Charlotte - Episode 4 "Moment of Earnest"

Key Discussion
#103

So, this episode was interesting in terms of subtle developments. First, we see some extent to Nao’s planning here in this episode, particularly with regard to Yuu. In episode one she (indirectly) gave him the feeling that his power can’t solve everything. In episode two she showed him what can happen if you are caught, and also what might happen if you rely too heavily on your powers. In episode three, Yuu experienced how one might be able to utilize their powers to help others, while they can. Finally, here in episode four, Yuu experiences accomplishment without having to rely (solely) on his power.

tl;dr: Nao is actively helping Yuu move forward.

Personally, I found this episode to be a good fit, given where everything’s at so far. It felt lacking in some ways, but I’m not going to fault it for that.

[quote=“Aspirety, post:95, topic:1669”]
Why didn’t we see Yuu possessing the baseball dude? We saw his power working, then he wakes up in Nao’s arms.
[/quote]Nao likes Yuu, so she wanted him to wake up in her arms… :v

To answer seriously though, I’ve been thinking about this a little bit as well. When they introduced the catcher I figured “Okay, maybe this guy also has a power?” The way they interacted with each other seemed pretty… ambiguous. Perhaps the catcher was on to the existence of the supernaturals, and Nao wanted to check his reaction. But then wouldn’t she have been focused on that power user, instead of Yuu? However, Yuu woke up in her arms, and that was probably the point. Maybe Nao wanted to check what happens to Yuu when he uses his power. But then, there would be inconsistencies with the setting. (But, there are already similar inconsistencies. For example (although I haven’t put too much thought in this), in episode one, how did Nao get to that riverbank so quickly?)

I probably have more to say about this episode, but I’ll leave it at this for now. Sorry, there were a lot of posts prior to this, so I’ll have to give a proper look over them. Hopefully nothing here overlaps too much with previous posts.

#104

I guess I never talked about it, but what was going on in my mind when Nao asked Yuu to take over the pitcher guy was the specific power that they have. I was thinking “Maybe because both their powers are related to mind-control, they might not be able to affect each other” or something like that.

I guess it’s interesting how we weren’t even shown whether yuu was successful at hijacking the pitcher guy. For all we know, that might have been the first time that Yuu failed at it, and we just weren’t shown on-screen. And if he did fail, then why? Is it because their powers conflict with each other? Or is Yuu’s power getting weaker? I have no idea since we were given so little information to come by

1 Like
#105

ANGEL BEATS SEQUEL CONFIRMED

2 Likes
#106

Anime ORIGINAL confirmed. There’s a reason why it’s called "Original’ and not “Sequal” :slight_smile: Have a nice day

#107

I’m fairly certain Kanon was kidding haha

1 Like
#108

Yeah @Kotarou ,like the meme “Illuminati confirmed” :wink: I like to even laugh at myself about this.

Anyway that’s the point of a forum. To debate, speculate, and so on… we can speculate to a certain degree 'cos of the patters from previous works and topics, and at the same time we may have almost no idea of what’s going on. That’s what we all have been doing from ep1 and before. Little information escapes the studios and it is instantly shared here, but then again… too little. Things will get interesting in ep.6 I hope (when our petit theories will fall or make any sense). Some things may change its meaning in the very last episode. On the other hand, lets be careful about it, we can start a rumour among fans / potential fans easily though.

#109

I’ve been disappointingly bad at predicting things in this show so far…

So, I was pretty convinced from the moment I saw Nao’s video of the pitcher that the guy with powers was going to actually be the catcher. That could have made things a little more interesting, and it would have been a better explanation for why the catcher was able to nab those amazing knuckle balls. Still, even if it was just the pitcher, it was nice to see a power user who wasn’t completely selfish.

I was also predicting that beef tongue would continue to show up (it still might). In another thread I theorized that the tongue dishes are a way to signal that the setting is somewhere in Sendai, since Beef Tongue is to Sendai as Cheesesteak is to Philadelphia. That is to say that Sendai isn’t the only place that beef tongue is served, but it’s iconic of the area.

1 Like
#110

I only noticed it during a rewatch but, this moment here is important in more than one way:

As we can see, Nao is encouraging Yuu to not rely solely on his power.
But what we can also see is that Nao is entrusting Yuu with her camera while it’s her turn to bat!
Considering how important her camera is to her, that’s a huge token of trust.

6 Likes
#111

That’s actually a very good observation that I, personally, did not notice. It says a lot about what Nao thinks towards Yuu

#112

I have a question, why did Yusa join the student council? Is there something particularly valuable about her power, because as far as I can tell they try to focus more on a more peaceful approach when targeting a new power user. Did I miss something?

#113

Those magic spell things? I’m not sure if Nao knew about them before though.

1 Like
#114

I would guess that Nao wants her for her “magic spells”. We see evidence of this when Nao is running her mouth at the Hoshinoumi pitcher: he threatens to quit, and she uses Yusa to calm him down.

[quote=“Doublethree1, post:113, topic:1669”]
I’m not sure if Nao knew about them before though.
[/quote]We are shown that Nao knows about them before, by that scene with the two guys in the classroom fighting over Yusa.

Also, Misa has shown that she’s pretty enthusiastic about following all of Nao’s plans in general.

#115

Wouldn’t that have been after Yusa joined or did Nao show some reaction that she knew it was about to happen that I missed?

#116

Nao didnt tell Yusa to come to the student council room until after it happened, and Yusa clearly hadnt been told before that she was going to be joining the student council.

Nao might have also been considering it beforehand as well. She probably knew about Yusa’s effect on people before we were ever shown it.

#117

That seems like the best bet, I guess it just just didn’t come to my mind that she would recruit a member for a reason other than their power, and the “magic spells” seemed like a joke idea more than a plot device

#118

When Nao is telling Misa to join in episode 3 she says something like “we want you to come to our school and do everything alongside us”. While Misa might not have gold Yusa Nao still decided just after that thing with the producer.

#119

Honestly I don’t think Yuu failed at taking over the pitcher or anything like that. He’d definitely react more strongly to it if that were the case. What really makes me curious is how Nao explicitly stresses that the opponents are the test subjects. I’m inclined to trust her on this, because why would she lie about it?

It is a possibility that Yuu using his power on someone ‘influences’ them in some (permanent?) way. Either that or she was just observing the immediate reactions of the guy and his team.

1 Like
#120

Yeah I just rewatched that scene,

image.jpg1136×640 101 KB

So that still begs the question, why? Like her powers are impressive I suppose but I don’t believe that their goal is to actually harm anyone, and for intimidation I think that takahiro is more than enough…

#121

[quote=“Doublethree1, post:118, topic:1669”]
When Nao is telling Misa to join in episode 3 she says something like “we want you to come to our school and do everything alongside us”.
[/quote]While that line sorta implies that Nao might have been considering it at that time, I think that “do everything together with us” part is more referring to what they say next, about Misa’s friends not ever getting to see her again.

I guess its kinda hard for all of us to think about when exactly Nao decided to have her join the council, since we all knew Yusa was gonna be a part of it from the beginning :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

As I said before though, it did seem like Nao liked Misa’s personality. I mean, why did she specifically chose any of the three to work with her? Dont you think its likely that there are other kids with powers that would be just as useful? I think while she certainly considers how their powers could help her accomplish her goal, she also choses kids who she wants to work with.

1 Like
#122

I always assumed that she only chose people for practical reasons, she doesn’t seem to care for yuu too much, and takahiro seems to annoy her. Additionally I find their powers quite useful, yuu can take over and immobilize someone while takahiro can apprehend them, misa can… Light them on fire?