Forum - View topicREVIEW: Charlotte Blu-Ray 1
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HuuskerDu
 Posts: 93 Location: USA |
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That's a pretty good summation. There was so much that went wrong with this series. It's basically spoiler[X-Men: First Class, a story about special kids with newly discovered powers, time-travel, world governments, etc)], but it totally botched the theme: spoiler[X-Men had a simple and important aesop: Every child is unique and special, and so every child should be treated with respect. But in Charlotte, the childrens' powers are treated like a disease. All special abilities must be stamped out ruthlessly (and Yuu did just that). So what is the aesop in Charlotte? Hide your abilities and conform to everyone's expectations? Always keep your head down? Behave exactly like everybody else?] The first arc had started meh, but it improved near the end (episodes 7 was the best in the series). But then the second arc devolved into a muddled mess: spoiler[The depiction of time-travel was so illogical and nonsensical (flip-flopping randomly between the many-worlds model and the unified-timeline model) that it made Doctor Who look like Steins;Gate in comparison. Not to mention the fact it ret-conned away episode 7.] The final arc crashed and burned spectacularly like a 50-car NASCAR pile up: spoiler[Over 10,000 ability-wielders existed worldwide, and yet with one exception (the girl with healing powers) we never see any 3rd party ability-wielder use their gift to help/hurt humanity at any point, much less in a more organized way by a Xavier or a Magneto. It doesn't even occur to them to try to use their abilities like that. Multiple governments went all-out to kill/capture/dissect Yuu, and yet it never occurred to any of them to recruit even one class A ability wielder to oppose him. Good grief, the kids don't even form temporary teams to defend themselves against the One Eyed Reaper. Instead they simply stand around to be scooped up mushrooms in a Super Marios video game.] Not even Maeda's music in Charlotte was particularly memorable (normally one of his strengths). The uneven pacing, the whipsaw shifts in tone, the total illogicality of the plot, and the unrelatable characters all combined to make Charlotte the worst work in Maeda's oeuvre. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5120 |
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It's been a while since I last saw this series, and – of course – this one disc doesn't cover the entire series; but, nevertheless, I am surprised that that this disk got a D+. I just do not recall the series being that bad.
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4828 |
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Charlotte is probably my second favorite Maeda work behind Air TV. I just really really love the guy's stuff.
That's not accurate. spoiler[Yuu took everyone's abilities to protect them. Nao and the rest didn't want to see more poor kids turned into science experiments by the government and tortured into insanity. It's not that they disliked having powers or disliked others having powers. It's because they could not get any peace or live pleasant lives on account of powerless adults being horrible to them.] The aesop of Charlotte was simply: "Use your abilities selflessly instead of selfishly. Which is what Yuu learned to do. A simple message but a fine one.
It got a C. But I think it deserves higher. |
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grooven
Posts: 1424 Location: Canada |
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Yeah the issue Charlotte suffered from was the way the story was crushed into in thirteen episodes. It was too big for the length.
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2443 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the second-half have an episode that begins with Nao literally saying "hey let's watch Yusa's latest music video?" That has to be the laziest merch tie-in I've ever seen. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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It is entirely accurate. Yuu played god and decided what was good for everyone. He's no hero, but the classic villain. He doesn't deserve sympathy, nor a pleasant or peaceful life. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4074 |
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I recall the series not being interested in the story it had to tell so it kept trying new things until the episode count ran out. I'm not a fan of Maeda but I am a fan of Ishihara's Key adaptations for Kyoto Animation; I even for give him credit for doing Clannad/Clannad Afterstory in that bloated way as it wouldn't work unless you gave the audience distance between the younger Nagisa and the older... we can argue about what he choose to fill in that time like a kind of gang war, a cat story and Sunohara's sister which all amounted to nothing but cute sound and pictures.... and we would have gotten that anyway. I don't like Angel Beats; When Lost did a similar plot in its last season, it was suitably ridiculed so why does Maeda get a pass? Because it wasn't that long and there just enough "moments" for just enough characters to keep the audience distracted; If that was more than one season, it would have devolved into a series of nothing but character centric flashbacks - Lost season 3 essentially. Unfortunately for Angel Beats, I saw Lost first so I could see Angel Beats for what it is... a shell game where the dealer keeps mixing up the cups because he knows there's nothing underneath them. I put up with it in Lost because they weren't dead... yeah, I know, I know, Irony and all that. The Angel Beats characters could only realize how much their life sucked, come to terms with how much suck they faced and then hope that what came next...whatever it was... contained less suck. Any conclusions more concrete than that is just wishful feelings. With Charlotte, Maeda tried to string together key moments from different genres without taking the time to develop the genres foundations. Some could argue that all he needed was another season... I'm not sure that would help him though as he's more interested in a predestined outcome than present predicament.... while I'd say all he had to do was pick a good story and develop it over a bare minimum of two episodes. "Do more with less" then genre hop... or rather don't. I think it has the same problems with Samurai Flamenco; They don't have to cover as many bases as they can because they aren't the only anime in existence. Light fantasy comedy with melodrama/action, done.
