Season 1 Plot
After failing the university entrance exam, Hideki Motosuwa decides to attend a tutoring course in Tokyo. He also looks for a part-time job to earn a little money. In this city, he discovers the “Persocoms”, personal computers in human form. One evening, the young man discovers an abandoned Persocom in a pile of garbage that looks like a beautiful girl. Fascinated, he decides to take it home with him and activates it. This Persocom only repeats the same gestures and can only say “Chii”. Hideki calls her that and gradually teaches her to speak. But maybe Chii is no ordinary computer? Maybe she is a Chobit, a persocom with a power beyond imagination?
Chobits Season 1 aired on April 2nd, 2002.
Season 1 Episodes
1. Chii Awakens
Hideki has moved to the city from the country to enrol in Prep School in order to pass the college entrance exam. In the city, Hideki is amazed by the mobile computer units called Persocoms that almost everyone has. If only they weren't so expensive! Walking one night he comes across a cute persocon just lying in the trash and decides he should do his part for the environment and recycle her as his own.
2. Chii Goes Out
Hideki wakes up to discover he really now owns a Persocom~! Shinbo comes over and realizes what Hideki was hiding the other night. He tries (stress tries) to help Hideki by seeing if Chii has any DATA or PCN numbers. When he can't find any (After Sumomo has crashed from trying) he sends Hideki and Chii to Minorus house. Minoru too is unsuccesful, but Yuzuki has given info that Chii has DATA just hidden. Minoru talks about a legendary Perscom series called "Chobits." As they go home Minoru gives Hideki some advice about Chii.
3. Chii Learns
Things start to look a little better for Hideki as he tries to teach Chii some words and expressions. Although he’s in need of a job, Hideki gets to start cram school today, and it turns out he’s got a very attractive teacher, Ms. Shimizu. After making the rounds for job hunting, Hideki manages to land a job from a wet accident, meeting another cute girl, Yumi Ohmura, in the process.
4. Chii Goes on Errands
Hideki's a decent guy overall and realises it's a bit perverted to have his girl persocom running around the place with no underwear. Unfortunately, inexperienced as Hideki is, buying female undergarments holds a great source of embarrassment for him. Hearing about the dilemma Shinbo offers Sumomo's services as navigator and generally being a source of common sense for Chii, in order for her to go and buy her own underwear. This sounds like a great idea at the time, but causes a seemingly infinite amount of worry during the day at prep school for Hideki.
5. Chii Finds
Hideki's first academic hurdle comes in the form of an impending mock test. This spurs some serious studying, hindered only by the lack of a Japanese-English dictionary. With the help of a visit to the bookstore Hideki gets rather side tracked and decides to teach Chii to read, using a picture book she was seemingly drawn to. With a visit (and some help) from Shinbo Hideki gets back to the books, leaving Chii to finish reading her book by herself. When Hideki finds Chii later she is emitting light and floating in the air! A Check from Shinbo finds nothing wrong with Chii, leaving Hideki with more study and less time, but at least Chii is around to motivate him.
6. Chii Weakens
Chii isn't feeling like herself and basically collapses in Hideki's apartment. He gets an adapter from Shinbo but unfortunately can't recharge Chii due to the fact that he never paid his electric bill. He struggles to find a building to recharge Chii but falls when climbing a wall to a building which is open til 2am. Luckily for him Ms. Hibiya saw them froma cab window and allowed Hideki to charge Chii from her place. Shinbo arrives and informs Hideki and Ms. Hibiya of how many watts are being used to recharge Chii. Hideki exclaims that he will pay her back for both the electricity used and his rent even if it kills him.
7. Chii Works
With Hideki broke, Chii decides that she wants to find a job to get money to give to Hideki. Hideki has little objection, but stipulates that Chii must find a "good job" to work at. Unfortunately for Chii, someone with a very bad job for Chii, finds her while she's out and tells her the job he has on offer is a "very good job."
8. Chii Bewildered
After Chii's reboot button is pushed, she escapes the 'peep show' room and is jumping around the city disabling all persocoms. She finally exhausts herself and Hideki catches her before she falls off a railing. Chii gets a job at a bakery having a five year anniversary thanks to Hideki. The manager offers Chii a permanent job which she accepts only if Hideki allows it. She trys to give Hideki her payment but he refuses telling her that since she worked and earned it, it belongs to her and for her to buy her favorite things (whatever they may be)
9. Shinbo and Sumomo Chat
Sumomo is running low on memory space, so she asks her owner, Shinbo, what he wants to erase. He starts at Sumomo's "congratulations on moving in" dance for Hideki, and then recalls several main events and funny incidents that have occurred in the series thus far. This episode serves mainly as a recap of the storyline.
10. Chi Buys
Chi decides to use her money to buy the sequel to the book "A City with No People" and a porno magazine for Hideki, who learns from Shinbo that Persocoms need bathing. Since he doesn't have money to buy bathing software for Chi, he has to teach Chi how to bathe. Hideki asks Minoru for help, and when they meet, Minoru shows him a picture that appears to be Chi. The picture came from an untraceable email. At the public baths, after some awkward, unsuccessful attempts to instruct Chi on how to bathe herself, Hideki eventually finds a way to avoid the task when he meets his landlady, who helps bathe Chi.
