Forum - View topicREVIEW: Charlotte Blu-Ray 1
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Parsifal24
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I recently finished watching this and it was okay episode seven was the strongest episode of the series but the comedy while funny felt repetitive and Joujirou started to feel like a one-note throwaway character to me.
As well as an unwillingness by Maeda to let the dark elements stay in the story these get retconned or fixed in really hamhanded ways that neuter the darker elements wich made it a stronger series in my opinion. |
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rizuchan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 974 Location: Kansas |
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Wow, I was just re-reading some of Gabrielle's episode reviews on this yesterday, and her and Nick say pretty much the exact same things with completely different reactions to it.
Charlotte is a train wreck for sure. But it's a head-on collision that catches fire, slowly burns, then explodes into fireworks. Certain scenes and episodes had more emotional impact to me than any of Key's other works. I think episode 7 was a masterpiece. Too bad it, along with episode 8, are made completely irrelevant by spoiler[the time travel stuff]... |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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All I remember about Charlotte, other than that I watched it, is that it had some oddly low res textures on some of its background art. I'd complain about how it seemed more focused on heightening the emotional impact of individual scenes rather than telling a more compelling, cohesive story overall that "earned" those moments, but you can say that about pretty much everything these days. I think writers & directors just figure that we've seen these stories so many times before that we'll fill in the details ourselves.
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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Or the series was too short for the type of story he likes to tell. Maeda's stories seem to do better as anime when they have 24 episodes to develop the characters and character relationships (Kanon, each season of Clannad), which does give them enough time to include that foundation work, versus trying to cram everything into 12 (Air, Charlotte). Even Angel Beats was really too short for its ambitions (and I know it was originally supposed to be 24 episodes before it got cut down), but it had enough other strengths that it still worked in spite of its abbreviated story and over-large cast. This one, not so much. I generally like Maeda's stuff, and I still ended up never finishing it. |
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Angel'sArcanum
 Posts: 303 Location: Toronto, Ontario |
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Just you wait, it gets WORSE. Some spoiler[ poor time travel and amnesia elements], Maeda betrays his own unrealistic idealism he sets up to save all the characters by not saving some of them and he expects you to get behind this ridiculous, manipulated act of martyrdom, it's a lot of hokum.
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Skerlly Fc
Posts: 79 |
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Is Jun MAeda the Nicholas Sparks of Anime? Can someone make that comparison here?
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2441 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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This idea that "Maeda needs more cours" has been conventional wisdom for a while, but Charlotte made me think it's bunk. As Gabrielle pointed out in her streaming reviews, Maeda's forte is these incredible, singular moments… and very much not the narrative that gets you from one to another. An Angel Beats! fan will be happy to rattle off great moments in that series (spoiler[Iwasawa's last concert], spoiler[Yui's to-do list], spoiler[Yuri being forgiven by her siblings], etc.), but will struggle to remember just how you get from one to another. You really have to rewatch (or hit a wiki) just to remember the arcs in the middle of the show: Naoi's rise to power after Kanade is deposed, the clone Angels, the shadows, the A.I., etc. Working further against the "Angel Beats! would have been perfect if it had gotten its original 24 episodes" is the fact that every time we've gotten more Angel Beats!, it has made the show worse, not better. The 2010 OVA "Stairway to Heaven" is an out-of-character "bad end" comedy trifle, and the 2015 OVA "Hell's Kitchen" (created for a box set re-release and also as a curious cross-promo for Charlotte) is another comedy piece wedged between episodes 2 and 3, one which deflates the pathos of Iwasawa's story before it is even told in episode 3. At this point, I don't buy the theory that Angel Beats would be better if it were longer, and openly wonder if it would be better if it were actually shorter. By the same measure, I don't buy the hypothesis that Clannad is good because it's so long. Quite the opposite: as the third-seat spokesperson for the show on the Clannad episode of ANNCast, I wondered aloud if we could put together an edit of just the Nagisa path through the show (like, eps 1-3 and 19-22 of Clannad, then 1 and 9-22 of Clannad After Story), thereby jettisoning about half the series. The arcs with Fuuko, Kotomi, Mei, Yukine, etc. aren't there to develop Tomoya's character… they're there to scratch the itch of fans of the original visual novel, who want to see their favorite arc reproduced in anime. If there were really any development here, you wouldn't be able to rearrange them in any order and have them make sense, yet I think that's totally possible -- nothing about any of those arcs depends on the events or sequence of any of the others. tl;dr: all of Little Busters! is nearly four times as long as Angel Beats! or Air. Does anyone think it's four times as good? The best you can say of Charlotte is that it has its moments. With Maeda, specifically, that's what you're looking for: these really incredible moments of character, comedy, and pathos. Problem is, a proper story needs more than just scattered great bits. Last edited by invalidname on Thu Aug 25, 2016 1:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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I enjoyed Charlotte, but I wouldn't have noticed that it was a Jun Maeda work unless someone had pointed it out to me.
