they permenantly shut down - that doesn't always happen with humans, perhaps that is what CLAMP means... now I'm confused. GracieLizzie 18:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

What is CLAMP thinking? In Japan, I believe that many people still believe in the concept of a "soul", something separate from the functioning of your brain that makes you you; that makes you alive, or perhaps, being alive gives you a soul. I won't even get into the definition of what "alive" truly is; that's a whole other can of worms. I think that the people at CLAMP believe that a machine can't have a soul, or at the very least, no persocom is advanced enough to harbour a soul. (Ghost?) I suppose they also think that because humans have a soul, that their emotions and consciousness are more real or legitimate than a persocoms, assuming that a persocom has a consciousness at all.

Clearly, the girls at CLAMP have at best a very poor understanding of the human brain's functioning, what the nature of human emotion is, how it comes to be, what causes it, et cetra, and that, possibly combined with a backward view concerning the existence of souls, has led us to this quandary.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is no place for my personal views concerning consciousness or souls, and I fear I must edit the article. I'll get around to it some time today. This is actually quite depressing for me, because, taking her words at face value, a lot of what I hold very dear about this series has just been thrown out the window. If they truly don't experience any emotions at all, if they aren't sentient, even in the slightest, then what was the point of it all? Of any of it? They shouldn't have bothered to write the story at all, because the Chobits are little more than normal persocoms with super-fast processors.PiccoloNamek 18:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't throw the idea that CLAMP do think that Chi's emotions are important and prevelant. After all her desire is to be happy, and she fulfills that desire. In than sense I think CLAMP believe that Chi does have that sort of emotion but what I think they were getting at is asking what exactly makes a human human? And why do we have emotions? What are emotions? And is it wrong to love a human-like machine that also seems to display those same emotions. So perhaps CLAMP do think Chi has emotions it's just what Freya says confuses this a bit - basically the only way to know what they think is to ask them. Oh and one more thing - is they're really anything wrong with believing in a soul? I consider myself scientifically minded, and I accept scientifics facts like emotions coming from neurotransmitters, and believe strongly in other scientific beliefs, but I still don't rule out the existance of a soul. Anyway I think the Japanese word for this concept is Kokoro which is usually translated as heart. ::shrugs:: GracieLizzie 00:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think what Freya said could possibly be made more clear or explicit. You said "After all, her [Chi's] desire is to be happy, and she fufills that desire." But Freya said that they don't really have emotions, and in fact are not sentient at all, so taking what Freya said literally, and not figuratively, Chi finding the Person just for Her was nothing more than a machine following it's programming, just like any random store-bought persocom. What makes a human human? The "program" contained within our DNA. Why do we have emotions? Because certain evolutionary pressures caused the functioning of our brains to be so. I suppose there's nothing "wrong" per se with believing in a soul, other than there's no proof whatsoever. Personally, my view of the "soul" is similar to the concept of a "Ghost" from Ghost in the Shell.

I thought perhaps that the Chobits had ghosts as well, but now, perhaps not.PiccoloNamek 03:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well the thing that I'm beginning to wonder is, maybe those store bought persocoms do have emotions, in the manner that Chi has, too. But maybe I'm reading into it too much. On the ghost in shell thing, I've just read the wikipedia article and I agree that it makes sense to me too. I should probably look into Ghost in the Shell as it sounds interesting. GracieLizzie 09:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps Freya's response was skewed by any combination of perspective, language, and/or programming? Explaining the abstract is always difficult, it seems that one must base one's explaination using some point of reference. Perhaps she was judging by human standards... I mean, Freya's response in reverse: They are not human, thus they aren't sentient, thus they cannot have emotion. Zima makes a similar statement, saying their happiness might not be the same happiness by human standards. Problem is... everything is judged by human standards, thus the only answer that can be given would have to be.. in human standards. Not only that, but Freya has ever been the pessimist, the doubter. And yet Freya later observes that Hideki is complex for he is not only simple, but profound. Perhaps Hideki, being the good man he is, has proven Freya wrong and thus all doubts are lifted and Freya can finally disappear.

