Charlotte

If not for his ability to take over people's mind and body, Yuu Otosaka would be an ordinary high school student. Though it only lasts for five seconds at a time, Yuu's mysterious power allowed him to cheat his way to the top of his class and enter a prestigious high school, where he continues his dishonest acts.

His shenanigans are eventually stopped by Nao Tomori—the headstrong student council president from Hoshinoumi Academy—who sees through his deceit. Through coercion, Nao convinces Yuu to transfer to Hoshinoumi and join the student council. Hoshinoumi Academy is secretly an institution created for adolescents who possess supernatural abilities—with the student council serving as a means of locating those who abuse their powers.

With Yuu begrudgingly assisting in council affairs, the group sets out to find and protect new ability users from harm. However, as they further investigate the abilities, their findings entangle them in far more complicated matters than they could ever imagine.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tomori, Nao Main

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Otosaka, Yuu Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Otosaka, Ayumi Main

Asakura, Momo Japanese

Kurobane, Yusa Main

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Takajou, Joujirou Main

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Otosaka, Shunsuke Supporting

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Kurobane, Misa Supporting

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Shane, Sara Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Kumagami, Takehito Supporting

Takemoto, Eiji Japanese

Maedomari Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Horikawa, Kenji Producer

Toba, Yousuke Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Tsuji, Mitsuhito Producer

Reviews

Dec 16, 2024

MrSlamboni

Recommended

The first thing that comes to mind about Charlotte is the main character, Otosaka. Otosaka, unlike shounen protagonists, is self interested. In the "superpowers" genre, the main character is usually more than ready to sacrifice even his own life to save others. Of course, the reason for this is that the "hero" must help others and thus, must be willing to make sacrifices. This is not the case with Otosaka. He won't jump into the line of fire to save someone. He might resolve himself, but also hesitate or chicken out completely. The protagonist is flawed and sometimes even an asshole, but is intentionally made ... to be flawed. That's a fresh idea.

I won't pretend that it's never been seen before. Otosaka reminds me of Lelouch from Code Geass. If you liked Lelouch or thought he was interesting, I think you would like Otosaka.

As for the story itself, it starts off a bit slow. For the first half, I thought I was going to just be watching a high school slice of life. It was fine, but it wasn't anything to write home about. It had average characters with the over the top gags that don't really land. The second half of the show focuses on a different set of characters and starts telling an interesting story. When I think of Charlotte, I mainly think of the second half. The story is complex, dramatic, suspenseful and it has a really good ending.

Here's a short review of the main cast:
- Ayumi: Just does the old and tired "little sister" stuff but at least it didn't have the strange incest undertones.
- Kurobane and Takajou: They're passable, but they flip-flop between being a plot device and a repeated gag. They don't really add something that is special to them
- Tomori: Interesting because of her usage in the plot. She does interesting things and pushes the story forward. Also she deeper interactions with Otosaka than the other characters. She gets a thumbs up for making the story more entertaining.

If anything, I don't know why Kurobane, Takajou and Ayumi are classified as main characters. They don't contribute anything to the main, overarching plot. The story also doesn't really "follow them around" because they are completely ignored for half of the show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 27, 2024

idkmarci

Mixed Feelings

Charlotte. A premise that seemed promising, but ultimately ended up being cliché and meaningless. Maybe it's one of those anime that had great potential, but was let down by poor animation and simplistic characters. You couldn't expect much from it, so it wasn't hard to expect it to be a bad anime. It's simply a generic, average anime with at least a decent soundtrack, but that doesn't save it from being generic. Only watch this anime if you're bored. And stop being swayed by what others say, just because it has some good scenes doesn't make it a good anime. Clearly, that's just my opinion, ... I don't find anything good about it apart from the music, which even becomes annoying...

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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Mar 1, 2023

ThatAnimeSnobRE

Not Recommended

Funny

This anime begins with one of the laziest plot devices that can make any story to play out however the author feels like it at any moment. Whether it’s Code Geass or Attack on Titan, the moment mind control comes into play nobody has free will. They stop being characters and become puppets that behave however the plot wants them to behave. The author is the first who realized it and stopped trying to flesh them out. That is why the characters are all 1-dimensional archetypes, defined by a single gimmick which they repeat in an identical manner in every episode.

The premise is about the ... protagonist being able to possess anyone he likes. He abuses this power for very selfish and petty reasons such as molesting women, cheating at school tests, and making the people he doesn’t like to fight each other. A manipulative protagonist who gets everything he likes without ever getting punished and always at the expense of others. What an amazing power fantasy that is definitely going to appeal to every loser out there. Just don’t wonder how many lives he ruined by possessing people and forcing them to commit crimes. We are not supposed to go there, we are only meant to like it for being a sick power fantasy.

