A Boy’s first computer. A country boy from Hokkaido, Hideki arrives in the big city (Tokyo) to go to college. Instantly, he is shocked and amazed by the variety and prevalence of Persocoms: personal computers designed to look and act like animals or even people! Too poor to afford one of his own, Hideki is overjoyed to discover a discarded Persocom in a trash heap. However, this gift of fate turns into a mystery as his Persocom, Chi, appears to be able to operate without her OS... How real is real?

The DVD will contain four bilingual episodes (English & Japanese) on a DVD9 with two English subtitle streams (Dialogue translation & Signs Only translation), non-credit opening animation and other extras.. Created by CLAMP (X, Cardcaptor Sakura, Rayearth), Animated by Madhouse (X, Trigun, Ninja Scroll, Patlabor WXIII), and English Dialog by Bang Zoom Entertainment (Vandread, X, Mahoromatic).

It first aired on Japanese TV just a year ago, and already CLAMPs anime based on the popular manga, Chobits is here on DVD. And so far it seems to capture some of the greatest moments from the Manga, but leaves us with a bit of a ‘meh’ feeling at the end.

For those that don’t know, Chobits tells the story of an 18 year-old from the farmlands of Japan, named Hideki. --Who has just been rejected from collage, but being the determined student that he is – He travels to Tokyo and attends a Cram School, in hopes of improving his marks. However, living so far up North has cut him off from the rest of the high tech world in the 21st century. (Or was it 22^nd?) He discovers that everyone has a Persocom. (Androids basically.) Needless to say, he wants one too… but has no cash for it, until he finds one in the garbage, Chi. He takes her home to see what he can do. Thus starting his new life of chaos and discovery…. Mostly chaos.

The four episodes on this, mostly show the troubles of handling a Persocom, especially one like Chi, that has the mentality of a 3 year-old. He goes through quite a bit, like trying to get her to talk and say something other than “chi”… And picking up clothes for her. Can you imagine what would happen if an 18 year-old man walked into an underwear store to buy panties? And this isn’t the half of his troubles, as he goes through several other ordeals. The DVD sure does have its moments, although not a funny as one of Pioneer’s recent releases, being Mahromatic. It still manages to provide some good laughs, though much of them are aimed at males.

In addition to all that, it doesn’t look too bad either. The character designs are more or less the same from the Manga. In addition, the animation looks really rich and beautiful, presented to us in 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen, with no video problems at all. Nice crystal clear imagery throughout the whole disk. Same can be said about the audio, I found no problems in it at all. And the nice thing is, it is in 3.1 sound, with much of its sounds coming from the center speaker. With the left and right sounds coming from the left and right speakers respectively.  The quality of the audio sounds about the same for both audio tracks, well as far as tech is concerned.

As for the voice acting, we get the standard results. The English dub is done by BANG! Zoom, the same group that does much of Pioneer’s releases. Though the voices do sound terrific, I found the Japanese voices were much nicer on the ears. Much of the voices just didn’t seem 100% right for the characters; well maybe for Chi… then again all she says for most of these episodes is “Chi.” Go figure :) Maybe with the next release, things will fall more into place. I for one hope so; this seems to be one of those series that can have a truly hilarious dub.

One thing fans will likely find interesting to say the least, is the naming of Shimbo’s Persocom, Sumomo. As we all know, in the Manga translations, her name is “Plum” which is the direct translation of Sumomo, this infuriated a few people. In the dub, she is indeed called Sumomo, so if you are one of those that insisted that, her name is Sumomo and not Plum, you will be happy. Got used to or thought that her name was Plum because of the Manga? Well get use to the name, because it’s Sumomo Dubbed and Subbed.

Extras and menus are a bit on the laid-back side. The menus are very simple, using still images for each area. Not too many moving graphics or anything, just simple images with the instrumental version of the main opening song, playing in the background. Access to the other selections is easy to get access to, not too many problems here overall. It just was missing that, push for perfection. The extras included with this are standard, Textless opening, Image Gallery with a small batch of high quality pictures, Pioneer’s previews for upcoming products, and DVD credits. Nothing really revolutionary here, well the reversible covers and inserts look nice. Again, like the menus, not bad, but at the same time could be better.

This first release of Chobits left me feeling amused but a bit empty at the same time. I wanted to see more. (Despite the fact that I have read ahead with the manga) don’t get me wrong, it is very funny. But if you are looking for a DVD that has everything close to perfection as possible, more so for the extras to the running time, (Four episodes wasn’t enough for this volume) you might have to bite the bullet with this one. This series has a lot of potential and if you are a fan of the manga, definitely give it a watch. Not in that party? Give it a rent at least, you might find yourself addicted to it, especially with the later releases.