Charlotte - Episode 13 "Memories to Come"

Key Discussion
#21

Charlotte is a good anime. Not great, but not terrible either.

I had next to no expectations for this last episode, and I suppose, as a result, it helped me understand and enjoy it. Yuu’s journey from episode 2 all the way to now has led him to this point, and to close it all up he made the last leg an epic journey that should have spanned years and quite a few episodes telling. That would have been great, but unfortunately Maeda had to crunch the story into 13 episodes, and as a result this monumental task is heavily abridged to show the highlights of what happens. This episode reminds me a lot of episode 7 in terms of structure, from Yuu’s slow but sure start to his gradual weakness and psychological breakdown, and then his downfall and redemption. If Yuu had died on this trip, it would have had more of an emotional impact. But pretty much everyone except Kumagami survives in the end, which makes for a bit of a cheap ending.

This would have been better off as a two to three hour movie rather than a twenty-four minute episode, so Maeda could more comfortably write out a thoughtful, detailed story. As it is, though, I’m okay with it. The journey to make it here was rather bumpy, but it had its moments. As it stands, I guess I can safely call Charlotte my least favorite Key work, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because the lasting emotional impact it left me with is weaker than other Key works. It didn’t feel ‘Key-like’, so to speak.

…So, how about that Rewrite anime? :stuck_out_tongue:

#22

I need some more time to gather my thoughts, so for now I’ll just leave this here:

I really liked how Yuu became Accelerator.

2 Likes
#23

Badly written? Yeah, he did get that huh.

#24

This is exactly how I feel ^^"

1 Like
#25

Heh, I thought I was the only one who got vibes from Index’s favourite psychotic albino, Accelerator. That was probably one of my favourite moments of the entire show.

#26

My thoughts about this episode:

  • It feels a bit unrealistic that he is able to plunder the ability of EVERY ability user in EVERY country in the world in such a short time…but after plundering so many power it might be possible
  • The Engrish was hilarious this episode…I started to think he should get an ability that allows him to speak english and he did.
  • The ending was really beautiful

Overall I enjoyed Charlotte; the last episodes felt random and rushed, but I really wanted more.Next time Maeda does an anime project, it should really be at least 2 cour.

#27

By the way

[HorribleSubs] Charlotte - 13 [720p].mkv_snapshot_17.53_[2015.09.26_21.51.49].jpg1280×720 83.5 KB

Best girl.

…oh I’m sorry do you think I’m joking? No, I’m not, her total screentime was less than the OP but she got a more developed backstory and personality than most of the cast. Just from her power

…assuming that powers from desires is still a canon thing, show is such a mess it might not even be, but I choose to believe it still is, in a world where you could desire god damn anything and have it pop up, the thing she apparently desired most was wishing to be brave and that’s adorable.
Following that is losing her power and still managing to stand up to the guy made it a super nice heartwarming scene(UNLIKE THAT SHIT LATER WITH NAONAO WWWWWWWWWWW), showcasing that though the power, she’s just gained normal courage, the thing she wanted.

11 Likes
#28

I said this at the end of last episode. If instead of all those trashy previous episodes, we got a series where this bland Yuu kid heads off on an adventure around the world, I’d probably love it.
You could have 2-3 episode chunks dedicated to a specific part of the world or a specific mindset change in Yuu. Earlier on is him going around, thinking about his past, thinking about his future, and struggling to come up with a good method of achieving his task. Mid-way through he starts to give up and lose determination. He stops thinking about his past and future, and just focuses on getting powers as fast as possible. Late in he slips out of sanity, and has spent so long focusing on the powers and being messed up by them that he has forgotten his goals. He lazily goes about finishing his mission without knowing why. He comes up with plans and ideas when going from place to place, but forgets them instantly and just brute forces everything.
Make the return to Japan less sudden, make it so Nao’s words at the end aren’t so weirdly placed, and it’d be good.

As it is, I don’t know what the point of Charlotte really was, I don’t know what it was doing, and I don’t see much worth to it. Oh well.

He probably went everywhere else notable in the US too.

Hmm… Wouldn’t it have been designed for 13 episodes? They even wasted like… 3 of those episodes, so they weren’t strapped for time.

Second best is here:

And Yuu stood her up!

