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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:00 |
 It's been a long wait since the last volume of Chobits appeared in the UK (nearly 5 months), but it's finally here - and just may have been worth the wait. Away from the ecchi comedy moments, Chobits hasn't had much to offer up to now, but this volume finally begins to pull a plot together and almost makes up for five discs of disappointment...
18 - Chii Disappears
Hideki's beginning to realise the appeal that persocoms can have for a
human - he's starting to have feelings for Chii, and given what he's
heard from others about people who have become obsessed with their
Persocoms, he's starting to worry. He may not get the chance to get too
obsessed, though, as Chii is kidnapped on her way to work. Her
kidnapper has his own fascination for her, and promises to find out
where she really came from. Meanwhile, Hideki's out searching for her,
but with no real clues to go on he doesn't have much chance of finding
her...
19 - Chii Waits
Chii's stuck waiting for Hideki to rescue her, with no-one but Kotoko
for company. Hideki's doing his best to track her down, and Ueda
(Chii's boss from the Tirol) joins in the search, but it still seems to
be a hopeless task. While searching, Ueda tells Hideki of his own
experiences of getting too attached to a persocom...
20 - Chii Wants
Kojima gets down to his analysis, while Minoru has received another
picture that may have some importance. Hideki can't make any sense of
it, but Shinbo arrives home just in time to be of use... Meanwhile,
Chii's analysis is having some unexpected side-effects, and the extent
of Chii's abilities becomes clear...
21 - Chii Answers
Shinbo's moved in with Ms Shimizu, so it's just Hideki at the
apartments now. Otherwise, life is pretty much back to normal, but
there's something different that Hideki can't quite put his finger on.
Minoru's still trying to dig up what information he can about Chii, and
shares what he knows with Hideki. There are more risky ways of
gathering more information, but Minoru doesn't want to risk them -
Yuzuki, however, doesn't agree and carries out some unauthorised
hacking of her own...
The volume finally begins delving a little more into the show's real theme (exploring the
relationships between humans & persocoms, it seems) and providing
some real details on Chii's past & origins, which makes this disc a
good bit more interesting than the previous volumes. That it took to
disc 5 to really grab my attention is a bit worrying, though - the appeal the show has through its inherent cuteness and comic moments can only carry it so far.
On the new character front, Kojima's mini-persocom Kotoko is almost worth buying the disc
for - there's more humour from just that one character than anyone else on the
disc. Kojima himself less interesting, and does a very unlikely flip flop from evil character to good guy in the
space of just one epsiode which really didn't help his case, but he seems to have a role to play
in helping Hideki & Minoru figure out what's going on. I'll admit it's nice to
have someone in the show whose ethics are less than snow-white, though.
Overall, I actually enjoyed this disc, which surprised me. I was beginning to resign myself to Chobits
having been a bit of a waste of money. That said, one good disc doesn't
save a series, and there's only one more disc of story to follow, so the final batch of episodes will need
to be something spectacular if they're to save the series from the
'mediocre' bin. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen...
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