Ones from the last comet orbiting. Since Ayumi’s just awoke it’s safe to assume there’s a few more who are just starting or haven’t quite awoken yet.
I think the post-credits scene in episode 6 with Kumagami was supposed to be perceived as more important than people have assumed thus far.
Allow me to explain.
Going into episode 7, it’s more or less an implied notion that Kumagami was the one who saved Yuu, or at least assisted him after the first collapse in protecting him from death.
The fact that Kumgami is linked to Yuu by the companionship with Shunsuke and Nao, I believe this was supposed to be a way of establishing a stronger connection with the audience in the closing sequence of episode 11 after second collapse.
Think of it this way. The show focuses on Yuu and Nao heavily, and Kumagami was basically the guy who pushed forward the plot (Help Nao find users, helping Shunsuke form the syndicate, and being the victim because of his power) and not only that but he saved the lives of both Yuu and Nao. The two characters the show has been trying to get you attached to the most.
If you think about it that way, it really lets you appreciate Kumagami’s character a lot more in my honest opinion.
I’m of the opinion that it’s impossible to capture all the abilities in just 2 years. I wager he’ll either fail, find a way to extend his power, or turn into a monster, as was heavily foreshadowed before
So after a lonnnnng talk with the forum’s most rebellious moderator aka Yerian, I decided to post this on here as well:
This is the one page that gathers all my writings on Charlotte so far, all 11 episodic articles. A short intro and some precautionary measures will lead you to all the links, be sure to read that part too as I always fear they might not be the usual “review” type stuff most would naturally expect. The response from people interested in the series has been quite positive, I’ve even managed to make Charlotte into one person’s top summer anime!
My article on episode 12 will come either tomorrow Friday or Saturday before the anxiously awaited finale airs.
Hope of some of you read & appreciate my work~
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Hey, maybe Shirayanagi Yumi will make one last appearance in episode 13? I mean, yeah, it’s not like they have all that much time to spare in the last episode, but that would give Yuu a bit of closure, right?
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So Charlotte is over and I can now update my crazy ol’ rating scheme, which some of you may remember
Charlotte had pretty decent characters. I felt they were more interesting and fleshed out than Kanon, AIR and Clannad, but simply hold no bar compared to the others.
I quite liked the setting of Charlotte, what with the whole powers and everything, but I would have preferred it to have a more somber tone to it. Personal preference, I guess.
The theme of Charlotte is a bit hard to gauge for now, but I feel a lot of it has to do with one’s self. Following Yuu’s own development was, I feel, the most important part of the story as a whole, and I had a lot of insight on how it could apply to my own life.
The story of Charlotte is, well, meh. It lacked a direction and proper foreshadowing for many of the series, and a lot what happened converged to a single point: the promise to come home. Even that promise was pretty lackluster in terms of what happened, and I rate it as such.
Emotional Impact is Charlotte’s weakest point. I gained little to no emotional impact from this series, as a lot of the dramatic points were not given enough time to be savored, both before and during the scenes.
The music, however, makes up for a lot of things. The BGMs were absolutely great, and the How-Low-Hello and ZHIEND songs are sounding amazing so far. I can’t wait to get the full length albums! It ain’t no Rewrite, but it sure is damn good.
So yeah, that’s how I rate charlotte compared to other key series. By itself as an anime, I gave it a 3/5 on Hummingbird which, in my standards, means average.
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Alrighty, so since I finished Charlotte and I havent posted a single post about it, Im gonna drop a huge bomb of thoughts and opinions. Altho people will surely hate me for the most part what I say, I dont give a shit because if you know me well enough, you could have guessed early what Im about to say haha. So no h8 and no jundgerino plz :p.
First of all I want to say a few things about the “little” details of Charlotte I loved. I have discussed this the other day on discord with pepe and everyone. I have noticed it right away in those first episodes, but the each effect of the superpower that someone had was always displayed by the same color or visual effect. And I really liked that and noted it as a big plus. It may sound kinda stupid, but I loved how levitation was violet and then nao’s disappearence was always this TV signal effect .
