Chobits, or What's the deal with those sexy female computers in anime?

Cafe Society
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What’s the deal with those sexy female computers in anime?

I first encountered sexy female computers through my favorite artform, hentai. In films like “Custom Slave” and “Fragile Hearts” we had androids built to look exactly like hot babes, for one purpose, and they fulfilled that purpose in many ways, the end.

But there seems to be non-adult anime and anime that are on the fringes of being adult that feature sexy females who happen to be computers. Buttobi CPU (which I haven’t seen yet, only read about) would be one that apparently has a female computer that does some raunchy things, but it’s not really a hentai in the sense that there seems to be a lot of plot relating to the protagonist’s development as a person as well. (Japanese ratings of “adultness” re: sexuality don’t really reflect American values in this regard, so it’s hard to get a grasp).

I’ve also read about a popular series called Chobits that’s the equivalent of G-rated that also features very attractive female computers. That is, they ARE computers as I understand it. I haven’t seen “Chobits” either (it’s hard to get to the kid stuff when there’s so much good adult stuff crying out for attention ) but as I understand it, there’s no sex beyond maybe some smooching, mostly the robot just relates to the main character.

So, do the Japanese fetishize their computers that much? At least in the hentai, the androids are described as androids and not as “computers.” Is it the dream of a lot of Japanese guys that they’ll some day look at porn on the Web via naked woman? (OK, sounds like fun, but still weird.) Are Japanese guys having that much trouble relating to real women that they have a strong fantasy of having a totally compliant CPU in womanly form around? (OK, I have my moments in this respect, too, I suspect every guy does, but they’re just moments, they’re not enough to lead to a string of programs about totally compliant CPUs in womanly form).

In the U.S. there was a TV series that would have fit comfortably in this category called “My Living Doll” in which Julie Newmar played a sexy android and Bob Cummings was supposed to, oh, fuck her or something to convince her she’s human. But there weren’t whole rafts of series like it, that I know of, which I think would be the equivalent to all the robot CPU anime in Japan.

So, does anybody have any guesses about what’s going on over there? And what’s the deal with Chobits? Why a sexy female computer aimed for a market in which it can’t be all that sexy?

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its a pun.

we call a “personal computer” a PC, in japan they instead shorten it to “persicon” which pretty well sounds like “person”.

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I once had a student ask me if young, single women in America really live like on “Sex and the City”. She was a little disappointed to hear that such a lifestyle is rare/nonexistant in reality.

The Japanese have some strange ideas about the US that they’ve drawn from Western media, but these pale in comparison to the very, very strange ideas about Japan that Westerners get from anime. Especially from anime that’s not even considered popular mainstream entertainment within Japan.

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Most straight male artists that I’ve met enjoy drawing attractive females, and will use any excuse to do so. Most straight male artists seem to settle into ONE archetypical attractive female, and all the attractive females that they draw will have this archetype’s face and body, with minor differences in clothes, hair, etc.

My guess is that anime artists, like other artists, just enjoy drawing hot women and will draw them at every opportunity. Besides which, I’m sure that there’s at least some fanboys who buy the anime mostly for the drawings of females.

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A nitpick: Robots in the form of female humans are not androids, but gynoids. The Greek root “andros” means “man”, not in the inclusive “human” sense, but in the sense of “adult male human”.

As for the reason, I think that Lynn has the most important part. One never needs ask “why hot females?”. Nor, presumably, “why hot males?”, though I’m less attuned to that one. But there are also internally consistent reasons. Think about it: If you’re making a humaniform robot, you can make it look like whatever you want. Why not make it physically an exemplar of the human form? So if, for whatever reason, you have an inventor in an SF story making humaniform robots, you should expect them to be babes and hunks.

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I’d hate to think what questions the OP might have about the Japanese Id after watching All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. Nothing like cute girls with robot bodies and cat’s brains. :smiley:

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Because the anime about the humanoid personal computers that looked like hideous hags just didn’t sell toys very well.

