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** Contains some minor spoilers, though not like they can't be predicted from a mile away **

Not strictly speaking a generic isekai, but it might as well be one.

The MC, Ain, is a weakling who was born with the appraisal job, which is considered to be one of the most useless jobs there are... because it is. Don't let the synopsis trick you, the job only becomes useful because Ain's eyes are literally implanted with the soul of the greatest existence in the world, the tree of life Yggdrasil.

Ain himself is a shell of a person. The only thing he has going for him is ... that he is a human being capable of saying "thank you". He doesn't have the drive to grow, he doesn't have the strength to grow, he doesn't have the skill to grow, he doesn't have the knowledge to grow, every little thing that he achieves is because there's someone holding his hand and dragging him along.

The supporting characters are not much better. Yuri (Yggdrasil's soul) is an airhead whose only personality trait seems to be falling in love with anyone who says "thank you" to her (hence why the MC got to carry her soul). Ursula (Yuri's guardian) is... sigh... an obnoxious bipolar sadistic helicopter parent.

As for the story, who knows? So far it's been the journey of a man who was given everything he could imagine after he failed to do anything at all. I gave up on the story after he was told that the boss, who was essentially defeated for him, would make him even stronger than he already is, even though he already breezed through some of the strongest creatures known to man.

The art is above average, so it's got that going for it.

Sonny boy is a borderline surrealist psychological character drama that follows a group of school students who've been trapped in a series of alternate dimensions that do not quite follow the rules of our universe as we know them (some would call it an isekai, but it really shares very little with the genre). We follow those students as the situation they are in forces them to confront their inner struggles.

This anime is not for everyone, it is a show that will demand a certain level of attention and thinking for the audience to really enjoy it, so many dismiss it as "pretentious" or "artsy" ... out of spite.

On a technical level, the show is simple but impressive. It is obvious that the director has a very clear picture of what he wants and how to achieve it.

Art: 10/10
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Sonny boy stands out first and foremost because of its art direction. Backgrounds are crisp and colourful; characters are detailed and evocative; animation is complex and fluid. The aesthetic of the series is reminiscent of old-school anime, but colour and composition are unlike most you'll see out there.

Sound 9/10
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The sound direction is simple but effective. Background music is used very sparingly, giving the show an overall real feeling, while highlighting the key moments that do have music. Sound design is clear and crisp as, without music, the series relies on good quality sound effects.

Acting 8/10
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I don't speak Japanese, so take this one with a grain of salt. Being almost entirely dialogue-driven, the series has a great cast able to make even drawn-out monologues captivating and full of emotion.

Story ???/10
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It's hard to judge the story as of yet as the show seems to be building towards something but it's not quite clear what, yet.

In general, it is a character drama about human nature. Each episode deals with a problem that the characters face thanks to the situation they've been put in. However, these problems that are addressed are always a reflection of who the characters are at their core. It uses the plot as a tool to inspect human behaviour.

Enjoyment ???/10
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As I mentioned in the beginning, this show can be hit or miss depending on what you hope to get out of it. It requires that the audience takes their time to think about the message and morals that each episode touches on. This is not the kind of show that you watch for simple entertainment, it's gonna bore you if that's the case.

Welcome to Chihayafuru: Shamisen edition! Alright, that's not really fair. But, I do think the similarities this show shares with Chihayafuru (and many other shounen series) are what holds this show back from being great.

The problem with this show is that, at its core, it's just another competitive shounen. Normally this wouldn't really bother me that much; the standard shounen formula can be executed really well and make for amazing stories (see 3-Gatsu no Lion and Haikyuu!). What does bother me is that this show hooks us under the premise that it is not a standard shounen, and that it is aware that it could ... be a much greater story, it just doesn't want to be.

The show starts with our MC leaving his hometown in the countryside for Tokyo in order to find his own sound after his grandfather, his father figure and mentor, dies. There he finds himself in a new and overwhelming city, in an unlikely situation full of rich characters and a rich environment for him to explore his own self and grow.

And then, in episode 2, it becomes a high-school club competitive shounen. Talk about wasted potential. Episode 1 is rich enough for an entire movie, but the show does nothing with that, it abandons the premise and then defaults to a generic plot in a generic setting.

Throughout the show, we also get constant reminders that this is not where the focus should lie. The mentor figure of the MC never participated in any competitions, and the MC himself believes he only plays his music for himself and not to compete with others. In the very climax of the show, the MC complains that he is frustrated that his playing is being judged on a numerical scale when that's not what playing the shamisen is about.

