I don't want to fight humans... BECAUSE I'M A HUMAN BEING TOO!
Since she was young, Qi Qi has been burdened with an incurable disease that will cause her death before the age of 20. Despite this, she uses her genius intellect to develop robotics in order to defy her fate. However, she is inevitably unable to create a robotic body for herself before her time is up. As her vision darkens, she is not satisfied... Only to awaken again? - Synopsis
"Wo, Nu Jiqiren" or "I, The Female Robot", is a Science Fiction manhua created by Wang Guo Qiang & Wang Le Yang, aka "The Father and Son Comic Group", following the adventures of Qiqi, a 21st century human roboticist turned robotic protector of the 31st century, as she grapples with the complexities of life as a sentient robot, in a future where machines with free will are hunted down and killed as existential threats to humanity.
Note: As this page was made using data from the unofficial fan translations, there may be differences compared to the original work.
I, The Female Robot contains examples of:
- Action Girl: With power beyond anything else in existence and a determination to match, Qiqi is the embodiment of this trope, jumping in to help, save, or rescue anyone and everyone, up to and including the very people whose jobs it is to bring her down, once and for all.
- Aerith and Bob: You have normal sounding names like the english Roxanne and Goldman, the germanic Freyer and the chinese Qiqi, Chen and Gu Xin alongside names like Ka Mora.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The series. At one point, the original Team E disbands after some of its sentient robot, founding, members decide that humanity is hopeless and Team E's mission is unattainable.
- An Arm and a Leg: Despite being a 3rd gen Executioner class robot, supposedly made out of the toughest and rarest materials known to man, Qiqi loses body parts like nobody's business. Almost every fight will end with Qiqi losing one or both arms, one or both legs, half or more of her body, parts of her face, be outright split in half, or some variation of the above. Most of these are a result of combat, but at one point, Qiqi intentionally tore off one of her arms, in order to expose circuitry that she could then use to deplete the power cell of the otherwise invincible machine fortress, on its way to commit genocide on the neighboring human population. This also seems to happen with depressing regularity to the regular humans as well, though thankfully medicine has advanced enough that this isn't a problem to them either.
- Androids Are People, Too: This is basically the entire premise of the series.
- Artificial Gravity: The main method by which flying is achieved in the series. At one point, a legless Qiqi uses an anti-gravity module, hidden inside a long skirt, to get around in public.
- Artificial Limbs: Available in all shapes and sizes and with all sorts of hidden accessories to boot. The chief of security, aboard the ship Executioner 03 normally operates from, has a leg with a built in bomb. Another character aboard the same ship has an arm with a built in energy cannon.
- Attack Drone: The machine fortress. Overlaps with killer robot.
- Badass Adorable: Given that the art style varies depending on the mood, Qiqi frequently comes off as this.
- Badass Normal: Miss Liu, the energy module factory owner, despite being just a normal human female, gave chase to the crook who stole her purse, then proceeded to beat him into unconsciousness, with her bare hands, after she caught up to him.
- Berserk Button: Hurt Qiqi all you want, but don't you dare hurt an innocent, be they human or robot, unless you REALLY want to see just how many pieces you can physically be split into.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Executioner 02 is this in spades. On the one hand he routinely saves Qiqi while also acting as her mentor. On the other, he took over a robot transport ship by gassing its human crew with a nerve agent which then dissolved their corpses, in order to eliminate any evidence. And he's supposed to be one of the good guys.
- Body Backup Drive: Comes in various shapes throughout the series. At one point Qiqi creates one that can do the job in a record breaking fifteen seconds. For a robot with a soul core, the core is this since that is where its sentience and memories are located and as long as that survives, it can be placed again inside another robotic body.
- Body Snatcher: Qiqi is this to Executioner 03. The series starts with human Qiqi dying in 2010, then waking up in 3073 in Executioner 03's robotic body. It's not intentional on human Qiqi's part and she doesn't seem to be able to do anything about this. What makes this trope apply is the fact that, as is later shown, Executioner 03's original non sentient self is still inside her body. Averted with the sentient robot soul cores, as those are grand theft me instead.
- Brandishment Bluff: Shortly after waking up in Executioner 03's body, while trying to escape the ship she's on, Qiqi runs into the chief of security and the two end up doing this to each other at the same time. Qiqi bluffs that her deflector shield makes her immune to the officer's weapon, when in fact said shield is depleted and can't be used, whereas the officer bluffs that she won't get the chance to use it, when in reality he knows his weapon is useless against her anyway.
