It is oft repeated that everybody, well not everybody, but many people, had high hopes for Charlotte, and that 'people' includes me in the ranks. It was the first name on my team sheet for the summer season. Such a waste.
It's also repeated that it started okay and plunged down after a certain point. This plays true to the words, it shot up the horribility scale after about EP8. Everything went wrong. The pacing, the character development. But especially the plot. The believability of that plot. Plot holes are galore. It's really depressing trying to talk about every one of them. The last episode was especially a huge pile of garbage on that front, which you have to see to believe. How is that even possible? There were too many 'red dots' on one map in one city and too much time taken for him to erase one dot at a time for me to believe any second of it.
The characters were a big problem too. Nao is well-loved and praised, at least round here in my part of the Earth. She is well-designed, no doubt about it. However she plays too little a part in the short and appalling main plot, think about it again, doesn't she? About all the others, well...there are too many come-and-go characters that just slip in, do their part which have wildly varying impacts on the plot, and then vanish with slim explanation on their past or future actions and intentions. Even two 'main characters' in the main party, glasses guy and idol girl, really do nothing to complement the anime outside of giving the odd giggle(or, to put it better, vain attempt at making you giggle) and being a kind of christmas visual decoration. We still don't know virtually anything about them after the end of the last episode. It's impossible to like the character as a moving character that has flesh and blood, even though they're 'main characters'. Ms. Zhiend and Nao's older bro clog up more than one episode of the anime, and the whole of EP8, for literally nothing, as their forced drama is reversed when the MC turns back time. What was the point?
Pacing and production, to a lesser extent was also to blame. Look at the flashback scene in EP9 and...It’s really bad. I'll have a moan with the main band Zhiend as well. They're vaguely listenable, but how on earth are they a post-rock band? And why did Maeda try to emphasize that?
That leaves the art. It's not a masterwork in design and movement, but it's certainly commendable and faults were hard to find in the quality throughout the series. That's it though. It doesn't leave waves of astonishment for that, and is just...a little better than the average anime you get. There's no trying to leave from the tradition neither, everything is standard. Is it better enough than your average 'moe anime' or whatever they call them to cover up its gaping shortcomings in just about every department excepting the art? Nah... it just serves to make this shit look a bit less shit.
That's Charlotte then for me. I was planning to give this a long, critical mind you, but still long review up until EP11 or something. I lost the remaining love for this over the next couple of weeks, and gave up on giving it a long review as it was a waste of time. That leaves this rant. No recommendation people, don't watch it. No chance I'm waiting for another series from Maeda. Not in a million years.
