Uh? I didn’t know AB! had story problems. Most people seem to just complain about the pacing… And Charlotte is probably going to have a better pacing.
What about Sala’s story? And just because the story is going to be focused on the main characters doesn’t mean the side characters can’t have their own (shorter though) stories. I’m sure the main characters won’t be very explored since the beginning.
Key works can have some problems, but they don’t come from the VN structure. If it was like that, almost every VN was fated to be problematic in that way.
And well, VNs aren’t easily adapted because they were intended to be VNs from the beginning. Charlotte is not. And I never said arcs=routes, but arcs can “kinda” work as routes, aside the romantic aspect.
Characters that are almost completely pointless that are supposed to be respected as main characters from the story’s conception.
See, the majority of the AB! anime cast and these ‘side-characters’ are the same thing just with different names, and if those are in Charlotte then it will be disappointing. The saving grace is for them to focus next to no time on them so we have a maximum amount of time with the main cast. If we don’t get that- Problem. The less time we get with our Charlotte main cast and the more time we get with characters that are intentionally not fleshed out, the worse it’ll be. Character/Viewer investment and bonding is essential for something that aims to impact you at the core to work well. It’ll work for some that are just… ‘easy’, like that, but not people who dig deeper.
By this, you’re supposing Charlotte is just 1 cour. If it’s longer, even if they focus on the side characters on the first cour, we will have an entire cour or more with the main cast, so there would be no problems.
Cour is irrelevant. A great story can be told in less than a cour, no problem. My personal problem is I hate partially developed characters that are tossed aside. Feels like a waste. I’d much rather have Sala a formless entity that Nao likes, not a designed character and stuff.
At any rate though I’d be very surprised if this was two cour, still. I also am not so quick to take a ‘but if’ as a counter argument, because of course my issue does lie in the view of this being a one cour show, so that goes without saying.
Yeah I get that point. We don’t want it to become like Angel Beats again with 16 characters, all with complicated backstories, in a limited anime.
But wait, what comment did marina make about Sala? LINK PLS
Nao is definitely different from Taiga She can smile by herself right from the get-go. Just silly marketing trying to make her like Kanade or something.
See, it worked well for Visual Novels… Anime not so much >_<
I get what you mean here, too. But I dunno, Yuu strikes me as the… not-so-helpful type, really. So if it is gonna be focused on individually fixing other characters’ problems, it’s definitely not gonna be Yuu doing that. Probably, if ever, it’s gonna be the student council doing that as a whole. And since it’s the student council working together, we will have more character development on the council members themselves rather than the characters they are trying to help.
Sorry I havn’t read the 4-koma and glimpsed the previews so my understanding is from what I’ve read and heard so my ideas of the characters are probably way off XD
I think it’s going to be Yuu. If he receives major development in the story, a good part of his development must come from helping others. I also don’t think Tomoya is the type to help, but he did it. Dulcinea effect? Perhaps…
I mean if the help just comes from student council president as a whole, it will be much more a duty than something actually genuine. And I don’t think that’d be really useful to the story or character development.
Thing is, they work as a group. Whether its by duty or by desire, they will do it. There have been countless times where helping others transcends simple “duty”. Take Plastic Memories, for instance (I’m just using this because I just watched it earlier). Even though it’s only Tsukasa’s job to collect those giftia, he does it out of his desire to help those who are part of his job.
So no, duty does not mean less genuine or less useful character development. And I don’t believe it’s only going to be Yuu who will be developing from helping out in the student council.
You can be right, but… The major development, focus of the whole story can be his. I don’t know how it was in AB!, but LB! was like this. If AB! was like you’re saying, Charlotte probably will be as well.
Errr… No. Let me explain first why I said I’d like Charlotte as an all-girls show.
All-girls shows rely on friendship rather than romance, but I still really like romantic stories. The thing is, I think friendship is more ‘beautiful’ than romance. First, because friendship is platonic, and doesn’t include the sexual aspect. Second, because I think it’s something a lot more complex than romance. With romance it’s like “Hey, let’s date or marry.”. Friendship just becomes friendship after hard work and when people really know each other. And you don’t delude yourself attributing values to things like kissing or even overlooking the other person’s flaws. You see the truth and you like the truth.
But I still really like well done romance, but my reception of it is quite different. I can understand, for example, when a guy falls for a girl (because I’ve already passed through that). But I can’t grasp how a girl can like a guy, because I’m not a girl and I’ve never fallen for a guy. So, this is how I see romance: the guy likes the girl and the girl stays with him because he fulfills her necessities and treats her well, not because she likes him romantically. If you say Nao is the one who falls for Yuu, then it’d be a strange concept to me, contradictory to my vision of romance. (I tried watching Ao Haru Ride with my imouto, that explores the girl’s feelings, but I didn’t like it at all.)
And don’t you think it’s strange that out of all people in our social circles, we like the same ones who like us? Not denying the existence of one side love, but look at how many couples are there in the world.
No, no, no. It’s not like that too. Emotions don’t have to be simple or too explicit for me to understand. After all, I’m a human being. In those kinds of stories, the characters are explored and they go from flat to complex. You see them through personal moments with different feelings and you can really know them.
