For this week’s Roast or Recommend, I am going to once again stay within the anime department. I have just been watching a lot of anime lately and want to give my opinions on what I’ve watched over the last few weeks, even if the shows are a few years old.
This time around, I will be looking at yet another anime from 2015. This anime is named Charlotte. It came out in the summer/fall of 2015 and consisted of 13 episodes.
This anime takes place in a world where a comet named Charlotte passes by earth every 75 years, and with it brings dust onto the earth. If inhaled by young children, it could cause a reaction in their bodies that gives them abilities at puberty that other people do not have. These abilities always leave them when they become adults, however, so they aren’t present for long.
This story follows the main character, Yu Otosaka. He has the ability to take over people’s bodies for 5 seconds at a time. Though, he collapses during that time. He uses the ability to take control of people to cheat on tests and keep his grades up.
However, he gets caught in the act by our other main character, Nao Tomori, another ability wielder who can make herself invisible to one specific target at a time. She gets Yu to transfer to Hoshinoumi Academy, a school which houses ability wielders and keeps them safe and out of harm’s way until they lose their ability. He also is forced to join the student council at the school and help them bring in or stop other ability wielders to protect them from people who would try to exploit them for their powers.
I’m a big fan of the characters in the anime. Yu is a character that is developed extremely well. He goes from caring only about himself and his best interests to caring about everyone else around him over his own self. He becomes very willing to want to help out other people and to protect and save them, even if it means he will get majorly harmed. That part of his character didn’t come up early when he was more like ‘why do I have to do this’ and stuff like that.
Anime often gets beaten down hard because most of the main characters in them are bland and aren’t really challenged morally because they are nearly perfect from the start. Yu isn’t like that. He actually has major inner conflicts and grows through it to become strong morally and otherwise. It, in fact, leads to his downfall.
And Nao Tomori is a very strong female character. Often female characters are seen as secondary to main male characters, but not here. Tomori takes the lead many times in the anime and presents herself as very strong despite dealing with her own issues too. And I love a strong lead female character sometimes more than one that relies on the male to bring that out.
The animation in this is beautiful too. I love the art style as well. The characters are done very well and look awesome. But the big thing here is the settings and backgrounds. They really did a good job, in my opinion, of incorporating beautiful settings and used different ones well to provide a feeling for certain scenes.
The strongest part of this show was the story, but it might have also been it’s downfall too. Let me explain.
The story was done very well and the concepts were interesting and kept intrigue the whole way. I don’t want to spoil much, but there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way that are incredible too. I thought the anime was going one direction, but I wound up being proven wrong like 5 minutes later. It was wonderful.
But at the same time, I think the story tried to do too much within a short time. I’ve seen anime do too little in a short time, but this anime tried too much. There was a lot of concepts that didn’t get fair conclusions or even a conclusion at all. There were great plot devices that were rushed and felt unnatural in a sense. The story seemed to never have time to breathe because they had to fit in everything and jam things so it was rushed a lot of the time. It made for compelling action and intense interest, but I’d have preferred a little bit of time to absorb some of these concepts and greater depth placed in them instead of rushing into the next thing.
The other big issue with it was pacing. The first four full episodes were just set up and almost slice of life even. That made the last nine episodes where the story really started coming together feel super rushed. They simply didn’t have enough time afforded to fit in everything because of it. That was its greatest weakness I feel.
This anime fits within the action/comedy genre with some drama and a hint of romance. I think it definitely has all these things and a good amount of each with what they were trying to do. There’s a good amount of action and drama, with a good bit of comedy to lighten the mood at times. There even are hints of romance, but it didn’t need that aspect to be successful. It was just an add on because people like that.
I really loved this anime and it is definitely one of my favorites so far. However, I can’t help but notice that it really missed its chance to be even better. If it had done a few things differently, it could have went from a really good little anime that had its time in the spotlight to one of the top tier anime that still gets widely discussed.
It had all the elements of something really special. Great characters that show growth, brilliant and different concepts that are interesting and unique, the ability to invoke a wide range of strong emotions, great animation and art, and a story that weaved nicely together. Plus it had a very emotionally satisfying ending. Heck, even the opening and ending themes are top notch too. It was all there for it to take off like a comet, but it flopped a bit.
I think the big problem was lack of time. As I mentioned, they introduced a lot of concepts and plot devices in such a short time. And I just don’t think 13 episodes was enough for it all. They should have been afforded more episodes to expand on these brilliant setups they made and give more depth to everything and tie a nice bow around it all instead of leaving much unexplained or just things being left underwhelming. The whole final episode could have easily been five or six episodes by itself.
I think the first four episodes of setup to lull people into a false sense of something only for it to pick up big time later was done wonderfully, but when you only have 13 episodes, it just does not work as well. Had they had say even 22 to 26 episodes, I think they could have easily done all they needed to do in a more satisfactory way while still keeping that setup at the beginning.
Again, all the elements were there to truly be something special. It was just rushed in a way it didn’t need to be. It’s a real shame because this anime was awesome, and I enjoyed it the whole way. But it really does bug me that it was so close to being so much better if they would have just given the anime more time to expand on everything.
Overall, however, I’d highly recommend this one if you haven’t seen it. You will come away very satisfied at the end despite the emotional wreckage you may come away with from it. This is definitely an anime I will watch again in a year or two and definitely love just as much the second time around. It fits a lot of genre criteria so there’s bound to be an aspect or two there that you’ll find awesome enough to keep watching. It’s a terrific story if nothing else anyway.
Overall score: 79/100
Final Verdict- Highly Recommend
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