- Break Them by Talking: Executioner 02 does this to the crew of the ship Qiqi gains sentience on, by revealing their most embarrassing secrets to each other, before horribly horribly murdering them with nerve gas.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: While searching the internet for the meaning of the words "I" (as in oneself) and "robot", one of the hits in Goldman's search results is an entry for "I, The Female Robot", alongside an abbreviated version of the above synopsis, about a female roboticist named Qi. Executioner 02 also does this at one point, when he mentions confusing the readers.
- Clone by Conversion: Expect this to happen to any 3rd gen robots that get taken over by a soul core.
- Clothing Damage: Repeatedly played for laughs, when Qiqi is unexpectedly attacked by the robot of the week. At one point, in order to stop this trope from repeating itself, Qiqi takes the time to undress at the start of her fight with Bone Slicer, to her opponent's complete bewilderment. And yet despite that, later on in the same fight, Bone Slicer manages to slash Qiqi's Leotard of Power just above her chest, causing the lower part of her attire to start peeling down in a revealing fashion.
- Contagious A.I.: How the two robot wars basically started. A malevolent intelligence arose somewhere and started spreading to regular, non sentient, robots.
- Containment Field: The ship that robot Qiqi first wakes up on has one of these, which the chief of security uses as a trap against her. It required 60% of the ship's total power to maintain, but proved impervious to even the strongest of Qiqi's blows.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Chen, while in his overweight otaku disguise, as punishment for Qiqi's failure in his Training from Hell arena, put on one of her favorite dresses and proceeded to flex his body, causing the dress to literally burst off of him in pieces, leaving poor Qiqi in tears over the horrible fate that befell her once adorable outfit.
- Cute Bruiser: Qiqi's the most powerful thing there is and yet her chibi forms will melt your heart with cuteness. As will her regular body. She can deploy energy shields that are impervious to pretty much any ranged weapon there is, has armor that can witstand hits powerful enough to cleave ships in half and she can stand up to murder machines that could annihilate entire armies.
- Cute Little Fangs: Roxanne has one constantly visible.
- Deflector Shields: Of both the personal and ship wide variety. Qiqi can either cover herself in one, which acts as a second skin, or she can project several small ones at a distance. In both cases they have limited energy and are only effective against ranged weapons fire.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: As trainee reporter Gu Xin recorded, for posterity, a report on Qiqi's battle with Bone Slicer, Executioner 02 orders one of his underlings to hack into the tablet and livestream the event on anything with a screen. It is later shown that neither the crew of the hijacked TV stations nor the operators of the hijacked TV satellites can do anything to shut down the illicit broadcast.
- Doppelgänger: Many show up throughout the series, though justified in that they are entirely robotic in nature. One of the weirder notable examples is the protagonist Qiqi/Executioner 03. Notable in that Qiqi is a human who died in 2010, only to reawaken in 3070, inside a robotic body that is a carbon copy of her old human self. As volume 2 shows, there are a minimum of 3 Executioner 03's in existence. The first is the one Qiqi takes over at the start of the series, the second is a backup body that Qiqi eventually hijacks as well and the third is a very powerful enemy from the future, which actually triggers the stable time loop that puts the events of series in motion in the first place. Weird in that Executioner 03 is a carbon copy of the original, human, Qiqi, despite the fact that the latter died in 2010, while the former was created sometime in the 3070's. It is never shown that anyone intended for Executioner 03 to look like Qiqi and it's never explained if this is a coincidence or not.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Chen falls into this after his original Team E disbands due to A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
- Genius Bruiser: Qiqi is a 3rd gen, Executioner class, super robot with enough firepower to cleave a mountain in half and enough strength to rip a previous gen, super robot, limb from limb. And yet she figured out how to disassemble herself, in order to replace a depleted power cell, after only seeing the procedure once before and she was able to make a device that needed only 15 seconds to back up the entire consciousness of a sentient robot, something thought impossible until then.
- Girly Bruiser: Overlaps with Badass Adorable. As the first of the 3rd gen Executioner class robots, 10% of Qiqi's strength equals 100% of the power of the best military robots. And yet, the first thing she did when given a credit card was to max it out buying clothes, make-up and books. In one of the later chapters of the manhua, she calls for a time-out, at the start of a fight, so she can take off her clothes, to prevent them from being destroyed in combat.
