Charlotte is the 2015 anime series following Yuu Otosaka, a high school student who appears to be just a normal and intelligent boy like any other, but with a secret - he has the ability to take over another person's body for five seconds. His life has been easy due to this superpower, until he meets Nao Tomori and Joujirou Takajou, who catch him red handed and threaten that they will expose him unless he transfers to their high school. He finds out that they possess super powers of their own and that their high school is by no means an ordinary school. It is a sanctuary for teenagers who happen to possess extraordinary abilities, making them targets for bad guys who want to abuse their powers.
Charlotte is the name of a short-period comet which passes near Earth every 75 years. When this happens, it spreads dust onto the Earth, which causes a small percentage of children who inhale the dust to manifest superhuman abilities upon reaching puberty. In order to save them, the student council of Hoshinoumi Academy tries to find these teenagers and stop them from getting caught by the bad people who would use and experiment on them. Yuu agrees to help Nao and Takajou in this and thus their adventures begin.
The Most Notable Superhuman Abilities
Invisibility / Super Speed
Nao Tomori, a hardworking and intelligent high school student who is also the student council president of Hoshinoumi Academy, is the one who found out Yuu's secret ability and brought him to this school. She also acts a bit like tsundere, not trusting people and trying to keep her distance; that being said, it becomes impossible for her not to care about her friends. Her ability allows her to become invisible only in front of one person for a period of time. This is a very valuable ability during the combat because she is able to bring the opponent down faster. Making herself invisible in certain situations or while she is hiding also comes in handy.
Joujirou Takajou, Nao and Yuu's classmate is a cheerful and reliable boy whose ability is to move with superhuman speed. It appears to be similar to teleporting because he needs only a couple of seconds to cross a long distance. However, the ability's shortcoming is that he cannot control it completely, so he ends up bumping into things and cutting himself along the way. He is a huge fan of Yusarin.
Pyrokinesis / Spiritism
Yusa Nishimori also known as Yusarin is a popular pop idol who has the ability to act as a medium and channel the dead. If she gets possessed, the spirit that possesses her can use their own powers. Most often, she is possessed by her sister, Misa, who died in an accident and whose power is pyrokinesis, the ability to control fire.
The two of them have opposite personalities; Yusarin is cheerful and naive while Misa is mischievous and has a sharp tongue. Therefore, it is impossible to confuse the two of them when Yusarin gets possessed, especially because there is an evident change in their appearances as well. However, when Yusarin reclaims her body back after some time of being possessed, she never retains any memories of what happened during her blackout.
Telekinesis / Thoughtography
Arifumi Fukuyama is a handsome high school student in Kannai Academy who is also a popular pitcher for the baseball team. He uses the ability of telekinesis in order to move the ball according to his wishes. However, after he loses to the Hoshinoumi Academy baseball team and the Student Council, he decides to stop using his ability and rely on his real talent instead.
Udou is the captain of archery club in Nanba High School who is able to use thoughtography and create various photographs of people by "burning" the images he sees or thinks up. His favorite ones are girls in their lingerie.
Passing Through Walls / Making Others Fall Asleep
Shichino and Medoki are Shunsuke's friends who have some pretty amazing abilities.
Shichino is an outspoken and sharp tongued boy with blonde hair who can pass through walls, though he easily gets tired to the point of complete exhaustion. If he exhausts himself too much, he cannot pass through the walls until he recharges his energy.
Medoki is a shy girl who can make others fall asleep, however, by doing that, she falls asleep too after finishing the deed. That can be troublesome if she is in a dangerous situation.
Being Able to Locate / Erasing Memories
Pooh or Kumagami is a close friend of Shunsuke and a mysterious high school student. His ability is to locate other teenagers who possess superhuman abilities and point out their location on a map so the student council can find them. It is hinted that he gets soaking wet while fully clothed in order to use his ability (the reason for this becomes apparent later in the series).
Maedomari is another one of Shunsuke's friends whose ability is to erase people's memories. Despite being great, this ability is very limited because it takes him a lot of time to search through a person's mind and erase a particular memory. He is the one who erased Yuu and Ayumi's memories when Shinsuke requested him to.
The Most Powerful Superhuman Abilities
Collapse / Possessing and Plunder / Time Leap
Shunsuke Otosaka is the older brother of Ayumi and Yuu. His ability is Time Leap, allowing him to travel to the past and future and thus influence the outcome of his life. However, in order to do so, his eyes need to be exposed to the light and every time he time leaps, his eyesight worsens to the point that he becomes blind and unable to use his ability.
Yuu's ability is to possess someone's body for five seconds which he exploits to the max during his high school life. Later on, it is revealed that every time he takes control of someone's body, he "plunders" that person's ability. When he realizes his full potential, he learns how to completely steal other people's abilities and goes on a mission to take everyone's powers in order to save them from the tragedies that he and those closest to him experienced.
Ayumi's ability is Collapse which is the most destructive power in the series. Unaware of this, during an incident in her school, she accidentally bursts out her power and causes the whole school to collapse, killing her instantly.
Why is Time Leap so important?
Time Leap is the most effective ability in the anime because it allows Shunsuke to travel to the future and find out that all of them would end up being captive in a research facility, tortured and eventually tossed away. Shunsuke uses this ability multiple times in order to form a group of friends and warn them, accumulate his funds, and prepare everything (including the Hoshinoumi Academy) for the present time, which he succeeds in doing. In the process, he becomes completely blind and asks his friend Maedomari to erase his siblings' memories so they would not get into trouble for knowing more than they should.
When he finally reveals the truth to them, it is up to Yuu to use his Plunder ability, possess his brother's body and steal his Time Leap ability. That is the only way to go back to the past and save Ayumi, however, as we already know, nothing good comes out of meddling with time and even though Ayumi gets saved, not everyone gets their happily ever after. Yuu completes the mission of saving teenagers all over the world and when he finally comes back home, thanks to Nao, he manages to regain his memory (which he lost after gathering thousands of abilities), so he can finally live a peaceful life.
