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 Iâll âreviewâ the show on here, since thatâs probably not something Iâll ever do on my website.
Charlotte is a very interesting show I felt - but as Iâm sure weâll all agree, it suffers from quite a few problems.
The production values donât 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 theyâd 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 theyâre both incredibly interesting & that Yuâs development is legendary considering heâs fleshed out better than 99% percent of protagonists from shows twice or even thrice as long. Nao is marvelously subtle. But, unfortunately, those twoâs 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 âerasedâ by the time travel), thereâs 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, thatâs undeniable. I love the âpowers as a diseaseâ angle. You also feel they really do take advantage of the setting well enough as Yuâs story unfolds, as his interior problems that stem from his condition are quite well painted. The message is superbly interesting & contrasted, although as thatâs analysis Iâll 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 itâs because the global execution of the show was lacking. I canât 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. Thereâs meaning to almost every sentence, in fact almost everything is worthy of analysis. Thatâs 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 Yuâs story (since heâs 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 - itâs 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 doesnât 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 itâs also full of holes and other inconsistencies that keep it from being a genuinely amazing experience. It is quite excellent I think, but Iâm not sure itâll remain with our memories - although to be frank, itâs still better than 99% of whatâs airing today, so it might stay simply because thereâs 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 canât help the frustration seeing how it couldâve 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 itâs a shame.
1 Like
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.
1 Like
Well I wonât argue that Charlotte will please the casual viewer, to me itâs clear thatâs hard & Iâve definitely heard many complaints from those, including some quite silly stuff that Iâd rather not mention.
However in the end itâs up to the viewer to pay attention, and if you do watch Charlotte closely enough, youâll see the subtleties because the information is most definitely in there if you watch out for it, itâs not invisible or so small that it requires 10 re watches. You just need to watch each episode once with enough focus, and youâll 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 viewerâs job, and that itâs their fault if they donât get the subtleties. Iâm more on the latter here, you simply canât go into a work like this and think of watching it casually.
The problem is, even doing that, even with all the extra information, doesnât fix the showâs problems.
Iâm 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. Iâve only met very few people who didnât like Charlotte and could actually make a decent case for their opinion.
1 Like
Itâd 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 itâd 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 principalâs office under suspicion of his test scores, and there he meets another superhuman, Nao Tomori. Nao, having recorded Yuuâs 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⌠Itâs 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.
Donât 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 isnât this showâs strong point. It doesnât help that half-way through the show, our main cast is abandoned, and faced with a new cast, we are told âthese are your friends!â
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. Thereâs 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 wonât get that in the show. The OP takes a while to get used to, but itâs pretty nice, both visually and musically. The ED⌠happens sometimes.
Uuuh, the animation is not bad. Youâd expect better from P.A. Works, but you canât get it all right. There are a few pretty scenes throughout the show, but itâs not consistent in that regard.
As for the story, well, youâre not gonna get much of one. Thereâs a bit in the final 3-ish episodes, and a bit for a couple earlier episodes, but the rest isnât 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, itâs too late. Nothing has happened before to make the audience give a damn about whatâs 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 didnât. All I could think was âIâm never going to like this show, am I?â
I spent the 12th episode thinking one thing. âWhy is nothing happening yet?â
The 13th episode was worst. âThis is all I wanted.â Finally, for maybe 18 minutes, they created a story that was more worthy of a series than the past 12 episodes were⌠But itâs too late.
Huh, looking back on it. I donât think Iâve 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. Theyâd 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 idolâs music video, the next itâs giving us an unexplained flashback sequence. Sad scene? Donât 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 90âs dating sim. What we do see of him is never consistent with what we already know.
This strange lack of coherency shows in everything. Itâs 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 itâs technical flaws well enough. Why doesnât Charlotte?
So⌠What is the strong point of this show? What does it want to focus on?
Honestly, Iâm not sure. I donât know what Charlotte was trying to do. It never really had any focus, and it never really had any depth. I canât describe the overall story much. I canât describe the characters. I canât describe the music. Thereâs nothing there. A show needs a direction before it can do anything, and Charlotte never had that⌠So I donât think Iâd 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 itâd get better, but I suppose I should have taken the smart mindset and realized itâd be a waste of time.
3 Likes
Lately, Iâve 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. Itâs good compared to a lot of anime out there, but itâs 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, letâs get to the good stuff.