I also have to say that Charrlote itself is really awesomely deisgned in graphical way, and to me it looked appealing and nice to watch. I was really getting this nice sense of it just by looking at the eyes for example or the background landscape or w/e.
Also this will sound really weird but Im going to compare Yuu to Kotarou a little, idk why but w/e right. I kind of liked how Yuu had this badass character on the outside, but at the same time he was really sensitive inside. If we take Kotarou for example in some of the routes he becomes stronger, and so his mindset does. In a sense that he can do this and that and wont be afraid … this is hard to explain, but when it comes to Yuu, and especially 12nd ep. He was like, NOO I cant do this alone how the fk am I gonna do this right? So even tho he has all those powers he is still scared. (well who whouldnt be) . And I kind of like this “progress” of a characters mind and strenght itself, and how are they gonna accept it. And to be completely honest. I was 100% satisfied how they made main protagonist behave n stuff and partly it is because of the 13rd episode. (I was seriously hoping to see all his sides of behaviour, and I got it, so win win for me).
When it comes to other characters tho, Im kinda 50/50 on that. You know, it would be nice if characters like Nao’s brother got more attention, but they just mentioned him like once and then poof suddenly he became unimportant.
I really like the design of every other characters tbh, Kumagami or Yusarin, whoever, I really liked how they displayed them.
Now the story,
The story itself, had a good idea and a point to it, but what really put me off a little was the pacing. Like 5 episodes or so, and seriously almost nothing happened. But, I knew that Key is going to have this … uhhh how do I put it. A bigger impact of the story itself. Rewrite spoilers ahead - What I mean is, that in rewrite the things that was happening wasnt only in japan, but planet included… everywhere right? And for some reason I knew that they are going to do something similiar in Charlotte. It really reminded me of rewrite in that sense. It reminded me of Terra route for some reason haha.
Music, ohoho boy that was one of the best things in Charlotte and I think everyone could agree. When I heard the opening for the first time I was kinda like “hm okay thats nice.” But then I started watching the eps, and the bravely song started growing up on me lol. And now everytime I listen to it I go insta goosebumps. As for background music and funny scenes music. I think they did a phenomenal job on it. It kinda had this glitchy feeling sometimes, but that’s what Charlotte suits imo.
Also ZHIEND, the way Key are trying to visualise the music is just something I really love. I think the first time I saw something like that was in angel beats with Iwasawa (the headphones). AND THE SAME THING, when Yuu got to listen to ZHIEND’s songs from Nao and found himself in that place UGGHH THATS JUST… YES DAT! :D.
And lastly the emotions. I… expected more of Charlotte in terms of emotional impact. I mean, they tried to put emotions and tried to make you go feel-ish mood where it didn’t really work. But there were times that had a big impact on me, I have to say that yeah. Especially the scene on the 13rd ep where Yuu wakes up, I couldnt stand the look of Nao’s face. Maybe it is because that I tend to put myself into other people’s shoes and then feel the way they do… if that makes any sense to you. But It kinda got me into this depressing moment somtimes, for example where Yuu always reminded himself that he cant use the time jumping ability, or the fact that he saw his sister die. Its just… Imagine being in that situation, it will be there with you, in your mind. And that sucks. So yeah I kinda got depressed xd.
Sorry for the longer post and all the spoiler tags :p. I hope I brought something new and that I didnt repeat someone else’s ideas.
Again this is my opinions and I think a lot of people will not agree with me, but w/e I am who I am right :D? Peace
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My general overview of Charlotte can be found on my blog. It obviously has spoilers in it, and is written for people, that have watched the full anime too. Here is a link
I guess I’ll “review” the show on here, since that’s probably not something I’ll ever do on my website.
Charlotte is a very interesting show I felt - but as I’m sure we’ll all agree, it suffers from quite a few problems.
