From the "Nation of Panty Shots" dept.

Bought andricongirl volume 1 of Chobits yesterday.

It's fucked up.

And not in the what-the-fuck-is-going-on? way of FLCL. It's just plain disturbing.

18-year old farm boy moves to Tokyo to study for his Uni entrance exams. But his study is thwarted because he can't afford a persocom - personal computers that take the form of cute robotic girls. Then he's lucky enough to find a broken persocom on a garbage heap, and sets about repairing her.

I think part of my problem was that the wistful, pink packaging lead me to expect a kid's cartoon. What we got is a teeanger fantasizing about porn sites, persocoms whose power switch is located in their groin, and persocoms dressed up in bondage French maid outfits. Plus the only real human female character, who manages our hero's apartment block, appeared to be doped out on valium, and thus even more robotic than the computers.

The sexual politics are, to say the least, dodgy.

Still, it's cute. And we've only watch the first two episodes, so I'm hoping all the panty-shots and fan service dies down.

And -let's be honest- Ping from Megatokyo is both cuter, and a cooler idea for a robot-girl.