Chobits does have some lightly naughty jokes, and if I remember the first episodes right, the heroine personicon does show up naked or naked-ish. And her “on button” was in an unfortunate place…

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As an unfunny student of computational linguistics who knows virtually nothing about anime I just want to add that making a computer or robot “female” might actually make sense - at least if you assume mainly male users. If it speaks, a female voice is fundamentally easier to understand for both men and women (on the other hand it’s also a little harder to implement convincingly.)
Subconsciously people treat the systems with which they interact like persons to a certain degree. The more human a system is the more efforts they make to adapt to the system, including avoiding to hurt its feelings. People also judge the performance of systems that behave like nice persons more benevolently. I think that making devices for male users “female” is a logical choice and giving them an attractive appearance adds to the effect.

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Actually, I’ve only seen one ugly girl in anime.

She’s an extra in La Blue Girl vol. 3.

La Blur Girl is not for children, Baptists, or anybody who might possibly remotely be offended by tentacle rape. Side effects may include drowsiness, dry mouth, eczema, vomiting, or priapism. It’s in your grocer’s freezer.

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Heck, or even female artists, such as Chobits’ CLAMP (4-woman writer/artist team). In that particular story it’s clearly stated it’s an “Engrish” wordplay on the phrase “personal computer”. And this is purely hearsay but I’ve been told that PCs are referred to in Japanese using feminine-gender words. Can any of our more Nihongo-savvy Dopers verify?

He may have to lie down for a while and take a drink. Then ask a question about florid, convoluted titles in Japanese media :smiley:

Lamia does make a good point, too: much of the Anime that becomes a hit among USA fans is not necessarily a major cultural presence in its land of origin (Think of it as a France-and-Jerry-Lewis kind of thing).
OP does mention Buttobi CPU aka I Dream of Mimi – that one’s interesting as all get-out since even more than the sexual situations (which make it absolutely Adults-only, even if supposedly softcore) it’s filled with compu-geek in-jokes, including a running reference to the PC/Mac wars and one quite poignant reference to what happens if you let your computer be accessed by many strangers. But the heavy compu-geek in-joke is, no spoiler this, that the geek protagonist’s real-life girl finds herself competing for attention with the computer. So in this one it makes sense to personify the PC as the “other woman”.

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I do not appear to have expressed myself very clearly in the OP, as people are answering various questions that I do not really think I was asking.

owlofcreamcheese I was unfamiliar with that pun, and it makes sense, but doesn’t explain why this subgenre might be popular, I don’t think.

Lamia I really don’t consider myself expert on Japan, and was asking a question about it in order to get information, which you have not provided, although you clearly feel you are more expert than I on the topic. It is distinctly possible that you are more expert than me, if so, give with the info instead of whapping me for presuming to an understanding which I have not presumed to.

Also, as I understand it Chobits is mainstream and Buttobi CPU is somewhere in between. These are the main topics I am interested in.

Also, I wonder about your assertion that pornographic manga are not mainstream in Japan. People claim that porn isn’t mainstream in the U.S., yet all the evidence indicates that it is. From whence does that opinion originate?

Lynn: I’m not so much interested why guys draw sexy females and look at them where possible (and yes, your intimation that sexy guy stuff might be popular, too, my wife keeps telling me about this stuff called yaoi, but I tell her it’s not for decent women like herself. Not that she pays any attention to me on matters of decency – it’s like she knows me or something.) What I’m interested in is the subgenre about sexy female computers/androids and how prevalent it is and whether or not there are any cultural factors that make it so.

Chronos Sure, gynoids, fine. The real question is, why make COMPUTERS in human form, which is what I understand the protagonists of chobits and Buttobi to be? From the hentai, I’ve seen androids created for sexual reasons, and I’m cool with that. But the primary function of these women/computers seems to be being a computer. What’s up with that?

Tentacle MonsterSo, you’ve never seen T’Nuk from the Canadian anime “Tripping the Rift”?

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Evil Captor:

  1. I don’t watch much TV.
  2. When I do watch TV, I make a point to avoid the Sci-Fi Channel (still pissed over the cancellation of MST3K)
  3. Canadian animation != anime.
  4. That’s not even anime style.
  5. If you want to include all animation under the anime flag, you go ahead and do that. I can name a few ugly females in animation: Olive Oyl, Mother Brain (from that old Captain N cartoon), the little fat girl from The Oblongs (but the creepy goth girl was kinda cute), the teacher from Cow and Chicken, Patty and Selma, the landlady from Futurama, Diane Choksondik, the woman from the Warner Brothers’ version of The Courtship of Miles Standish, the Captain’s wife (from early Captain and the Kids shorts), Mona Lisa from Time Squad (not too bad, really, but one seriously jacked-up set of teeth), and the Sea Witch Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
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Because cute girls are more user friendly than a monitor with keyboard?

