Chi (Chobits) - Elda

Elda

Before she was found by Hideki and named Chi, her name was Elda. She was the second Chobit produced by Ichiro Mihara. Elda was created after Mihara's wife, Chitose Hibiya, noticed that Freya, the first Chobit, was becoming increasingly depressed as time went by. Elda was created to be Freya's little sister, in an effort to make her happy. In spite of this, Freya's condition continued to worsen, eventually forcing Elda to take Freya's mind and memories into herself in order to save her. In the manga, Elda loses her own memories as a consequence of this act. In the anime, it is explained that Hibiya reset Elda's memories after her husband's death. Also in the manga, after Elda took on Freya's heart, her last request before losing consciousness was to be left alone outside, away from her family, so that there would be no possibility the same fate that befell her sister could befall her.

Before doing this, her father gave her a "gift"; this gift was a program, designed to do one thing. If in her new life, Chi failed to find the Person Just for Her, she would connect to every persocom on the planet and execute a program that would delete the individual-recognition abilities of all persocoms, so that they would never be able to distinguish one person from another ever again. If Chi failed to find the Person just for Her, it stood to reason that other persocoms would suffer the same fate as well. The purpose of this program was to spare the persocoms of the world the pain of unrequited love. In the anime, this program appears to have an alternate effect; if Chi finds the Person just for her, all persocoms would be granted the ability to feel emotion. The reason for this is since Ichiro Mihara was the creator of persocoms, he viewed them all as his children. His wish was that if Chi were able to find someone who loved her in return, all his children would be able to share in this happiness by being able to feel emotions the way humans do.

After Mihara's death and Elda's reset, Chitose creates the children's book series A City with No People, a story within a story. It is about the interactions between people and persocoms (referred to as "it" or "them"), and the journey of the narrator and her mirror image as they attempt to find "the person just for me." The publication of this series is a way that Chitose can help Chi's program to execute, which remained intact after the reset. Hideki buys the first volume for Chi, and as the series progresses she obtains all of the sequels.

"Elda" is the official English spelling of her name, although "Erda" would have made more sense as a direct translation. The name is written in Japanese as "エルダ" (Eruda) which is also used to write the name of the Norse earth goddess Erda (or Jord), the mother of the Valkyries. The word "Jord" also means Earth in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.