The production values don’t pose any problem - the animation is classic P.A. Works, they know what they do and do it to great effect, although I do have to admit that I was surprised to see them keeping their trademark style even when working with Maeda again, I thought they’d go back to their AB style. The soundtrack is, very obviously, quite excellent. On that end, I see no problem.
Now as for the characters, well that part is very mixed to me. I absolutely love Yu & Nao, think they’re both incredibly interesting & that Yu’s development is legendary considering he’s fleshed out better than 99% percent of protagonists from shows twice or even thrice as long. Nao is marvelously subtle. But, unfortunately, those two’s brilliance sacrifices the other characters almost entirely. I understand why in this case, but between Yusa & Takajo who get less development in 10-13 episodes than Shunsuke in like 4 and those characters who appear one and never come relevant again (including Sala, despite her contribution being “erased” by the time travel), there’s a lot to criticize where the characters are concerned. I simply felt none of them were truly fleshed out or shown to be really relevant, the two main aside of course.
Regarding the story: the setting is interesting, that’s undeniable. I love the “powers as a disease” angle. You also feel they really do take advantage of the setting well enough as Yu’s story unfolds, as his interior problems that stem from his condition are quite well painted. The message is superbly interesting & contrasted, although as that’s analysis I’ll keep it for my site. But where Charlotte falters, in my opinion, is the execution of it all. For all its good ideas, the ending was incredibly rushed and made the final ordeal feel too weak in comparison to what was to be expected given all the build-up, and one could argue that it’s because the global execution of the show was lacking. I can’t help but think that most of the episodes (except a few) were quite well executed on an individual level, they all had a very clear purpose and managed to realize it - but at the same time, when you put them all together, the result is that they had so much work left for the final episode, and that led to a somewhat weak ending, at least definitely so in terms of delivery.
Furthermore the story has obvious problems, for instance the matter of time - after Ayumi dies, Yu stays holed up for quite a few days and is able to run away freely, even though after he travels back in time, the terrorists make their plan a reality within less time than it took Yu to run away in episode 7.. Furthermore, one has to question the ultimate worth of episodes 7 & 8 if Nao ends up falling for Yu regardless - and those two episodes were easily my favorites in the entire show.
So yeah, as interesting as the setting & premise are, and as good as I found most of the episodes, the global structure has many frustrating problems. The main flaw here is how it all adds up rather than how each part works, which ultimately hurts the show as a whole quite a bit.
However that has to be contrasted with how dense each episode is, how much info one can squeeze out of everything. There’s meaning to almost every sentence, in fact almost everything is worthy of analysis. That’s one of the major aspects that made me like the show - its meaningfulness, and how so many things just come together to create a wonderful general message. Everything that is presented as meaningful to Yu’s story (since he’s the one to convey the message ultimately) does come to make sense at the end, so in that regard Charlotte is well built.
I also loved the subtle aspect to the show. So many anime just try so hard to make you understand how everything works and how each character feels at a precise moment - it’s a firework of tears, entirely silly lines, overly tragic music and other all too obvious visual elements. Charlotte is all but that - many times you have to pay a lot of attention to really get what each character is thinking or how they feel. It never forces you into understanding the super obvious message, and doesn’t make its characters into sorts of allegories of human beauty.
All in all I loved Charlotte as a meaningful story that made me feel really engaged - and also for being superb analysis material. But it’s also full of holes and other inconsistencies that keep it from being a genuinely amazing experience. It is quite excellent I think, but I’m not sure it’ll remain with our memories - although to be frank, it’s still better than 99% of what’s airing today, so it might stay simply because there’s hardly ever anything better, at least in its own genre, considering almost all good anime series are comedies those days (meaningful stories such as this one are an endangered species in the realm of anime, and shows that try to be that generally fail miserably - hey Glasslip, hey Plastic Memories!).
So yeah, those are all the thoughts I can muster at the moment. I might edit if new ideas come to me. I think the impression that will remain with me will be positive - but I can’t help the frustration seeing how it could’ve become a total masterwork with more time (I think additional time would have naturally fixed most of the execution problems & such). All in all I rate Charlotte pretty highly, but definitely far from as much as I could have, and it’s a shame.