On another tangent, in the Manga, am I correct in that the program inside Chi only has one effect; the destruction of all person-recognition abilities, in effect destroying memories of people, in effect eliminating all persocom relationshihps? Unlike in the Anime where the program has two, the alternate effect to upload Chobits-level emotions? Perhaps this needs to be reflected in both articles?

Following that tangent, Zima and Dita were not likely to have been built for close relationships in contrast with the way Chi/Elda and Freya were. In the manga no program was executed, and yet Zima and Dita still experience strong emotions with one another. Not to mention Zima's unrational feelings toward's Chi finding true happiness despite running counter to his programming.

I'm not really here to debate philosophy, of sentience, of emotion, of life, of truth, of everything... I guess I am the sentimental dreamer type, so personally I beleive the Persocom's love, especially Chi's love is true and real. And that just like one of the numerous themes found in the series, emotions and memories cannot be adequately expressed as words or data.

Let me just end by saying Freya's answer may not be the whole truth. Things like this, are rarely simple. --Mark4011 05:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

What I wonder is, what exactly is Freya's definition of emotion? If by emotion she meant "a neural impulse that moves an organism to action, prompting automatic reactive behavior that has been adapted through evolution as a survival mechanism to meet a survival need." Then of course she doesn't have emotions. But that doesn't necessarily imply she they don't experience feeling at all. On the other hand, she could have meant that they literally don't feel anything at all, like Commander Data.
I've been thinking a lot about what Freya said, and I'm still unsure. Re-reading all of the conversations she had with Chi in book seven, about how much horrible pain she was in ("I could no longer take the pain of these emotions"), I'm really confused.
I think there are a number of possibilities:
1. What she said in book seven and the previous books is true and what she said in book eight is false.
2. What she said in book eight is true and what she said in the others books is false.
3. What she said in the previous books is true, and we are simply misinterpreting what was said in book eight.
I've been thinking. She also said "We cannot function outside of our programming." This made me wonder. Perhaps what she meant wasn't that they don't have real feelings, but that perhaps that they don't have true "free-form" emotions like a human. Their programming says "You will feel this when this happens, and that when that happens. When emotion A is active, you will have facial expression X" while this isn't necessarily true for a human. The feeling itself may be real and valid, but they will always feel a certain way in a certain situation, and not any other way, because that is what their programming dictates.
The feeling itself may be real, but it is still programmed to be there. Perhaps this is what she meant. Am I making any sense here? What's really infuriating, is that even if the Chobits were real, it would still be impossible to know for sure if they can have the experience of feeling, because it is impossible to know another being's qualia. (Assuimg that a persocom can even have qualia at all.)
Any way, perhaps I should differentiate between the manga's program and the anime's program. Also, I think it's a little unfair to call Freya a pessimist. Perhaps we could just say that she's cautious. Very cautions. You would be too, if you went through what she did. Honestly, I'd rather contract cancer than experience that kind of emotional agony.
I truly wonder, are the Chobits even conscious at all? Are they really just machines processing lines and lines of programming code? Freya said "Chi's heart is only a program". This got me thinking. What would the nature of such a program be? I believe it is probably a self-updating program, a sort of "soft" neural-net that is constantly growing and becoming ever more interlinked as it recieves data about things such as speech, language, word associations, social norms, proper behavior, etc. It probably contains some kind of meta-language that would allow the learning of any human language, speech algorithms and recognition, and many other things too numerous to list. Wow, sorry, I suppose I got carried away!
Also, emotions = neurotransmitters, memories = synapses between neurons. At least, that's how I see it. There was a man who once bumped his head and forgot his entire life up until that point. He never did regain his memories. For me, this proves that memories are a purely physical phenomenon.PiccoloNamek 06:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Laptops?

I'm quite sure, Sumomo and Kotoko aren't Laptops. Laptops and PC's have the same habilities in hard disk and processing, the only diference is the battery. On the other side, PDA's have more limitations than PC's and Laptops. In one scene (both on the anime and the manga) we learn of Sumomo's limitations:

Hideki - What is that? (looking at the downloaded image)

Sumomo - That is... AN ATTACHED IMAGE!!!!