I think I just found the ball. |
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Spike Terra
 Subscriber Posts: 358 Location: Maryland |
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Unpopular Opinion incoming..... I hated episode 7. Also incoming long subjective rant, that will most likely be a waste of your time. I was enjoying the nice episodic content of Charlotte's early episodes. Yuu was developing into a likeable protagonist and I was waiting for Joujirou and Yusa to become more significant than just one off joke characters. I never liked Nao as a character because she had a terrible personality in my opinion. Charlotte had good visuals and a nice soundtrack (then again so did Guilty Crown). The esper of the week formula was ok and I never wanted the show to go past that unless it was going to devote time to developing any of it's other characters.spoiler[ And then Ayumi died, and that's when my problems with the show started to surface.
The proceeding episode was actually pretty good until random yandere middle schooler appeared. Even then, I was legitimately interested in seeing what would happen in the next episode because that was a good cliffhanger. So it's revealed that Ayumi's dead at the beginning of episode and Yuu has every right to be depressed about it. The first red flag came at the funeral scene, where only Yuu and random lady are present, normally you would want to show more people paying their respects but I'm guessing it's implied they did so beforehand. This isn't really a major gripe and I only point it out because it's where I stop looking at Ayumi as a character and more as a mcguffin to justify Yuu turning into a monster. After that moment, I was okay with Yuu becoming a junk food eating neet and being an asshole to the girl from episode one because the death of his sister makes this seem like natural behavior. If I wanted to save this episode, I would have Yusa breakdown his door and have a conversation with him that would start the road to emotional recovery. I would use Yusa instead of Nao because even though they both have lost siblings, I felt that Yusa needed more serious scenes to earn her place in the main cast. So after Yuu runs away from home and becomes a karaoke hobo, I stop pitying him and I start just getting angry with him. He wastes an enormous amount of money on eating crappy food, staying in karaoke booths, and killing virtual monsters for fun. Which is becoming harder and harder to take seriously on my part but I can understand why they writers went with this to show that Yuu doesn't care about living anymore. All of this is justifiable until he starts torturing people for fun. Yeah I know their delinquents but that doesn't justify torturing them. At this point, I'm like "I don't care anymore. Go ahead and be a sadistic douchebag but I have no sympathy for you." It got worse for me when Nao busts on to the scene and gives him a stupid anti drug speech. The reveal that she was present through out the entire episode severely pissed me off. At any point she could have stopped him from ruining himself nutritionally (which to her credit, she did attempt to), wasting all of his money or most importantly of all, kept him from torturing people. But no drugs were the breaking point for our main character and the day is saved by the real hero of the show....pizza sauce. Seriously, one omelet rice undoes most of the bad things that happened after his sister's death. After this episode, it seems that the show tries everything to cover up the events of episode and even straight changes them. Those episodes were bad different reasons and this post is already too long as is.] So that's how I felt about episode 7 and I know that many of you will disagree with my opinion of this episode as it seems to be the high point of the series. Edit: Oh crap I forgot to use the spoiler tag |
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Humble1ne
Posts: 6 |
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I completely agree with the ratings I myself thought it was a C+. Animation was beautiful and the music was great also. Just wished the plot could be better and then it would have made this anime way better. Also Tomari was def the best character out of the whole anime.
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 826 Location: PA |
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Again why is nobody talking about how completely unimpressive aniplex packaging and discs are? Slipcase has nice artwork on it, but is thin enough to get torn or damaged pretty easily... I have sitting right next to it the collectors edition of NIS Tora-Dora Bluray.. and you could easily use that box to replace a wall in your house... seriously.
Ok as for Charlotte.. lot's of Maeda and Key hating going on.. meh. Charlotte was a good idea and story, just poorly executed and rushed due to time constraints. As mentioned previously the most glaring is the last episode.. this had so much new and interesting content that it could have been a 2nd season by itself! Charlotte took me a few episodes before I started getting into it.. and in comparison Angel Beats had me the first episode. I agree that Charlotte was lackluster in many ways and it's deserving of the C+ ranking.. but I was still entertained by it. |
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wastrel
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This is what Aniplex products are, and we all just have to decide if a show is worth the price or not. Unlike so many here, I enjoyed Charlotte. I would have bought it from no-frills Sentai. I would have bought it at Aniplex's price if they'd even gone so far as to use a nice chipboard box like Funimation does on a lot of their shows. But I have to be mad about a show to pay Aniplex price with Aniplex crappy quality packaging, and Charlotte didn't make the cut. *shrug* Not the end of the world; there are other anime I can spend my money on. |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4828 |
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..........I'm really at a loss for words here. All I can do is laugh and say "We didn't watch the same anime." |
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