4 Likes
#29

Episode was fine. I think Maeda works better with visual novels. Imo, Yu traveling the world and taking powers seemed kinda boring for “Key” but, oh well. I think the bad thing about Charlotte, is the fact that Jun Maeda, unlike Angel Beats, decided to fix the flaws in Angel Beats when making Charlotte. One of the flaw was the story, since Angel beats had a big story. The bad thing about Charlotte is that it’s story was basically too small. Charlotte feels like lost potential tbh. I would have preferred Nao going with Yu all around the world. What if that dude shot Nao ? We could have seen Yu rage.

I said this once, I’ll say it again. I was really disappointed with the lack of good OST/BGM’s. There’s only 3 good OST/BGM’s from the anime as far as I recall. Jun Maeda, sure, he worked on ZHIEND and How-Low-Hello music, but he could have at least made more BGM’s, and OST’s. I know a lot of people, who were excited to hear the Charlotte BGM’s since Jun Maeda was gonna do some of it.

Charlotte has been a good ride. I remember being hyped for it. I remember the first episode still. The first episode when Yu was narrating was kinda disappointing for me. I remember Misa’s goodbye moment. It was beautiful. I remember Nao beating the life out of Yu :relieved::relieved::relieved: Ahh, the memories. Maybe it’s just me, but the story itself, was kinda sad for a Key story, putting in guns, militaries, facilities and all that.

Oh well, an anime story has ended. And with every ending, comes a beginning. All we can do now is wait for the Rewrite anime.

2 Likes
#30

The cherries on the blanket were foreshadowing Rewrite anime confirmation.

I saw the reference and called it 7 weeks ago.
Wow.

[HorribleSubs] Charlotte - 05 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_22.08_[2015.08.02_22.57.11].jpg1920×1080 103 KB

7 Likes
#31

All checks out, nice catch.

#32

Well, this is officially the Key work that has made me cry the least. I got a little misty-eyed at the ending, but there were no buckets of tears like I’m used to with Key. It might just be that I’m getting desensitized, though…

Overall, very good, but nothing mind-blowing. I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that it’s not really doable to fit that much plot into a single-cour anime, as Angel Beats! proved before. (Air managed, but that’s because there were far fewer characters to focus on, so they all got enough backstory.)

Also, a character as wonderful as Courage Girl needs a name. I doubt she’ll ever get an official one, so should we come up with a fan nickname for her?

1 Like
#33

Well, that was certainly the ending of a Japanese animated television series!

As cynical as that sounds I liked the very ending despite how out of nowhere it was but still very mixed feelings about everything else leading up to it. I’ll need some time to articulate my thoughts on it.

#34

What a waste of three months

1 Like
#35

First thing I’ll say is that this is the first Key work I’ve experienced that hasn’t at least made me tear up. That said, I gave this show a lot of shit over its flaws, but overall I enjoyed it. Seeing Nao so happy at the end was the most fulfilling part. I agree that the ending didn’t quite live up to the iconic scenes in Clannad, Air and Little Busters, but I don’t think it was meant to. Charlotte is it’s own show. Idk though, I didn’t really feel much for Joujirou or Yusa, and Yuu’s personality changed way too erratically for my tastes, so I almost didn’t even care about him. Overall it was a satisfying ending to a solid C+ show.

#36

I have quuuiiiiitttteeee a lot to say about the final episode and the anime as a whole. A few good points, and a few bad points. I still really have to fix up my thoughts before saying them, though (and I might just save it for the podcast), but I would like to bring up one of each now.

Good Point: Yuu gaining healing abilities and consciously choosing not to time-leap was an amazing decision. It really showcases Yuu’s own development throughout the series. It’s definitely something he wouldn’t have been able to do if, for instance, Ayumi didn’t die in Episode 6 or he didn’t meet Sala in Episode 8 (yes even that contributes to this decision, no matter how small). I even love that the possibility was made available, and they just brushed it off. It’s that kind of decision that makes me respect Yuu as a character.

Bad Point: I might seem pretty over-the-top but the final power; the power of courage just ruined the entire thing for me. Without it, I would have rated the series a 3, maybe even a 4 out of 5. But I will probably have to give something lower than that. (EDIT: I ended up rating it a 3, because I think it accurately depicts what I think of the series as a whole, instead of stupidly basing it off of one thing I didn’t like :P)

Why is it such a big deal to me? Because I feel it demeans me as a viewer. Courage is something that we, as human beings, have to develop on our own. It isn’t like invisibility or teleportation or time-leaping that is impossible for us; it’s something that we can obtain after working hard towards that goal.