Hideki - I already knew that!!!

Shimbo - You can't ask her such dificult questions, she is just a mobile unit!


Kotoko on the other side says she has the same habilities as a normal sized persocom, but that's because she is "unique". So in other words, Sumomo is like a Tungsten (or any other "normal" PDA) and Kotoko is a LifeDrive (maybe better, but still a PDA). Coven 36

They're called "Laptop persocoms". Most real laptops aren't as powerful as their PC counterparts, and they have very different CPU architectures. Do you think a Powerbook is even half as powerful as Quad CPU PowerMac G5? Then how could a little thing like Sumomo be as powerful as a full-size persocom. A bigger persocom simply has more space for advanced equipment, just like a real computer. Sumomo is equivalent to a "normal" laptop computer. Kotoko is a desktop-replacement laptop. Kotoko has much more memory than Sumomo and also has dual processors. Also, I believe what Shinbo actually said is that she can't answer abstract questions, probably because of a combination of limited CPU power and too-simple programming. (A more complex program capable of understanding such a question probably wouldn't run well on her system.) I would also imagine a simplified CPU architechture in and of itself limits a persocom's ability to "think", so to speak. The Chobits equiavalent of a PDA would be something like Yumi's handheld model, that only stores phone numbers and whatnot.PiccoloNamek 22:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atashi

Should I add a character spot for Atashi? What do you think?PiccoloNamek 21:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Now see here

CRAP. I accidentally violated the 3RR rule. Please forgive me administrators. I just know I am going to get blocked. Now, whoever this anonymous editor is needs to stop, now. This article entitled "Characters in Chobits", not "Characters in Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE". This article concerns the stories and events concerning the characters in Chobits. Whatever happens to them in any Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE crossover is completely irrelevant to what happens in Chobits, and has no business being on this page. Most of what is being added is already covered, at least in part, on the TRC page and if it isn't that's where it needs to go. Please STOP adding the inappropriate information to this article.PiccoloNamek 08:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Freya

In the anime, does Freya still exist at the end? She gets deleted, but it seems like she reappears at the end when Chi returns.I've read comments that suggest that she dies (for real) at the end. In the manga, I'm not sure what happens. She survived the first memory wipe of Elda though, makes sense that she appears at the end again of epsiode 26.

I am inclined to believe that, at least in the anine, she continues to exist. The best evidence for this is that the final page of Chii's book, in the last few seconds of the final episode of the show, still has the red Atashi in the picture, along with pink Atashi and the figure representing Hideki. And, after all, Freya did say that they would be together forever. In the manga, it is explicitly stated that a single Chobi unit was not designed to hold two hearts at the same time. (Or, to put it in more technical terms, to be running two instances of the core program at once.) One of them will eventually have to overwrite the other, which is why Elda lost her memories.

So, in my opinion: Anime = alive, Manga = dead. Although, at least as far as the manga is concerned, they were never even truly conscious to begin with.PiccoloNamek 20:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

PiccoloNamek 19:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I've seen the last episode of the anime, and Freya is still definitely "alive". She appears again after the "delete" afterall.

[edit] Elda's memories were on the disc

"Elda's memories were on the disc which was accidentally left in the garbage when Hideki salvaged her."

What is the source of that? I couldn't find it in the manga...

In volume 8 Hibiya says that the Elda's memories were on the disc and that the reason she had been keeping it was to reload them into Elda's body if she was ultimately unable to find someone to love. She wanted to do this so that they could be a family again.PiccoloNamek 03:45, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stop. Grammar Time.

I see a number of grammar problems in this article.

Much like many young men, Hideki is also has an active libido, possessing a very large number of pornographic magazines, which he refers to as "okazu" which means "side dish".

She is programmed to be cute and tends to be quite hyperactive, for example her morning 'wakie wakie exercises'.

The phrase "Because of this" is used a lot. Commas are everywhere. I think this article needs a lot of cleaning up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nanobot (talk • contribs) 07:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC).

I agree the page needs improvements, but what exactly is grammatically incorrect about commas and "Because of this"?PiccoloNamek 15:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
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