If the show knew what it wanted to be, or committed to the story it wants to tell I might have rated it higher. As it stands, it's a show that knows it could be better, that had the chance to have an original and unique character-driven story but instead chose to become a generic high-school shounen.

All in all, I recommend you watch episode 1, it's a great short story. If you don't mind a much simpler and more familiar plot, then watch the rest of the series too, but don't expect it to match the tone and plot it set up in that first part.

Ahhh, how much I wanted to love this series, but I just couldn't.

I'll go straight to the problem: pacing and characters.

For the most part, the story is slow, that in and of itself is not a problem, it allows the reader to become attached to the characters and understand them. Which in turns yields a more rewarding story, especially in romance. The problem is that at a certain point the story drags out to a painfully slow pace where the author does everything within their power to stop the story from progressing. The story would have been perfectly fine being 10 chapters shorter.

Adding insult to ... injury, the ending is then rushed. With the characters revealing their feelings in a ridiculous cliche moment and tieing all loose ends in just 3 chapters.

As for the characters, they are perfectly fine during most of the story, but towards the end, it feels as if I'm reading about two completely new people **SPOILERS AHEAD** Yanagi goes from being the guy that wants to prove himself by his own merits and who wants to be there for his love to being a clingy love-struck moron. Meanwhile, Kujou goes from being a girl who is learning how to relate to others and who is discovering her love for Yanagi to being cold and distant. **END OF SPOILERS** I don't think the way they behave towards the end is unrealistic or bad, but I do feel like they are completely different characters to the ones that they had been before and there is no progression from A to B to bridge the gap.

This is my first review and is full of spoilers, so beware.

I review a bit differently with only two main criteria: entertainment value and production value, each equally important with the former being very subjective.


Entertainment value: 4/5

With 5 being I'd pay to watch this and 0 being I'd pay not to watch this. It's very entertaining but nothing out of this world, wouldn't watch it again unless a friend or girlfriend wanted me to.


... Production value: 3/5

Plot and story: 4/10
I must say I was sorely disappointed from ep 9 onwards, the story is just all over the place. It starts as an average quality slice-of-life-meets-super-powers. Entertaining with decent comedy, though nothing noteworthy. They build upon this premise until episode 6, where they drop a (figurative) bomb and kill Ayumi, the main character's little sister.

I must say I was pretty shocked by this, but only because I watched this in one go. This is because they made the mistake of leaving the fate of Ayumi as a cliffhanger, if feels is what they wanted (and it probably was considering the length of the first act) they should have made it crystal clear that she was dead, leaving an audience to grieve. Instead they waited a whole week to announce the death and then overwhelmed the audience with Yuu's (the MC) own feeling, not letting people feel for themselves.

So far, and despite the poor handling of the event, this was a turn for the better, otherwise the series would have been just 'meh'. But it is from here that things start to go south. They dedicate a mere two episodes to Yuu dealing with his loss, and in the second episode it's not even Yuu, but another character (that shows up in that episode and is never heard of again) that deals with his feeling for him.

After that it's plot twist time: Yuu is actually from another timeline because his brother can time-leap, they make Yuu steal this power in order to save his sister (because he now can steal powers) which he does.

Pretty cool story thus far, but there are still 3 episodes to go, I wonder what will happen? well, it appears everything happens. After saving his sister the story switch to him being targeted by the mob, then it's about him dealing with his internal insecurities, then it's about saving the world in order to finally be with his love interest, who forgot was his love interest because Yuu had to go back in time to save his sister.

Charlotte could have been a 9/10 story had the writers sticked to Yuu saving his sister and getting a girl in the process as a final story arc, possibly with heavy emphasis on dealing with his loss for more impact and with emphasis on mutually exclusive decisions for a more in depth and rewarding character development.

Instead they decided to cram a series of arcs worthy, all by themselves, of a 13-26 ep anime, into 3 episodes.


Animation and art style: 8/10

Nothing fancy, but overall pretty good, the superpowers are nicely animated as they should be and the art style is quite above average with a few, very beautiful, eye candy shots.


Soundtrack: 7/10
The soundtrack was good enough for the story, but it was never good enough to be noteworthy. No moment in the entire series has a single moment where the soundtrack actually stands out, as such I default to a 7/10 for a soundtrack that does it's job properly but nothing else.


Final veredict: 7/10

Charlotte is mediocre story-wise, with a decent story in the beginning and a crammed attempt at nothing at the end. But it's an anime with a good entertainment value for an afternoon with nothing else to do.