Putting in a power like “courage” is just a spit in the face of people who have worked hard to obtain this sort of courage, because it cheapens the idea of courage to begin with, bringing it down from something they can be proud to obtain, to an ability akin to the disease. At the end of the day, the show gives us the idea that the characters, Yuu especially, can use this power to obtain courage when they need. Because of that, the hospital scene, with Yuu reassuring Nao, is something that I can see as possibly an effect of Yuu having the power of courage. This speaks nothing towards his character development of being able to give Nao the strength to continue staying with him, but just tells us that “When times are rough, just take out your magical power of courage and it’ll make everything better!” I won’t deny that the character development was there, and having courage would have been unnecessary, but it adds this lingering possibility to his entire mindset.

As such, it leaves a very bad image for us viewers, and I cannot even fathom the final value that Charlotte wished to impart because of that scene.

3 Likes
#37

Going to write this post before reading the others as to have a fresh set of of thoughts.

I generally liked Charlotte all the way through and liked the idea they had, but it seemed poorly executed.

This episode was sort of the solidifying factor to that belief. Having Yuu’s entire global adventure packed into a single episode felt very rushed and awkward, as well as the supposed romance with Nao. On top of that, the global adventure wasn’t as thrilling as I’d hoped. Just a few bumps here and there. I can summarize episode 13 the same way I could summarize the whole series; Good idea, poorly executed, felt rushed. Normally at the end of a visual novel or anime, the word “fin” invokes a lot of emotion from me, but this time around I was just thinking, “Oh? Thats the end? Okay.”

The series as a whole was pretty mediocre but I didn’t hate it. Might be worth a marathon’d rewatch at some point in the near future.

2 Likes
#38

The absolute worst part of this show was that this track never showed up T^T: http://puu.sh/kpCUh/f3e8016720.mp3

3 Likes
#39

Goddamn, ever since I heard that in the PV for the anime I’ve been waiting to hear that track actually used. Extremely disappointed that it wasn’t, since it’s so beautiful.

Edit: There’s a review on MAL which pretty much sums up my feelings from episode 13, and by extension, Charlotte as a whole. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RpwYMTnBp69zp7MSMQ70t2M9Hf1LFbwFpvTwrXeE3XE/edit

1 Like
#40

Since it appears to be peaceful enough here for the moment, I guess I’ll just post a few thoughts while it’s all alright.

I felt it was lacking. Not in how it made sense or conveyed the show’s message, it did and was entirely satisfying in that regard - but in terms of execution it was quite weak. I remember saying (not on here) that they should at least have made this episode a one-hour special, and I still stand with that. Watching it, you feel they had to throw in the whole of Yu’s adventure despite it clearly being too long for the usual anime episode format, and it resulted in his supposed struggle feeling weak, because he navigates between distinct parts of it all in a matter of minutes, which makes the whole of it feel as if it were brushed aside. It felt rushed, and weak as a result. Another consequence of that is the final scene, which comes about so abruptly I barely knew what to say when it started.

The more global problem is that quite frankly I feel Maeda went for the “easy” ending, one where his characters aren’t hurt too much - the problem being that I expected a much greater sense of sacrifice and struggle from Yu’s adventure, and although it was partly because of what I said above, I wonder if any length could have fixed that entirely. That makes me really frustrated.

I feel especially frustrated because all in all, it’s a show with amazing ideas, and to me it was mere inches away from being a truly amazing work. That is to say, a better ending, or alternatively more episodes, from being quite a masterful anime.

Now as for how I rank Charlotte, I’ll still put it as my favorite anime of the summer if only for what an interesting and meaningful series it was, despite the ending being of unfortunately questionable quality and, I’ll say it, one of the show’s worse episodes in my opinion, if only based on what one could have rightfully expected from Charlotte’s finale after all that build-up. And while that might sound upsetting to some, I rank it way above Angel Beats!, aka the anime which never should’ve been one - at least Charlotte is fit to be an animation. (and also because Yu & Nao are amazing and I never felt as strongly toward any AB! character).

1 Like