Wait, that didn’t come out right… :smiley:

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Oh, well, if it’s just computers that you’re wondering about, you could also cite Red Dwarf, where the computer, at least in later episodes, portrays as a female, and the various Next Generation incarnations of Star Trek, in which the computers have a female voice (though no visual representation). For that matter, in Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, Minerva, the planetary control computer on Secundus, falls in love with the (vice) Chairman, and eventually takes on a flesh-and-blood form. So it’s hardly characteristic of Japan or animation.

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I provided you with the information that your basic premise is flawed. You cannot make generalizations about a foreign culture based on a couple of pornos and secondhand descriptions of a kid’s show. If you had merely asked “Why are there so many female robots in anime?” that would have been one thing, but in your OP you began wildly (and insultingly) speculating about the attitudes and sexual desires of Japanese men.

I’m no expert on Japanese culture. I just live in Japan. But more importantly, I realize that the Japanese are ordinary people like anywhere else in the world, not a bunch weirdo computer fetishists who can’t deal with other human beings. That’s an insight you don’t have to be an expert or an ex-pat to possess. Remarks like “Are Japanese guys having that much trouble relating to real women that they have a strong fantasy of having a totally compliant CPU in womanly form around?” are both ignorant and inappropriate, and that’s what you deserve “whapping” for.

I wonder about your assertion that I made such an assertion. I didn’t say a thing about pornographic manga. Indeed, I’m mystified as to why you’re suddenly bringing up comic books, since they haven’t been alluded to by anyone in this thread previously. Far from making any claims about pornographic manga, I didn’t even mention pornography at all. I said “anime that’s not even considered popular mainstream entertainment within Japan.” The average Japanese person is not a regular watcher of anime (pornographic or not) about sexy robot girls. Most adults are not regular watchers of anime of any kind unless they have kids. Japanese television consists primarily of live-action talk shows, dramas, game shows, and musical variety shows. The stuff foreign anime fans love is usually direct-to-video, and sometimes not even particularly successful domestically. On the other hand, the small number of anime TV programs that are truly mainstream in Japan are often unknown overseas. Pokemon was a hit around the world, but few foreigners have ever heard of, much less seen, Chibi Maruko-chan or Anpanman.

Japanese sci-fi has humanoid robots for the same reason Western sci-fi gives most of its robots human form. A lot of sci-fi stories have reason to include a computerized character, and a box that sits on a desk isn’t very interesting or futuristic. As for why they’re feminine robots, well, why not? Western sci-fi seems to skew towards masculine robots (e.g. Data), but if you’re going to have robots with a gender identity at all they can just as easily be women as men. Around the world today female voices are the usual choice for automated phone systems, pre-recorded station announcements, etc., so it’s no great stretch to imagine that in the future people might similarly prefer robots with a feminine voice and corresponding appearance.

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You seem to have overlooked the fact that all my speculations were in the form of questions, not certitudes. I know some people ask questions in order to advance opinions: “Did the Holocaust REALLY happen just as the Jewish media says it did?” but I really don’t think my questions fill that bill.

Fact of the matter is, I don’t have any emotional investment at all in the notion that computer-as-robot themed anime reflects on mainstream Japanese culture. While I would tend to think that the prevalence of this theme reflects SOMETHING that exists SOMEWHERE I don’t pretend to know what it might be. Which is kinda why I was asking.

Sorry, I still don’t see it. I will grant you that it might reflect ignorance – surely, this board is where ignorance gets replaced by that other stuff. It sounds like you really don’t “get” that aspect of the SDMB. I mean “inappropriate”? Gimme a break.

My mistake, I meant to write “anime” and wrote “manga” instead. I still have trouble with the denial about pornographic anime. Whenever I encounter denials that people are consuming porn in any form, my bullshit detector tends to go off. (I’m not saying YOU’RE spouting bullshit, I’m telling you I have a general distrust of this argument. To hear some people tell it, porn is a huge multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. that’s supported entirely by a couple of thousand pervs.)

