I don’t think it’s the “dark” stuff that’s making the show bad. At least that’s content! Charlotte has already done dark, and it was one of the better episodes.
It’s just an easy way to describe the lack of direction the show has, or maybe for some it’s about the pacing.
For one, it was very sudden. I still don’t know the characters very well, and I still don’t know what the show wants to do. Some of the characters acted very differently to what I’d expect. When put under threat, I don’t think I care about a single character in this story so far aside from maybe Nomura… Who I only like because she has a cool hairstyle. Guy might lose his family? Okay. Pooh dead? Okay. Blind guy is sad? Okay.
Can we move on and see something more informative now? It’s probably too late to make me care about these people. At least make a good main plot.
The explanation behind all of the powers was also very half-heartedly done. They basically just told us what we already knew from the opening animation. They linked it back to the first episode, so pachi pachi pachi, even if it was incredibly forced.
You could take the exact same concept, throw it in something like… Classroom Class, and they’d probably manage it much better. Foreign guy kidnaps someone for some form of ransom? Little animal girl assassin shows up? It’s tropey, but that stuff has been used well in the past. Charlotte is just an exception.
You say people are comparing the show to Clannad and Litbus, but I don’t think most of us are doing that. Our complaints stem from Charlotte being bad as an anime. Not compared to other Key works… It’s not even good enough to compare to previous works imo.
If I were to compare it to every other show of the season, Charlotte’s charadev would be about as bad as Chaos Dragon’s. Maybe a bit better or worse depending on the episode, but overall, pretty neck-and-neck.
We’re 11 episodes in and I don’t know where it’s going.
Compare it to the previously mentioned anime…
Chaos Dragon episode 1: Oh okay, these countries are gonna fight and the main party will get caught up in it.
Classroom Crisis episode 5-6: Ah, a classic battle of families, and the main cast are the tipping point!
I could just compare it to the shows I’ve watched today…
Gakkou Gurashi episode 1: A survival slice-of-life.
Joukamachi no Dandelion episode 2: Following around different members of the main cast and learning about them.
Every show I watched this season. Every show I watched the season before, and the season before that… You knew what a show was before the first half of the season was over…
What is the point of Charlotte? What is it? While every other show was setting up for further weeks of entertainment, Charlotte was doing power-of-the-week segments and forced foreshadowing that screamed “please don’t drop me. We’ll do something eventually! I promise!”
When it finally stopped being an episodic, it forgot to find a new direction. At least, that’s how the show looks to me.
In it’s current state, Charlotte just doesn’t compare well to what’s out there, and it doesn’t stand up to my expectations of any show.
I look at my pretty little chart of anime ratings in worry, because Charlotte might be the show that puts my 4-point rating bar into the red.
I don’t think Charlotte is a generic anything. It’s sub-par.
Hamatora is a better example of a “generic super power anime.” Not that good, not that bad, but it has everything you’d expect.
It didn’t help it though. It was an okay episode, but it needs to be more than okay at this point.