- Grand Theft Me: How soul cores operate. Each soul core is a tiny sphere containing the robot's consciousness, memories and everything needed to move around. When they find a suitable robotic host, they burrow into the CPU of said body and proceed to take it over. Often comes with Clone by Conversion if the victim is one of the customisable gen 3 robots.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Played for laughs about once per volume. In volume one Qiqi uses her dismembered lower half as a jetpack in combat, while in volume two she uses the paralyzed Executioner 02 as a bat against the anti human resistance leader Goldman.
- Guns Are Worthless: Projectile weapons in the series are basically this towards any robot, except the garden variety consumer grade ones. When confronted with the takeover of the Jupiter Corp transport ship by Executioner 02, one of the crew members opens up on the hijacking robot with a machine gun, only to have said robot catch every bullet in mid air, between his fingers.
- Heroic BSoD: Happens to Qiqi, when overconfidence in her abilities coupled with an incorrect assumption on her part, regarding her shields, causes one of her friends to, apparently, be crushed under a massive, robotic, fist. She takes it hard, dropping to her knees, wailing at how her shortsightedness caused the death of one of the few people to not be afraid of her, as a sentient robot. She got better though, after it turned out that the person she saw die was actually just a hologram.
- Hellish Pupils: Played straight with Executioner 03 who has these and averted with Qiqi who does not. They are most evident in the closeups of Executioner 03's face, when she meets Qiqi.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted by the crew of the Jupiter Corp transport ship, the Executioner robots operate from, when they think Executioner 03/Qiqi is a rampaging sentient robot and their only solution is to wake up the other two Executioners to take her down. Attempted again, later on, by the chief of security aboard the same ship, after Executioner 02 reveals his hand as well as his goal of taking over the ship.
- Hollywood Encryption: If it's electronic then expect it to run on this, as far as any sentient robot is concerned. Throughout the entire series, as of writing this, there isn't a single system that a sentient robot can't gain complete access to, near instantaneously. From a reporter's tablet, to the military's killsats, if it has electrons flowing through it, expect some AI to take it over while you blink. And they often do so while faking realistic data to the original operators, in real time.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Qiqi/Executioner 03, has this as part of being a Jack of All Trades model robot. Apart from being able to fight in any conditions, she has a built in jet pack, deflector shield, Wave-Motion Gun, killsat transmitter, pocket dimension generator and a few other weapons and gizmos that have yet to be revealed.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: This is basically how non soul core robots gain sentience. After spending enough time among humans they spontaneously become self aware. Averted with soul core robots as, in those cases, their soul cores come equipped with sentience from the get go.
- Invisibility Cloak: Executioner 02 has this. Ostensibly he uses it in order to observe from the sidelines. In reality though, he mainly uses it to perv on Qiqi, peep on people and commit grievous amounts of mischief. While it normally only affects him, he can also extend it to anything he's in physical contact with.
- Jack of All Trades: Qiqi/Executioner 03 is an all purpose combat robot, equally at home fighting on land, in space, or underwater. While this means that she does not excel at anything, this also means that she has no real weakness to speak of. From Executioner 04 onward, robot development takes a turn towards crippling overspecialization instead.
- Jet Pack: Qiqi/Executioner 03 have these built in, in the form of a pair of calf mounted jet thrusters. This is also available as an optional extra for all 3rd gen robots, in the form of jet boots.
- Killer Robot: The machine fortress was this, though it is not the only example in the series.
- Kill Sat: Both planet Earth and Ana Ka have these in low orbit. One of Qiqi's skills gives her the ability to take complete control and reposition them at will, to be fired whenever she sees fit.
- La RĂ©sistance: Of both the good and bad variety. Team E (Equality) are a group of humans and sentient robots whose goal is the peaceful cohabitation of the two species, whereas the anti human resistance are a group of surviving sentient robots from the second Robot War, whose purpose is the complete annihilation of mankind.
- Leotard of Power: Qiki/Executioner 03's default combat attire, though clothing damage still applies to it as well.
- Master of Disguise: By using his disguise suit, Chen can physically imitate basically anyone that's not smaller than he is. Plus, he's also a phenomenal actor who can so perfectly slip into a role, he basically becomes the person he's disguised as. Averted by Qiqi who's idea of a disguise was to put a sheet over herself, then poke her head through the cloth in order to see.