11. Chi Meets
Hideki gets a date with Yumi. While he's out, Chi reads the sequel of her book, which awakens a part of her memory. As a result, she meets a mysterious girl who looks exactly like her, named Freya, who seems to know everything about Chi's past that Chi does not.
12. Chi Confirms
Hideki is scared of a room in the apartment because of a horror story he heard at Minoru's house when he was asking about the internet through Minoru's custom-made Persocom Yuzuki. He becomes paranoid thinking about the story and, believing that his apartment building is haunted, has several self-induced hallucinations. The apartment number in the story is 104, as 4, or shi. "Shi" is the Japanese word for Four (四) and Death (死), and because of this, the number four is unlucky in Japan. According to the story, a woman who was hoping to rendezvous with her lover was killed in that room. Hideki and Chi along with Shinbo, Minoru and Yuzuki decide to investigate. At the end, Hideki and Chi discover that it is all a misunderstanding.
13. Chii Plays
Yumi's dad loans Hideki his DVD player, and tells him of a DVD sale coming up. Hoping to get some mature videos, Hideki embarrassingly meets Minoru and sis instead, who offer him a fantasy multiplayer Internet game (Brave Quest Online) that persocoms can play too. Hideki thinks this would be fun to play with Chii. But Hideki knows nothing about hooking up to the internet! Fortunately Shimbo helps him out. Now everyone's logged on, except for Chii; she's missing (in the game)! Oh no, what's Hideki going to do now? Blindly run through the game looking for her of course!
14. Chii Goes to the Ocean
Hideki and the entire gang are invited to hang out at Minoru's beach home for the weekend to study and to have a lot of fun. This is Chii's first time at the beach. But with Hideki not knowing how to swim, and with Chii going in the water, what's a guy to do?
15. Chii Entertains
On a hot summer night, Ms. Shimizu pays a surprise visit to Hideki and Chii, and wants to STAY OVER(!!) Is Hideki going to have his first night of passion, or is there some other reason?
16. Chii Doesn't Do Anything
Hideki discovered that Shinbo and Ms. Shimizu on the street hugging each other. The next day, Shinbo and Ms. Shimizu aren't at class. And then Sumomo is left in Hideki's care! Could something be up with those two? And isn't Ms. Shimizu married?
17. Chii Provides
Hideki's in trouble grade-wise, so Ms. Shimizu advises he prepare for a practice exam. Hideki gets ready for studying, but loses his wallet. Chii tries to help him out by cooking for him.
18. Minoru and Yuzuki Chat
Minoru and Yuzuki tried to find what Chi really is and search for clues about the creator of the Chobits picture. Yuzuki reviews with Minoru what they know about Chi, and the only thing they can conclude with the information they have is that Chi is not a normal Persocom. This episode is another recap of the events that have happened so far in the series.
19. Chi Helps
Ms. Hibiya is cleaning the apartments, and Hideki and Chi offer to help her. When Hideki goes to clean the electronics room, Sumomo accidentally falls onto some wires and gets electrocuted. Ms Hibiya then reveals that she used to build Persocoms, and she repairs Sumomo.
20. Chi Disappears
While Chi is on her way to work, she notices the third part of the book series "A City With No People" on the shelf of a bookstore. While she flips through the pages, she is grabbed from behind and is kidnapped. Hideki comes home from prep school and returns to find Chi missing.
21. Chi Waits
Chi is still in the hands of her abductor as Hideki searches for her. After he talks to Mr. Ueda about Chi missing work, they decide to search for Chi together, and Mr. Ueda talks about his marriage to his last Persocom.
22. Chi Wants
Chi is still missing, and Hideki is enlisting as much help as he can to find her. A strange e-mail image gets sent to him and Shinbo from an untraceable email address. It turns out that this is a map for the house of Chi's abductor, Dragonfly, and he is carrying out research to find out what Chi is.
23. Chi Answers
Hideki and Chi help Shinbo move out of the apartment to live with Ms. Shimizu (who is now married to him). Then they arrive at Minoru's house, where he is trying to find information on Chobits. Minoru, who has not been sleeping enough, passes out, and Yuzuki (Minoru's custom-made Persocom) decides to try to hack the Chobits database herself.
24. Chi Wears And Takes Off
Hideki takes Chi to work. There, Chi changes into the wrong uniform. Ueda tells her it's the wrong one, but before she goes to change, Yumi sees her wearing it from outside the shop and runs away crying. As it turns out, Yumi used to work at the store, and that had been her uniform. When Yumi was working for Mr. Ueda, the two had started falling in love, but when Yumi learned about Mr. Ueda's previous marriage to a Persocom, she concluded that he believed Persocoms to be superior to humans, so she quit her job at his bakery and broke off the relationship.
25. Chi Decides
Ms. Hibiya secretly leaves Chi the fourth book in the "A City With No People" series. Hideki meets with Shinbo and shares his feelings for Chi. Ms. Hibiya reveals to Hideki that her husband was the one to create Chi and the other mysterious girl, Freya. She tells Hideki that Chi used to be called Elda and, like her sister, was created to be loved and fall in love with others. Chi then tells Hideki that she loves him.
26. The Person Only For Chi
Following the events from the previous episode, Hideki responds to Chi he also loves her. At this point, something triggers in Chi, and she flies out of the apartment window and onto the roof of the building. Zima and Dita, two advanced Persocoms who had been observing from a distance, wait nearby intending to stop Chi from launching her supposed hidden program that they fear will destroy all Persocoms.