Iâd 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 itâs going to be âa typical Key storyâ, so we perceived it as such and judged it accordingly. For example, we expected fleshed out characters that we would love so much, weâd cry rivers whenever something sad happens to them. So we got worried when many characters still werenât fleshed out after many episodes. But it turned out that Charlotte was in fact not âa typical Key storyâ. It was Maeda trying out something new. Charlotte was, in many ways, different from what we had expected it to be. And weâve never been told what itâs actually about. Even late into the show, we still didnât 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 whoâs both willing to take on this huge task and capable of seeing it through.
No wonder we didnât understand where Charlotte was headed for the most part. Yuu didnât expect it, either. None of the characters did. So there was nobody around to give us hints. Admittedly, I do think we shouldâve gotten some hints here and there, just to lessen the confusion and prevent thoughts like âOh no, thereâs not many episodes remaining and the main plot still hasnât been introduced!â. 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.
1 Like
See⌠If thatâs what Maeda was going for, then I think heâs losing it.
If that was the point of Charlotte, then it was bad at itâs 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.
2 Likes
Thatâs a questioning Iâve had for a long time, but⌠Angel Beats has six visual novels, including five to come, so I donât think we can really judge it as a âworkâ yet. Weâll only be able to do that in I donât know how many years. Thus, I guess people are judging the anime - but how is the anime better than Charlotte? Weâre not just looking at the ideas here, but at a work of animation - and I donât 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 - itâs a hugely ambitious work theyâre 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 doesnât 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, itâs inferior to me - although as a whole work I can imagine it to be better, but as I say itâs impossible to judge that now.
Not that I want to change your or anyoneâs opinion, itâs just that many seem to share this thought, and I just donât 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 weâre 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 âbetter,â theyâre 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 âholesâ: its trying to cover a much larger story and encompass many more characters. Now I dont think its even possible to âmeasureâ the amount of âholesâ Charlotte had proportional to its story and characters, so I wont attempt to use that argument. But to me, what you say about âholesâ 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 âtruerâ goal. Charlotte however, seems to have none of this. There isnt a goal in sight until episode 12, so what appears to be the âpointâ 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 âinteresting and engaging throughoutâ 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 werenât 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 pointâŚ
TL;DR: âDe gustibus non est disputandum!â â âThere is no disputing taste!â
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 âbe rightâ (read: exist) is to experience them both. Thats all the basis I need.
5 Likes
First of all, thank you for trying to be civilized where Iâm pretty sure many want to rip my head off for this Unpopular Opinionâ˘.
Now as I said I have no intention of changing anyoneâs opinion, if they feel AB is better then Iâm fine with it, this is merely a questioning. However I donât think you should back them for calling it âbetterâ if at the end of it, you say:
If itâs taste, then donât use the adjective âbetterâ, 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 donât use just the words âbetterâ or âworseâ 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 thereâs more to it than just that.
That I canât see - our expectations hardly matter at all here. Ultimately what we have to look is how it turned out based on the writerâs vision of his own story (which we can only understand via analysis after the show has ended), and the criteria of âachievementâ then becomes quite clear and objective. Here I say AB exploited far too little of its setting, and thatâs entirely objective, because it did show what a huge setting it had. From here on out, itâs up to the show to exploit it, and the fact that it didnât is no more than an observation. Also, you say ABâs goal is clear⌠of course? I mean the ending was predictable. Iâm unsure whether than makes the showâs end goal âclearerâ though. And, just like Charlotte, the show did undergo some changes throughout its run.
Thatâs one of the arguments Iâd place in the âit has to do with the viewer more than the showâ category. Although then we might be going back to an earlier debate on whether the subtlety was too much in the show, so I wonât 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 arguingâŚ
Iâll 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. Itâs 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 ABâs are bigger in that at least one of them is very fundamentally bothersome.
So yeah part of it is subjective, but thatâs not just it - I wouldnât come out & openly wonder why people would say AB is better than Charlotte if there wasnât more to it than personal feelings.
Not that I donât respect the reverse opinion or donât believe one canât make a good case for it, itâs more of a questioning than anything really. I donât actually want to argue on which is better, rather Iâm wondering how so many came to that conclusion, and as you explained why & now Iâve also explained why Iâm on the opposite side, I donât 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 donât hate Angel Beats or anything, I like it a whole lot. Just thought my words might give the wrong impression.