- Me's a Crowd: After seeing Qiqi nearly kill herself in a last ditch effort to stop the invincible Machine Fortress, the people she saved became smitten with her and started changing their customizable 3rd gen robots into carbon copies of her, in gratitude. Dubbed in universe as "The Qiqi effect".
- Mirror Match: Qiqi's training with the hijacked Executioner 03 is this. Though the two are evenly matched in terms of speed, Executioner 03 is much more skilled in combat.
- Mundane Utility: Executioner 02 hijacks Executioner 03, the most powerful combat robot humanity has ever built and uses her to help Qiqi train.
- My Future Self and Me: At one point in volume 2, Qiqi and Executioner 02 are sent back in time from 3073 to 3072. The future Executioner 02 then uses his knowledge of the past to take Qiqi to an upcoming battle that her past self, as Executioner 03, was/will be involved in, in order to let Qiqi see how her non sentient self used to fight. While Qiqi does take the opportunity to train with her past self, receiving a punch in the abdomen, she only does so after first fawning over Executioner 03's combat form, since she never got to see herself in a mirror. None of these events ever seem to have any ill effect on the timeline.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Again played for laughs by Qiqi, who gets shivers down her spine whenever something absurd happens, such as when the amnesiac Goldman mistakenly reached the conclusion that the two of them were a couple, after recovering some corrupted memories of Qiqi's battle with Bone Slicer, which now looked like something else.
- No-Sell: Some weird examples with Qiqi where this is repeatedly played straight and then immediately averted. In volume one, when Chen tries to back up her consciousness, following her mutually destructive battle with the machine fortress, he fails despite the backup itself succeeding. At the time this is chalked up to the fact that you can't back up a soul and yet, just a few pages later, Qiqi is now in a 3rd gen robot body, carrying the lifeless Executioner 03 back to base. In volume two, Qiqi is infected by a control virus which has no effect on her, ostensibly because you can't virus a soul, but right after that, Executioner 02 uses software to take over her body, something which is shown that she can't resist. Other examples are anti human resistance leader Goldman tanking repeated hits from Qiqi's killsats without a scratch or Miss Maid harmlessly tanking a direct hit from Qiqi's Pentagonal Pyramid Death Ray.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Most of the sentient robots in the series are this. Due to the two previous robot wars, humanity has been conditioned to always assume sentient robots are out to get them and should be destroyed.
- Old Soldier: The chief of security aboard the ship the Executioner class robots operate from is a grizzled veteran of the second robot war. The regional commander of the anti sentient robot task force on planet Ana Ka is also one of these.
- Raised by Robots: Happens throughout the series. One notable example is Team E leader Chen who was raised by Miss Maid, a sadistic former member of the anti human resistance, turned equal rights activist.
- Replacement Goldfish: The regional commander of the anti sentient robot taskforce gets himself one of these after the death of his son Buddy. Fittingly enough it turns sentient, though it sees the commander as its father and is genuinely heartbroken when he rejects it and kicks it out. The two eventually reconcile, with a little help from Qiqi and the commander admits that he was wrong to turn it away.
- Reinforce Field: Used by every high level robot in the series to bolster their defense in combat. Anti human resistance leader Goldman was basically invincible while his was powered on, but the moment he lost it he became vulnerable to everything including low power hand held rifles.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Any robot that gains sentience is mentally indistinguishable from a regular human. Even more so in the case of the completely human looking 3rd gen robots, to the point where the only real way to tell them apart is either by their visible ID tags or with the aid of advanced scanning technology. Averted by Qiqi herself, as she is actually a human mind inside a robot body.
- Robot Buddy: The main use for robots in the series, culminating in the gen 3 models who are so realistic, they're basically indistinguishable from regular people. This is also a major part of why they have a habit of turning sentient, since this puts them in the middle of human society, where they experience their master's emotions first hand.
- Robot Girl: Special mention goes to Qiqi, who is an early 21st century human mind inside a late 31st century robot body, though examples abound given the prevalence of ridiculously human robots in the setting. Another example is Butler who gained sentience over 30 years before the start of the series, at a time when robot bodies were usually genderless. As a result she was forced to inhabit a featureless Jetsons style body for most of her life, followed by a male body due to an error on her master's part. It's only about half way thorough the second volume that she finally gets a female body, that reflects her own self image.
- Robot Religion: Executioner 02 is forming one of these around himself, among the soul core robots. Nameless seems to be his first follower, given that he's also the first soul core robot to gain sentience.
