The English manga is published by TOKYOPOP, and the American translation is imported to Australia by Madman Entertainment. Also, the Traditional Chinese manga is published by COMICSWORLD.COM (天下出版有限公司) under official authorization for Hong Kong only. In Singapore, the Simplified Chinese version is published by Chuangyi. Unlike most CLAMP stories, Chobits is a seinen series, specifically of the magical girlfriend variety.

Plot

The story centers on the life of nineteen-year-old Hideki Motosuwa, a repeat student ("ronin") attempting to get into university by studying at Seki cram school. An honest and unassuming teenager raised on a farm, he has little experience with women, though his imagination and libido are both quite active. Besides a girlfriend, the other thing he dreams of having is a persocom (Personal computer), a computer designed to look and act like a human. In the city where he studies for university (Tokyo), Hideki discovers that persocoms are commonplace. They are preprogrammed with fairly subdued personalities; they assist their owners with chores (such as shopping, dictation, email, and accounting) and are easily identifiable by the large data ports on the sides of their heads. But persocoms are expensive and Hideki has no money, so he figures the only way he'll ever have one is if he were to find one lying on the curb.