In real life, I don’t see more than the surface, because I don’t get close enough to people. I myself have contradictory feelings, desires, difficulties, fears, etc. But when I look at other people, they don’t really look human. I can’t know why do they do certain things, how do they feel, how do they think; but this is just because I’m not close to them that their interior is a mystery for me. But if I were, I would understand them.
No, I do want to understand character’s feelings. But also (forgot to add this) I don’t understand how can a girl fall in love, because a girl has never detailed those feelings for me. (The closest I got was from a girl who was talking to a dude she met on PS3. But then, I think it was just that she wanted an ‘adventure’. Proof of that, is that all her boyfriends are from the internet, and some even married.). So, this is why Nao–>Yuu crush would be hard for me to grasp.
I think there are so very many things wrong with this…
Romantic stories can be heavily explored without relying on the sexual aspect
Good romance is waaaay more complicated than “hey let’s date or marry”. You become a couple after sharing experiences with one another. There’s a big reason why I hate Rin as a pairing for Riki in Little Busters: Because it was exactly just “Hey let’s date or marry” and I think that is a terrible romantic story.
This is just a personal opinion, but love can’t work by deluding one’s self from the other’s flaws. It takes communication and acceptance.
And again,
Guess what: that feeling of “when a guy falls for a girl” is just the same as “when a girl falls for a guy”. There are many ways to “fall” for a person, and none of them are limited by gender. Stop trying to think of them as “girls” but think of them equally as human beings.
How is that different from:
Once again: That is severely limiting. If you can’t like something that you don’t understand, then that’s limiting.
In fact you’re being very contradictory when you say:
If you want to understand a character’s feelings, but you don’t understand them, then guess what? You go and try to understand them. You think, and you discuss, and you try to empathize. That’s the beauty of emotionally deep stories: when you try to understand them.
So, again, if you can’t understand it, and at the same time refuse to try and understand it, then that will limit the kind of emotionally engaging stories that you will be able to appreciate.
Related to this tangential discussion and Charlotte, I’d say that in many Key stories the protagonist had to first make an effort in understanding himself to move forward. (No, this isn’t a response to anything in particular.) Will we see that there, in Charlotte? There was only really one Key story that comes to mind where this didn’t occur, so I’d say yes.
What I’m wondering now, then, is what sorts of backstories we’ll see starting to get unraveled. Do we yet know how the “magic school” is viewed (in general within the Charlotte world) compared to normal schools? IIRC, not everybody is “magic.” (Yes, I’m calling it “magic,” for now.)
Anyway, I don’t have much else in terms of speculation for Charlotte as a whole. I’ll just wait for the next character topic~
Okay, so since I’ve read this whole thing about Sala having a backstory when she’s not the main character. I’m just making an assumption, but remember Kanon ? How Sayuri had a backstory which was basically shown in Mai’s story ? Couldn’t it just be possible that some of the side characters that have back stories would be put into the characters that are gonna be shown with back stories (if that made sense). You would take 3-6 side characters with stories that will actually relate to the overall plot and help stimulate the ending, then within their own stories, you would put side characters who aren’t as needed for the plot inside of there, shown when we learned about Sayuri’s past in Mai’s arc. Personally, I felt like Angel beats! was a beautiful story, and I love how the visual novel is gonna explore the back stories, but I think it’s kinda pointless. Having Angel beats! done, with the shadows, then going into each backstory. That seems too forced and will probably get boring, that’s the one major flaw for me, is having all the routes forced upon the story with nothing but routes 1 by 1.
I like your idea IF (and only IF) Charlotte is one cour. Otherwise, there’d be no need for that.
The thing is: they may seem pointless to the plot, but they are all related to the stories’ themes. Like a mosaic, sometimes the figures aren’t part of the others, but they combine with each other creating a beautiful picture.
Also, you can’t forget that Sayuri had her own (mini)route in the original VN, the way you put it was because that’s how the anime organized it, if I’m not wrong.
Well, with Charlotte being an anime-specific project (as opposed to AB!, and Kanon) the way it’s told might differ. Instead of trying to adapt a story to a VN structure they might be able to tell it in a way that isn’t quite as sequential as the AB!, Kanon, et al. anime were. That is, we might get to see each character have development alongside other characters, instead of one at a time. That sort of development might be spurred by some of the side stories presented to the characters. (e.g., a character with a backstory going to the student council and requesting something related to their club, potentially leading to exploration of the character’s backstory, with the fulfillment of the request being a part of the side story.) This isn’t too uncommon in anime. For example, most of Oregairu’s events were caused (either directly or indirectly) by requests made to their club. So your overall idea has merit to it as far as I can tell.
Yeah Angel Beats is already a complete story, and those side characters are just that, side characters, they’re flat and just there to give the illusion that the SSS is full to make it seem like something big.
They have no need for routes, it is forced and I can’t see the writers getting into it enough to make some good stuff.
She can smile by herself right from the get-go. Just silly marketing trying to make her like Kanade or something.