Air, Kanon, and Clannad all struck me like an emotional wrecking ball. Charlotte was certainly interesting but it never really "got me" in anywhere close to the manner of those three. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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I quite agree. To use the example of Air, Maeda allotted the largest running time Misuzu's arc to an ultimately great effect. Had an extra cour been available, it is hard to identify any enhancements a longer episode count would bestow its principle storyline. Similarly, the secondary arcs of Clannad can be viewed as excrescences—as you seem to suggest—despite the fact they occupy a larger proportion of the work. While Nagisa's arc is hardly faultless from the perspective of those who have not read the VN, I am in no position to say it suffered from the obligatory allowances to the game's other routes. Kanon, which notable had a different director to Maeda, demonstrated something quite different; that a Key adaptation can still produce gratifying secondary arcs within compact temporal constraints. Makoto's arc is granted no additional episodes to those it precedes, but I would wager that a Key fan would find little with which to fault it. The point to draw from this is that the capacities of Key adaptations to rouse their audiences, both those with and without Maeda at the helm, are heightened or diminished for reasons aside the sheer number of arcs being depicted within them. Time can be reallocated to promote certain characters' portions, but even then it is possible for the demoted cast members to leave their mark on the series. |
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rizuchan
Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 974 Location: Kansas |
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invalidname, I both agree and disagree with you on the cours.
The reason Angel Beats and Charlotte feel like they needed 2 (or more) cours is because they are ambitious, albeit in different ways. Angel Beats has an enormous cast of characters but only had the time to focus on a handful of them. While it didn't really need a longer run the enhance the plot, most of the characters felt superfluous, and it would have been nice to flesh them out more. Charlotte had an enormous plot that had to be rushed because it needed adequate time to focus on the "feels" Maeda is known for. Maeda seems to be stuck with one (or both) of these issues when it comes to TV anime: 1. He's used to thinking of huge, sprawling plots that fill 50-90 hours of visual novel but tries to fit them in anime with a tenth of that running time 2. He's really stuck on the thought that anime needs to be episodic, when the current popular format of 1 cour shows is not made for episodic series I think that currently we as anime fans are so used to the new format that we forget that longer running shows tend(ed) to have many episodes that followed a pattern (in anime it was usually a "monster of the week" deal) until suddenly having a climactic final arc that wraps up the plot, or told the story in many smaller arcs that weren't always relevant. Sure, you could absolutely edit Clannad down to just Nagisa's route and the latter half of After Story would probably still have the same emotional punch. This is one reason why some people liked the movie better (these people have no taste, but I digress). But I don't think the other arcs were a waste of time. Many people fell in love with Clannad for Fuuko's arc, and I was really touched by Kotomi's, and even Misae's, which I cared very little for in the VN. I don't think telling those stories was a waste of time, even if they didn't contribute to the plot. So looking back at Charlotte, I really got the feeling Maeda had this sort of episodic format in mind when he wrote it. The first episode establishes the plot, and the rest of the first half is very "monster (Esper) of the week" before the second half finishes the plot. I don't think anyone could argue that we needed more esper hunting in Charlotte, and many fans wondered even as it was airing why so much time was wasted on it. In that sense, no, we didn't need a second cour of Charlotte as much as the show could have done away with the first part. But if it had been 2 cour, 8 episodes of esper hunting and 16 episodes of plot might have been easier to swallow. Additionally, both Angel Beats and Charlotte follow Key's tried-and-true pattern - Spend the first half of the story goofing off with the cast and getting to know them and have fun with them so when the emotional hit comes, it's a real hit to the gut. I think this is what Maeda tries to accomplish by starting off both Angel Beats and Charlotte with these repetitive plots in the beginning. The problem is with the shorted format, we don't have time to grow close to the characters and therefore it seems like a waste, and the emotional punch doesn't hit nearly as hard. Personally, my biggest frustration is that Maeda seems to be okay with this. He has stated that he no longer wants to do visual novels so he can do TV anime instead. That's fine, except his style of storytelling is much more conducive to the visual novel format. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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I guess I'm enough of a sucker for Maeda's work to consider paying even Aniplex prices for this, but can anyone confirm: do these discs recycle the same awkward and error-ridden subs from the simulcasts? Given Aniplex USA's history, I'm inclined to think they do.