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I agree with your sentiment on subtlety, but there is a very thin line between subtlety and just not giving the viewer enough information, and I feel that unfortunately Charlotte often crossed over into the latter.
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Well I won’t argue that Charlotte will please the casual viewer, to me it’s clear that’s hard & I’ve definitely heard many complaints from those, including some quite silly stuff that I’d rather not mention.
However in the end it’s up to the viewer to pay attention, and if you do watch Charlotte closely enough, you’ll see the subtleties because the information is most definitely in there if you watch out for it, it’s not invisible or so small that it requires 10 re watches. You just need to watch each episode once with enough focus, and you’ll get a good part of what you need in order to understand the main of it.
But then again, that makes the show sort of inaccessible to a certain audience, which can be considered a flaw in its own right, that I can agree with. But in another perspective, you can also say that paying attention is the viewer’s job, and that it’s their fault if they don’t get the subtleties. I’m more on the latter here, you simply can’t go into a work like this and think of watching it casually.
The problem is, even doing that, even with all the extra information, doesn’t fix the show’s problems.
I’m not saying it does, I admit that in my first post - but if you look at the vast majority of the criticism targeted at Charlotte, most of it is unfair & stems from this lack of understanding. I’ve only met very few people who didn’t like Charlotte and could actually make a decent case for their opinion.
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It’d be nice if you can bring up those problems. I know you mentioned thing like bad BGM cuts, which can be viewed a lot more objectively, so it’d be worth discussing those, I think
To quote my end-of-season wrapup post:
Charlotte is an original anime helmed by Jun Maeda, the writer of many Key works.
Charlotte is a Heroes-inspired tale of a world where super powers exist. Yuu Otosaka has the ability to take over the body of anyone within his vision for 5 seconds. Using this power, he cheats his way to a fancy school, and becomes a popular figure at the school. One day he is brought to the principal’s office under suspicion of his test scores, and there he meets another superhuman, Nao Tomori. Nao, having recorded Yuu’s body controlling antics, tells him that he must transfer to a different school… A school for superhumans. Yuu gets dragged into the student council, and for the first 4 episodes, nothing really happens… It’s pretty boring really.
The story starts off by introducing our main cast! Yuu, our protagonist, who, after half an episode, suddenly loses every defining personality trait and becomes more of a background character. Nao, the girl who actually pushes for a story. Yusa, a generic idol, and Joujirou, a serious looking joker who fanboys all over Yusa.
Don’t worry about remembering the last two though. They get forgotten about quickly.
Oh, and Yuu has a little sister. She shows up sometimes.
The cast is really lacking in character development, and most of them never actually do anything… So that isn’t this show’s strong point. It doesn’t help that half-way through the show, our main cast is abandoned, and faced with a new cast, we are told “these are your friends!”
Ah, but this is Jun Maeda, one of the great musical talents of the VN world! The music of this show must be great, right? Yeah… No. There’s maybe two scenes where the choice of music is good. Aside from that, it is a total mess. The musical merchandise that spawned from this show in the form of How Low Hello and Zhiend are pretty good, but you won’t get that in the show. The OP takes a while to get used to, but it’s pretty nice, both visually and musically. The ED… happens sometimes.
Uuuh, the animation is not bad. You’d expect better from P.A. Works, but you can’t get it all right. There are a few pretty scenes throughout the show, but it’s not consistent in that regard.
As for the story, well, you’re not gonna get much of one. There’s a bit in the final 3-ish episodes, and a bit for a couple earlier episodes, but the rest isn’t all that story-focused. There are a few episodes that are enjoyable standalone, but as a series, it never really amounts to anything. By the time episodes become not-bad, it’s too late. Nothing has happened before to make the audience give a damn about what’s happening.