- Robot War: The backstory has it that humanity had been through two of these, with the second ending just a few decades before the events of the series. This is the reason why all sentient robots are to be immediately reported, hunted and killed with extreme prejudice.
- Self-Surgery: Qiqi does this to herself in volume one, in order to replace one of her depleted power cells. Since the batteries in her Executioner 03 body were normally only meant to be recharged, her power source is not easily reachable or replaceable, so she has to basically split herself in half along her abdomen to do so. However, as she is a robot and feels no pain, the scene is less surgery and more a mechanic replacing a car battery.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Qiqi's plan, after she and Executioner 02 found themselves transported back in time by one year, in the second volume.
- Shout-Out: The name of the series itself is one to I, Robot
- Spider-Sense: Qiqi developed this after her intense training sessions with Chen. It functions exactly like its namesake's power, giving Qiqi a split second in which to act. Anti human resistance leader Goldman has a more realistic version of this, where he senses the transmissions Qiqi sends out to her killsats, giving him a split second's notice to move outside their line of fire.
- Stable Time Loop: The whole of volume 2 is this, showing that Chen from 3074 went back in time to 2010 to recover Qiqi's soul, then was forced to put it into Executioner 03 in 3073, whereupon Qiqi/Executioner 03 from 3073 then goes back in time to 3072 where she meets an earlier version of Chen who she then inspires to remake Team E, which is ultimately what drives him to travel back in time from 3074 to 2010 to recover Qiqi's soul.
- Thank the Maker: Nameless, the first soul core robot to gain sentience, views Executioner 02, the naturally sentient robot who distributed the soul cores, as a god and frequently does exactly this. In fact, the only reason he's on friendly terms with the heroes is because Executioner 02 ordered him to do so.
- The Determinator: Qiqi was born with a degenerative disease that was projected to kill her by the time she reached her 20's. Refusing to accept her fate, she became the world's leading figure in robotics, by age 17, going on to invent numerous devices to amplify her, ever diminishing, strength. As a robot, her determination often leads her to stand firm in the face of even the most dire of circumstances, never backing down, even if it means her complete destruction.
- The Ditz: Qiqi. You wouldn't think the most powerful and advanced robot ever created, with the mind of the most brilliant roboticist to ever live, would fall victim to this, but here we are. Though to be fair, human Qiqi was just 17 when she died, plus the frailty of her old, diseased, body meant that she never got to enjoy anything in her previous life and now she has over a millennia of interesting stuff to catch up on.
- The Peeping Tom: Executioner 02 is this in spades. If he's not in combat or perving over Qiqi, then he WILL be found doing this to everyone around him.
- The Slow Path: How Qiqi and Executioner 02 return to their present, after being sent back in time by one year.
- Three Laws-Compliant: It's mentioned that all non sentient robots are this. However this goes out the window the moment they gain sentience, since they can now think for themselves and can chose to not care about this anymore.
- Training from Hell: As a child and young adult, Chen went through this at the hands of his sadistic sentient robotic caretaker, Miss Maid. He then put Qiqi through this, complete with Cool and Unusual Punishment, in order to help her adapt to her robotic body. Later on in the series, after they're sent back in time by one year, Executioner 02 hijacked Executioner 03, in order to show Qiqi how her pre-sentient self used to fight.
- Underwater Base: The Earth based chapter of the anti human resistance uses one of these as their base of operations.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Qiqi's Pentagonal Pyramid Death Ray is this. The first time it was used, it cleaved an entire mountain in half, with Freyer commenting that she can't even see where the trail of destruction ends.
- We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Since most threats in the setting are either too fast or too heavily armored to be affected by kinetic weapons, military doctrine has shifted towards this. They come in a variety of sizes ranging from handheld versions all the way up to battleship grade. They are repeatedly portrayed as being much more effective than their kinetic counterparts.
- Xanatos Gambit: Though pretty much everyone is doing this to everyone else, at some point and to some extent, special mention goes to Executioner 02, who, since gaining sentience, was able to outsmart the foremost experts on robotics, for over a year, take complete control of their ship and then create and distribute the deadly nerve gas that he ultimately used to kill all of them with. According to his remarks to Qiqi, he's been planing everything since he became self aware. And while we're on the subject of Executioner 02, pretty much everything that takes place in the series, so far, is either part of, or a direct result of, his "meet" project for both sentient robots and humanity.