First of all, according to my current definition, the Charlotte anime is a key work, the Angel Beats anime is a key work, Little Busters and Clannad visual novels are key works. Their anime adaptions are not key works - theyâre adaptions of such.
The reason I like the Angel Beats anime way more than Charlotte is pretty simple: Angel Beats completely blew me away. It gave me tons of feels. I didnât even know a work of fiction was capable of eliciting so many emotions of that intensity. It was what got me into Key in the first place. Angel Beats is just really powerful. Itâs incomplete, with a big chunk missing right in the middle, but the parts parts of it that we did see were doing their job wonderfully. Also, I consider ABâs setting to be the ultimate emotional setting, something Key arrived at after working on many masterpieces. A place where childrenâs souls arrive at after a short life of struggle and an unfair death. With just that, thereâs an immense potential in the story, and even the incomplete AB anime made good use of it. Even with all its faults, the AB anime is still up there, right next to the other Key works.
Charlotte didnât have that kind of impact to me. It didnât leave all that much of a lasting impression compared to any other Key story. It didnât leave behind as many fond memories. Even in terms of music: Angel Beats has âIchiban no Takaramonoâ, Little Busters has âHaruka Kanataâ. Memories and feels start flowing into me as soon as I hear those. No part of the Charlotte OST will be that kind of âtriggerâ for me. The most memorable piece would be the opening.
Now donât get me wrong. Iâm not blaming Charlotte for not being dramatic or emotional. It never tried to go all-out on drama. The thing is, it just didnât leave any other comparable kind of impact, either.
So for these and several other reasons, I will always like the AB anime way more than I did that of Charlotte. Itâs not an answer I arrived at after sitting down and counting the number and gravity of mistakes that the respective anime have made or anything like that. Those arenât all that important to me.
3 Likes
Are we doing AB vs Charlotte now? Because frankly itâs too hard to judge which is âbetterâ or âworseâ without a set criteria, even subjectively.
Perhaps, on some levels, they could be objectively argued; I personally think that Charlotteâs entire plot was way more polished than Angel Beatsâ, and thatâs an objective observation. But is plot really all it takes to make a series better?
Thereâs a reason why I have my own rating scheme, and in that scheme, AB beats Charlotte overall; but it doesnât trump it in every aspect. Perhaps some aspects are more important to you than others, and thatâs where the subjectivity comes in.
So, yeah, if you wanna argue about AB vs Charlotte, at least be specific about what aspect you are arguing on.
1 Like
I disagree. You are a mad man!
Charlotte had plot?
Iâd merit Angel Beats for actually having content. Sure, it eventually threw it into an abyss of âwe fixed it all off-screenâ but at least it had some worth. Charlotte just did random stuff each episode until the last episode, and then it was like⌠Oh⌠We only have an episode left to be something.
Angel Beats had a goal. It had a cast that, while underdeveloped, actually had some personality and chemistry. It had a fairly decent romance. It had an interesting world. It made good use of itâs initial concept. It had a good use of BGM.
I donât like AB, but it actually did some stuff right. Itâs main downfall was itâs reliance on comedy and itâs rushed final episodes.
As far as I can tell, Charlotte didnât do anything right until it was too late.
3 Likes
Despite the overwhelming Western negative backlash on Charlotte after the last episode, volume 1 BD sales are top of the rankings in Japan.
Didnât see that coming if Iâm honest.
Then again everything this season seems to have sold poorly.
Havenât DVD/blu-ray sales been getting lower and lower? It might just be in the west due to Netflix and stuff though.
Okay guys! With the series having come to a close and the final podcast around the corner, Iâd like to begin calling for submissions for the Charlotte Anime Bookclub Anthology!
Much like the AIR Bookclub Anthology, weâre asking for forum members to submit voice recordings sharing their final thoughts on Charlotte. For prompts, you can try answering the questions âWhat does Charlotte mean to you?â or âWhat did you gain from watching Charlotte?â. The only real requirement I ask is that the recording be positive. Criticisms of the series are entirely valid in our discussions, but the Anthology isnât really the place for negativity. Weâre looking to end the Bookclub on a good note, so please only volunteer your thoughts if you believe you have something nice to say about the series. Try to aim for 3 minutes, and make sure your audio quality is as good as possible before sending it my way!
Iâm not sure on a deadline for this yet. It may be as late as next weekend, but if we can get this done by the end of the week, Iâd be elated. So, if youâre interested in contributing, please donât delay!
6 Likes