Or that was the plan since within 1 episode the anime becomes a subpar school comedy. None of his victims suffer the consequences of committing crimes against their will. In fact, everyone forgets what happened a few seconds after it’s over. And no, that is not a superpower, they actually forget every crazy shit that constantly happens around them. Not just for the protagonist but for every character with a power. Whether they are turning people into criminals, spreading pornographic photos of minors, or destroying buildings, there are no negative consequences for all the crap they are doing. You can kiss away any attempt at exploring the concept of abusing superpowers because the anime ends up being a subpar school comedy.

I know it’s easy to scrub off these issues by calling the show a comedy, thus it doesn’t have to be serious in its presentation. But that is impossible since it also has heavy doses of drama regarding horrible human experiments. It expects from you to take it seriously, therefore the excuse of being a comedy doesn’t work. Not even the presentation works, despite being the best part of the show. The animation is very good, the facial expressions are vivid, you can easily tell what is going on even if there is no sound or subtitles, and yet we get a lot of boring exposition. Not only this disrespects the viewer’s intelligence because it makes him think he is too stupid to get what is going on without being spoon-fed every tiny detail, but it also ruins the effort of the animators. They tried so hard to make everything look beautiful and self-explanatory, only to be destroyed by monologues that undo everything they tried so hard to achieve.

Whatever plot you can find comes down to the main characters using their powers to stop other characters who are abusing them. It’s like the X-Men of the 60s but worse, because even them had Xavier to excuse why nobody remembers all the crazy shit that constantly happen. There is absolutely nothing of the sort here, just like in most anime parents, teachers, the police, and nobody in general cares about what is going on for the sake of maintaining the status quo and a having a very light atmosphere. Except of course the parts when it suddenly becomes a tragedy and expects you to take it seriously. Although you can’t, because the main heroine of the show exists to kick everything into a different genre. No, seriously, whenever she’s not around you have a social drama where the protagonist is a smart and manipulative villain who acts like Lelouch. Then she appears, kicks him, and he magically becomes a featureless self-insert protagonist in a harem comedy. Man, that kick is so powerful it switches the script.

Actually that’s not what happens. It’s the writer’s fault for being capable at nothing besides sappy melodramas that always resort to silly gimmicks as resolutions. Jun Maeda will waste most of the episodes on silly school comedy, then he will throw in a terrible event as a plot twist that is meant to make the show more serious, only to then undoing it with magic bullshit that takes away all the negative consequences. This doesn’t happen once at the span of 50 episodes, like in Clannad. It happens 3 times in just 13 episodes, thus not even his fans could ignore it for the sake of crying because of the unbearable melodrama. The same twist happens too often and very close to each event, so it’s impossible even for fanboys of melodrama to ignore it.

But even if the twist happened once, the show would still be very badly written. The characters would still be one-dimensional, the world would still be stupid since nobody notices what the characters are doing, and the concept would still be undeveloped because most episodes would still be wasted on stupid school comedy. And it’s also the protagonist who gets rewritten from a manipulative edgelord to a self-insert harem lead whenever Jun Maeda feels like changing the genre, because he’s not committed on one concept while at the same time not developing any of the concepts. And no, having a high school waifu kicking you in the nuts every few episodes is not enough to magically rewrite your personality as well as the genre of the show.

This is the result of lazy writers thinking they can constantly get away with it by abusing the same old bullshit like mind control, amnesia and time resets so every conflict can be fixed in a cheap way, instead of having some sort of internal consistency. It doesn’t even allow the melodrama-tards to cry, exactly because de devices get abused to the point where they become desensitized. Also the drama after the last episode was glorious, and it wasn’t because everyone was crying. It was so sloppy and rushed, cramming a whole season in 20 minutes, that everybody was shiting on Maeda for the crap he had created. And he responded by threatening to give up on making anime if they keep being mean to him. Something he kept repeating for 15 years before he actually did it, thus even his threats were bullshit. That’s the man everybody was worshiping for making Clannad.

Thus as a whole Charlotte is a modern anime. It’s badly written, made by an incompetent writer, aimed at a tasteless audience, which everybody was hyping before it came out and nobody liked it by the time it was over. And that is why retro always wins.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Charlotte Episode 13 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 26, 2015	895 replies	by GinckaCronos »» Nov 13, 7:57 PM
	Poll: Charlotte Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 19, 2015	568 replies	by SanessyAdversary »» Oct 31, 1:32 AM
	Poll: Charlotte Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 12, 2015	902 replies	by SanessyAdversary »» Oct 31, 1:00 AM
	Poll: Charlotte Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 5, 2015	556 replies	by SanessyAdversary »» Oct 31, 12:28 AM
	Blueray release? Drobot - Oct 5	6 replies	by Kradaxe »» Oct 18, 4:13 AM

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