By James Zheng
Charlotte was an anime that was first planned by two Japanese companies, Key and ANIPLEX, and finally released by P. A. Work. The script and characters were designed by a well-known writer named Maeda Jun. He already had plenty of outstanding works which are usually categorized as “moving” and “affecting.”
Within Charlotte’s story, in a fictional world where superpower holders exist, the hero thought he was the only superpower possessor and abused his power for his own purpose. When he encounters the heroine, his fate was changed.
(This paragraph may contain some spoilers.) Charlotte is absolutely one of the best animes, and I strongly recommend it, but I want to give it a fair review. The initial part is very interesting and novel; the first episode attracts a lot of audience attention due to the superpower motif. However, I can say that the setting is just okay. The figure of the hero is too “conventional” and too much like the characters you can see in every anime. There seems to be no creativity in the hero’s personality, value, appearance, etc. In addition, the type of anime that sets school as a stage is too common. To make it particular or special, a writer and director has to put extra effort into designing characters and script. Plus, those early episodes give the audience a sense that it is going to be a story about daily life and then suddenly it jumps to a completely different topic; then, people are confused. I am not criticizing its quality, but I am sure that the director is rushing the story, which does crucial damage to Charlotte. Officials also announced that Maeda Jun’s scripts are too massive and need to be cut down a lot, which could explain why the storyline has such problems. It actually took them a long time to make thirteen episodes. What I’ve always believed is that it will be better to split a season into two seasons rather than to rush the plot.
Let me sum it up.
The storyline in later episodes feels scrawled; Maeda Jun puts the focus on the end rather than at the beginning; he was expecting to make a “boom” to the audience. But, he failed at this attempt. He puts his own affection into it, but the audience does not feel it. Well… even though he failed at this attempt, that does not mean the anime is awful or he is a terrible writer. My recommendation remains for Charlotte: see it. The only flaw that Charlotte has is the unreasonably rushed storyline. The characterization, for the most part, is extraordinary, and Charlotte creates a compelling story due to the efforts from character voice actors. There are transformations of plot in the later story which may seem too sudden and unnecessary, but without those details, the whole story would be completely flat.
Watching anime has the same property as admiring artwork. I would not just see how the surface is bright and ignore connotation inside the story. I was quite upset to see how anime critics throw negative comments at Charlotte. At the same time, I was also glad that I was one of the few people who could really understand Charlotte.
The story of Charlotte is not ordinary.
Editor: AJ Patencio