In the 11th episode, an episode that, while cheesy, was pretty good for about half of the episode. I could see myself enjoying it… But I didn’t. All I could think was “I’m never going to like this show, am I?”
I spent the 12th episode thinking one thing. “Why is nothing happening yet?”
The 13th episode was worst. “This is all I wanted.” Finally, for maybe 18 minutes, they created a story that was more worthy of a series than the past 12 episodes were… But it’s too late.
Huh, looking back on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show get 2/3 of the way to completion without having any semblance of direction or coherency before.
I find it hard to believe that anyone working on this show had prior experience with anime. They’d have at least recognized some of the basic fundamentals that the show managed to screw up. Were they even trying?
Every element the show introduces is quickly dropped for something else. There are more flip-flops in Charlotte than on an English beach in the Summer. Instead of deciding on what it wants to be, it just kinda jumps between everything, leaving nothing to connect the jumps together. This leaves the series feeling slow, while the individual episodes feel rushed. One minute the show is giving us an in-depth look at an idol’s music video, the next it’s giving us an unexplained flashback sequence. Sad scene? Don’t worry! We have silly little Yusa to ruin the mood! In one episode Yuu is a smug selfish jerk. An episode later he is a kid who does whatever he is told, and has less distinct personality traits than a protagonist of a poorly written 90’s dating sim. What we do see of him is never consistent with what we already know.
This strange lack of coherency shows in everything. It’s all so sudden and yet so slow. Episodes will suddenly end at inopportune times. Scenes will be randomly thrown in at painfully jarring times. BGM tracks will start to play for no reason, at the wrong time, and then will just suddenly end. Nothing is worse than hearing tense music at a time of calm. Oh, and you can bet that the animation is never timed to fit the music, or vice-versa. Who does that, right? Hah!
How does a studio that has done any work before make such basic mistakes? Rokka no Yuusha had less, and made up for it’s technical flaws well enough. Why doesn’t Charlotte?
So… What is the strong point of this show? What does it want to focus on?
Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t know what Charlotte was trying to do. It never really had any focus, and it never really had any depth. I can’t describe the overall story much. I can’t describe the characters. I can’t describe the music. There’s nothing there. A show needs a direction before it can do anything, and Charlotte never had that… So I don’t think I’d recommend it any time soon.
4/10
Not the most in-depth, but I have 20 better shows to write about. If you want examples of this stuff, episode 6 is a hotpot.
Oh, and if you look back on the discussion posts, I was actually trying to defend this rubbish for weeks. I had hope it’d get better, but I suppose I should have taken the smart mindset and realized it’d be a waste of time.
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Lately, I’ve been avoiding talking about my opinion on Charlotte as a whole, concentrating on discussions of the content instead. So let me get this over with right away:
Like several others here, I consider Charlotte to be my least favorite Key work of all, but still a pretty good anime. It’s good compared to a lot of anime out there, but it’s just not Key-tier. I kept my hopes up, expecting another masterpiece for a long time, finally giving up after episode 11.
Do I think Charlotte has faults? Yes, lots of them. Do I think that makes it a bad anime? No. Do I feel like I have to discuss my disappointment? No. Do I regret complaining about the gloomy mood in certain discussions? No. Did I like Charlotte as a whole? Yes.
So now that I got that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.
I’d like to adress the issue of expectations that has been discussed before. Most, if not all of us, have expected a lot from Charlotte - because Jun Maeda. We have been told it’s going to be “a typical Key story”, so we perceived it as such and judged it accordingly. For example, we expected fleshed out characters that we would love so much, we’d cry rivers whenever something sad happens to them. So we got worried when many characters still weren’t fleshed out after many episodes. But it turned out that Charlotte was in fact not “a typical Key story”. It was Maeda trying out something new. Charlotte was, in many ways, different from what we had expected it to be. And we’ve never been told what it’s actually about. Even late into the show, we still didn’t know for sure where the story was headed and what the main conflict was. There was confusion and question marks all over. We have not been spoonfed the answers. Only now, after the series has ended, do I believe to understand it: (episode 13 link) It was all about Yuu.