Robots, sure, but computers? The thing that puzzle me is, the female protagonists of Chobits and Buttobi are computers, not robots. Their primary function is to deliver info and crunch data. A keyboard and monitor is the most efficient way of handling this in a lot of respects if you’ve got any typing chops – sure hate to work a spreadsheet or a database through verbal input only. Maybe I’m missing something here …

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And as I’ve tried to explain repeatedly already, I don’t think you’re right about the prevalence of this theme. I’m not sure how you even came up with the notion that it was unusually common or popular compared to Western sci-fi (which, as Chronos pointed out, also has plenty of feminine computers), since according to your OP you’ve only heard of two “sexy female computer” animes and have never actually seen any yourself.

You have now twice claimed that my first post in this thread contained some sort of denial or assertation about pornography. It does not in fact say anything about pornography at all, or even contain any form of the word “pornography”.

Maybe your detector is a little too sensitive, because I have not said any such thing. I’d have to be a bold liar indeed to deny that the Japanese consume porn in any form, because I see porn all the time at the video store and on the magazine racks at the convini and I see plenty of people buying/renting/ browsing through it too.

You do realize that these shows are not meant to be realistic, or even hard science-fiction, right? As has been pointed out already, in Chobits at least the idea is apparently inspired by simple wordplay. Imagine an American cartoon about the future in which “PCs” were computers that got upset if you tried to type anything that might offend minority groups or something. Sure it’s implausible that people would really buy such computers, but it could be an entertaining conceit within a light sci-fi story, so why not? Maybe someone’s even done it already. Probably not as often as the idea of attractive feminine computers had been done, but any conceit that adds hot chicks to the story has obvious appeal no matter how silly.

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Yeah, I don’t get what’s so mystifying about this for the OP. The fact of the matter is that in Japan, cute young girls RULE. They are in every magazine, in every TV talk show, in every movie, and they are a must for any manga, because people in this country (women and men alike) like to look at cute young girls. They run the gamut from wholesome, fully-clad girls to naked, moaning puddles of hot sex, but if you can find some way to get one into your product, you are that much more likely to succeed.

There are a number of manga that contain the theme of a man “creating” a beautiful woman-child. This probably points to the Japanese glorification of female simplicity and naivete: most Japanese guys I know want a woman who requires some looking after, and most Japanese girls I know at least to some extent cultivate a rather childlike and helpless attitude. I’m afraid I can’t provide you with titles, because I usually skip over those manga in my weekly manga-bon in favor of the more interesting ones. All I know is that the first time I saw Chobits, I thought, “gosh, another one?”

I understand that you see the difference between a robot and a computer as a very great one, and of course in the real world that difference is indeed very great, but I think that in manga it becomes quite negligible. The Chobits girls had to be small, cute, and somewhat helpless. It wouldn’t really have mattered if they were PC’s or food processors. Admittedly, I have not read this manga, but this is my supposition having browsed similar manga.

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You may well be right that this is sampling error on my part, which is one of the reasons I asked. I have encountered other adult anime that have this as a theme: one of the Imma Youjo series does and one or tow others. When I read about Buttobi and Chobits, I thought I might be seeing a trend. So I figured I’d ask others who know more about anime.

You said that adults don’t watch anime, which implies they dont’ watch adult anime, so I guess it’s an implied quote. It may well be that adult Japanese dont’ watch adult anime – there is an awful lot of live action stuff in Japan – but as I understand it most folks in Japan of all ages read manga, so it’s natural to wonder if they aren’t also watching animated version of their favorite manga.

As I said, I may well have an overly sensitive one, having encountered so much bullshit about porn from the mainstream in the U.S.

Yes. Also, moon not made of green cheese, Santa not real. I don’t know what YOU were thinking I was thinking here, but what I was thinking I was thinking was that sometimes what you see in fiction can disclose truths about a culture that is not easily or comfortably conveyed directly, sometimes truths which the author(s) are not consciously aware of. Long before there was an organized feminist movment, there were a lot of novels and such about women being stifled by patriarchal society. It’s always fun to look at fiction and see if you can see anything lying in wait beneath its surface.

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So, the theme of female robot/computers is simply there because sexy young female is the key to getting the attnetion of the marketplace, both male and female. Might also be sexy young female toasters or whatever if that made sense in a story. Fair enough.