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Angel Investor
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I thought Charlotte was overall a pretty good show (I'd say a solid 7/10). There are only two things that really bothered me. spoiler[When that elementary school girl tried to stab Yuu's sister. I'm used to anime testing your suspension of disbelief, but I thought that part was totally ridiculous.] The second thing that bothered me was the ending. spoiler[It wasn't clear to me whether Yuu permanently lost all his memories or not. I would have liked to see Nao do something that would make him remember her (kinda like when she made him food that Ayumi used to cook). That would have made it have much more of an emotional impact.]
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5526 |
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Huh. I think people are being overly harsh. Yeah, it was a rushed mess (Especially the end) but I can't think of very many actual "plot holes" as mentioned in this review, or contradictions as mentioned by other posters here. Specific examples would help arguments.
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Silver4000
 Posts: 181 |
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I kinda liked Charlotte. It could have been way better, but I took it as a slice of life show, with nothing serious to take. Although I did loved episode 7 spoiler[when Yuu just went dark and getting into random fights and stuff, I actually was praying that the anime could continue on that dark tone. Even when it took the "Jesus" route on the last episodes I kinda wanted to see the full trip around the world and stuff, but oh well...].
There are many types of OVAs. The ones that keep going after the anime was over. Original stuff made for fans. Or adaptations of popular manga chapters that weren't adapted in the anime, which sometimes happen to be a continuation of said anime, but are still loose episodes. Angel Beats would be in the between of the second-third category. Its something for the fans, and at the same time something that could have been a random manga chapter that wasn't made into the original adaptation. IMO that's what the original concept of an OVA is, and should be. I actually hate it when OVAs are the direct continuation of an anime, and many people tend to think that every OVA is/should be that. I do admit that I'm a fan of Angel Beats, I can even say that its my favorite anime (besides Digimon Adventure), but that doesn't mean that I can't see its flaws. Although, the main problem was indeed the cut on the budget that affected the cours, so I do agree with WingKing. But hey, nothing can be as bad as David Cage games. |
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MiloTheFirst
Posts: 429 |
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To be honest I have never liked Maeda´s works in general, they are usually too ludicrous to allow me to find any given character relatable. If I had to describe what I think the actual biggest problem his works share is a lack of tonal consistency. I am not saying a show that is engineered to make the viewer cry can´t have a bit of comedy, but from there to make a ¨looney toons¨ act is just too much. How am I suppoused to take seriously any of nao´s ¨tragic¨ backstory when she just randomly kicks jojiro through a (above ground level) window for absolutely no reason except for the (viewer´s) lolz. a show that demand´s the viewer sympathy can´t have it´s characters be so unrealistically irresponsable and expect us to look the other way as if it were natural. I remember I had this problem with clannad as well, when every so often the same gag happened in which kyou literally crashed sunohara with her motorbike (often straight out on purpouse) and then just laughts it off. If a show wants me to think about the ¨humanity¨ of its character why does it has to go out of its way to spell in my face they are cartoons. needless to say this same problem plagued angel beats from start to end.
spoiler[random murderous yandere middle schooler out of nowhere for starters] |
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