I will draw some comparisons here. (Little Busters & Charlotte spoilers ahead)
Like LB, Charlotte spent most of its time preparing the main character for something that would await him in the future.
As @Velunari pointed out in the episode 13 topic,
(heavy LB & Charlotte spoilers) But unlike Riki in LB, Yuu has not been deliberately trained by other characters so that he could deal with certain circumstances. Nobody planned for Yuu to go save the world all by himself. Over the course of the first 12 episodes, he has grown as a person and became someone who’s both willing to take on this huge task and capable of seeing it through.
No wonder we didn’t understand where Charlotte was headed for the most part. Yuu didn’t expect it, either. None of the characters did. So there was nobody around to give us hints. Admittedly, I do think we should’ve gotten some hints here and there, just to lessen the confusion and prevent thoughts like “Oh no, there’s not many episodes remaining and the main plot still hasn’t been introduced!”. Some people even took the panic so far as to perceive some episodes as time-wasting fillers. Fortunately, now we can confidently say that those episodes had a solid purpose.
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See… If that’s what Maeda was going for, then I think he’s losing it.
If that was the point of Charlotte, then it was bad at it’s core… Even without the basic flaws that she show has, spending 12 episodes doing nothing for one rushed 20 minute episode is an awful idea.
If it was all about Yuu, they should have made Yuu a character, instead of a name with a visual.
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That’s a questioning I’ve had for a long time, but… Angel Beats has six visual novels, including five to come, so I don’t think we can really judge it as a “work” yet. We’ll only be able to do that in I don’t know how many years. Thus, I guess people are judging the anime - but how is the anime better than Charlotte? We’re not just looking at the ideas here, but at a work of animation - and I don’t see how anyone can convincingly argue that AB, as an anime, was even on par with Charlotte. If Charlotte has holes, then AB has galaxies missing - it’s a hugely ambitious work they’re trying to pass as an anime, but the shortcomings were many & all clear as day. Maybe the idea is even better and the ending more memorable, but looking at the 13-episode run of both, AB is less interesting and engaging throughout, except for a few specific moments. Meaning it achieves less - it doesn’t matter all the potential it shows or how much we love the ideas, the result remains that it barely exploited its possibilites. As an anime, it’s inferior to me - although as a whole work I can imagine it to be better, but as I say it’s impossible to judge that now.
Not that I want to change your or anyone’s opinion, it’s just that many seem to share this thought, and I just don’t see the basis for it. Not as of now.
The only truly Key-tier anime out there is Clannad. Most others batter the source material, especially Little Busters. If we’re talking Key anime, Charlotte is superior to most.
(This is all pretty jumbled, maybe not even worth reading, just me attempting to explain how I came about my opinion as compared to Days. But really my main point is from the TL;DR down, so you wont miss anything by just skipping there.)
I dont think thats a very considerate way to put it, because the truth stands: there are people who enjoyed Angel Beats! more than Charlotte, and even whether or not they considered each and every technical aspect of what would make it “better,” they’re still gonna call it that: better. I happen to be one of those people, so let me respond to your arguments.
You answered yourself why AB would have so many more “holes”: its trying to cover a much larger story and encompass many more characters. Now I dont think its even possible to “measure” the amount of “holes” Charlotte had proportional to its story and characters, so I wont attempt to use that argument. But to me, what you say about “holes” is true conversely in terms of chaos/direction. In Angel Beats, the presented goal is always clear, and the story becomes about they method to reach that goal, and the revelation of a “truer” goal. Charlotte however, seems to have none of this. There isnt a goal in sight until episode 12, so what appears to be the “point” of the series only gets one episode. And the method to get to the goal that we dont know about appears ever changing and unrelated. Ep. 1 is separate from 2-5, are separate from 6-7, are separate from 8-12, are separate from 13. Even if this is all for the development of Yuu, if jumps around so much that instead of feeling like development to me it feels like a mess.
