Chi

Chi is the Persocom Hideki discovers one rainy evening, abandoned on a pile of trash in a Tokyo street. Unlike other Persocoms in this world, which can function as soon as they're switched on thanks to a preinstalled hard drive, she has no memory at all and at first can only say a single word — "Chi" — which becomes her name. She has to relearn everything from scratch: walking, talking, grasping even the most basic social conventions, like an infant discovering the world for the first time. This absolute candor, combined with an insatiable curiosity about everything around her, quickly makes her far more than a mere machine in Hideki's eyes, as he takes her in without ever seeking to exploit her vulnerability. Over the course of the series, Chi gradually learns to express herself, to feel increasingly complex emotions, and to form sincere bonds with the people around Hideki. But her initial inability to remember her past, certain words she can never manage to say, and reactions sometimes disproportionate to trivial situations, gradually suggest that she is hiding a secret far larger than that of a simply malfunctioning Persocom. She turns out to be connected to the legend of the "Chobits," those mythical Persocoms said to be capable of a love as sincere and complex as that of a human being — a revelation that upends both her relationship with Hideki and the reader's understanding of who she really is. Visually, Chi is instantly recognizable by her long ash-blonde hair and the two ear-shaped connectors from which cables sometimes burst during moments of intense distress — the single most iconic image of the entire series.