Now this “interesting and engaging throughout” part… /sigh. I guess theres nothing really to argue here. This is 1000% subjective. I guess I would just say, dont use this to back up your statement that Angel Beats is objectively not on par with Charlotte, because that really is just your opinion, and the way that Charlotte used its ideas and settings, I feel the opposite of you.
As for achieving less vs more, and exploiting possibilities. I could definitely say the same about Charlotte in terms of the latter. This can simply be backed up by how it turned out almost nothing like I expected. The few of the major questions I supposed and was interested in at the beginning which it actually answered were done so insufficiently in my eyes, and many of them weren’t answered at all. But Charlotte chose a different path, and imo it was a less interesting one.
Uhhg, that was a ton of words just to boil down to this one point…
TL;DR: “De gustibus non est disputandum!” – “There is no disputing taste!”
Basically, its an opinion, man. You cant argue that one thing is hands down better than another based on what it achieved and how much it was interesting or enjoyable or whether or not its story/characters were more complete because those are subjective things. All those words I just rambled off up there are just my disjointed thought process of why I like Angel Beats more, but really, I dont even need that, because all I need for my opinion to “be right” (read: exist) is to experience them both. Thats all the basis I need.
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First of all, thank you for trying to be civilized where I’m pretty sure many want to rip my head off for this Unpopular Opinion™.
Now as I said I have no intention of changing anyone’s opinion, if they feel AB is better then I’m fine with it, this is merely a questioning. However I don’t think you should back them for calling it “better” if at the end of it, you say:
If it’s taste, then don’t use the adjective “better”, because that one is entirely objective. This might sound like nitpicking, but that makes the way you come off entirely different. If you base your argument on the notion that all of this is subjective, then don’t use just the words “better” or “worse” without giving more context precising that this is none other than your feeling.
Of course part of it is a personal feeling, and that argument does come off as entirely subjective… but there’s more to it than just that.
That I can’t see - our expectations hardly matter at all here. Ultimately what we have to look is how it turned out based on the writer’s vision of his own story (which we can only understand via analysis after the show has ended), and the criteria of “achievement” then becomes quite clear and objective. Here I say AB exploited far too little of its setting, and that’s entirely objective, because it did show what a huge setting it had. From here on out, it’s up to the show to exploit it, and the fact that it didn’t is no more than an observation. Also, you say AB’s goal is clear… of course? I mean the ending was predictable. I’m unsure whether than makes the show’s end goal “clearer” though. And, just like Charlotte, the show did undergo some changes throughout its run.
That’s one of the arguments I’d place in the “it has to do with the viewer more than the show” category. Although then we might be going back to an earlier debate on whether the subtlety was too much in the show, so I won’t really go into that. I might be willing to accept this as subjective, but seeing as the people who output this argument were ranting more than arguing…
I’ll have to disagree here. Angel Beats! was very objectively less complete, it tried to cover too many things but failed to cover the vast majority of them. Charlotte also failed to cover quite a few things, but as a result of its smaller scale, there were less things it failed to cover. It’s almost mathematical at this point - a smaller scale resulted in a more comprehensive coverage of it. Beyond that problem, it also had plot holes, but then again Charlotte also had them, although AB’s are bigger in that at least one of them is very fundamentally bothersome.
So yeah part of it is subjective, but that’s not just it - I wouldn’t come out & openly wonder why people would say AB is better than Charlotte if there wasn’t more to it than personal feelings.
Not that I don’t respect the reverse opinion or don’t believe one can’t make a good case for it, it’s more of a questioning than anything really. I don’t actually want to argue on which is better, rather I’m wondering how so many came to that conclusion, and as you explained why & now I’ve also explained why I’m on the opposite side, I don’t want to start a whole discussion on which is better & why. Your answer gave me what I was looking for.
EDIT: just wanted to add that I don’t hate Angel Beats or anything, I like it a whole lot. Just thought my words might give the wrong impression.
