First Impressions – Charlotte
Remembrance or Fantasy?
PA Works and Summer go very well with each other. Last year we had the vastly, and undeservedly so, underappreciated, Glasslip. Now, that the warmth of the summer months are setting in, we have a brand new show to get into….
And that show is Charlotte, an original story created by Jun Maeda. You might have heard of a few of his other works… And whether you like it or not, it’s hard to argue that Clannad (and After Story), Kanon, Air, Little Busters, and Angel Beats aren’t series that have a big following each, and mindshare even among those who haven’t seen most of them (like me). Of course, that gives a lot of expectations for Charlotte, and for the most part the ones that are voiced are all worried about it.
A Worrisome History
Of course, this is the first thing he does
Highway: I think that a lot of the feeling people expect from Jun Maeda can be described as “maudlin”. Little Busters certainly fit that description right from the get-go, and when I read the description of shows like Clannad and Kanon, that seems to fit right in. But unlike JC Staff, PA Works doesn’t seem eager to embrace that feeling from the beginning. The show has a fairly normal feel, and there is no sentimentality present, at all, in this first episode. Instead, we get to focus on the main character of the show, Yuu Otosaka, and his particular brand of bad behavior.
Hero or Anti-Hero? Or In-Between?
The thing that gets him in the most trouble, at least for now
skylion: Thinking about others is something that you start drumming into kids as early and as often as you can. Otherwise they just grow up wrong, right? But in this case, that reinforcement leads our main character, Yuu, into quite the unexpected development. In what has to be the most subversive set of ironies, he leaps into others, possessing them, and yet he’s not even thinking about them in the least. And that is something the show is doing so deliciously well, being a bit subversive.
Where’d she come from?
Highway: I have to agree with Nao, the student council president: Why is he so ostentatious about his power? Why use it in such a way that you are top of the class, that you go after the girl everyone likes in the class? He is a good-looking guy, and he’s going to be popular anyway. Why not do just enough? And heck, to the point of the amount of work that he does to avoid actually learning things in school, he could have just learned the things. I have to say that I was getting a very similar feeling from Yuu that I did from Seiya Kanie, from Amagi Brilliant Park. The fact that the two character have the same VA, Kouki Uchiyama, helped make the connection, but also the sneer and that self-satisfied smugness, so thick that you can’t help but think of it as at least partly a desperate facade, although Seiya didn’t really have it break down, and I don’t think Yuu will here either. Now maybe that’s where the difference between Shouji Gatou (the creator of AmaBuri and Hyouka) and Jun Maeda will come in, but we’ll have to see.
How to impress the girl you like: Put her in mortal danger in the first place so you can save her
skylion: There are so many moments of questionable things happening in the background, not just Yuu’s use of his newfound power. The most chilling is the absentee family member from his household. His little sister seems to think there should be another member after the uncle, and the divorced and now gone mother are brought up. We want to say “father” but they just aren’t getting there. Is that who Yuu sees later in his dream? Going on, we have the subversion of the “female character gets saved from oncoming truck” trope. It was manufactured from start to finish to Yuu’s advantage in getting the girl to go out with him. The writing and direction hardly play much straight; the girly mag behind the test paper, the girl’s childhood friend actually getting the hint, and being saluted for it. And even giving a great explanation as to how characters can just pop into frame unseen. Well, one character, the best one of the bunch.
Yuu don’t mess with her
Then there is the simultaneous use of subversion, playing it straight, and playing it even straighter in the Absurdly Powerful Student Council. A forced to be reckoned with, moving people around like pieces on a shogi board, one step ahead of the protagonist. But what are you gonna do when a cute invisible woman sets her sights on you? Against a group that has you dead to rights, and makes it their mission to stop you?
More interested in saving his own bacon
Highway: When I think about the show more, the reasoning that having someone with these powers out in the world is so dangerous comes to me, especially when I reconsider Yuu’s nature. Take that truck incident. He almost got Yumi killed, and if the speed of the truck, or his reintegration into his body had taken just a little longer, she’d be dead. And you kind of wonder if he’d even have felt bad about it, and conclude the answer is no, the way he leaves her lying on the ground when he wants to escape. People throw the phrase ‘power corrupts’ about, but Yuu seems to be the embodiment of it (digression: I will say that I disagree with “Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.” If you truly have absolute power, you have no need to be corrupted, or you are corrupted by definition. So I go along with the minor version but not the limit case). It’s this petty corruption that makes Yuu such a problem.
And someone has enough of his shenanigans
Imouto Time
skylion: Now I do have just one minor complaint, and that is that Yuu’s sister, Ayumi, is played just this end of annoying, perhaps it’s the voice? Or her overly-childish manner? Or, is there something deeper going on in that family? Is there something missing? There has to be a reason to have her transfer schools as well…
Highway: I don’t know if there’s more reason than “presenting Yuu with a fait accompli” at least to start. But I actually felt that the inclusion of Ayumi was an interesting counterpoint. I really liked the energy and happiness that she brought into the show, with a positivity and the ability to look at what’s happening to her and her brother as a good thing, as well as accepting the help of these other people who are, actually, not bad people. Now, the worrisome part, if you’re playing Jun Maeda Bingo, is that the happy imouto is a prime candidate for having something tragic happen to.
Quibbles with Ayumi aside, this is a damn fine first outing. PA Works is no slouch when it comes to just about everything they touch. Though this seems pretty straightforward, it has as much depth as any other show they’ve done. There are great moments of broad comedy. The character design pops is so many ways. Ayane Sakura sounds so deliciously derisive and manipulative as Nao that I just want to challenge her right here and now, just to be with her.
Jun Maeda is known for pulling the heart-strings and manipulating the tears, so I’m not counting that out as of yet. But for Charlotte he’s pulling tropes and spinning them around a bit. I’m intrigued, and quite happy with the first episode. I’m looking forward to seeing if Yuu can manipulate these new school circumstances to his advantage….and how the game is going to be played against him.
I agree on the depth, and also on the possibility of the tears. But this first episode really steered clear of that kind of feeling, so there’s at least hope that the whole show won’t be about putting people in awful situations. I was a little worried about this show, like everyone was, but I think that it opened quite strong, and was wonderfully enjoyable.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: 600-699 and Romance Expert with 652 comments
the MC is literally lelouch 2.0.
cunning? check.
bishie? check.
“pleasant” public appearance? check.
sick grin? check.
mind control eye powers? check.
takes care of little sister? check.
only difference is that lelouch was a genuine genius, and that their motivations are different.
not that its a problem though, this is a pleasant change from the usual personality of an MC. and he’s pretty fun.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I haven’t ever seen any of Code Geass, so I didn’t make the connection with Lelouch, although other writers did. However, I did like that Yuu was not a genius. Smart enough to figure out a way to use his powers, not smart enough to think them through. And they catch him early enough that it feels like he didn’t get the chance to turn into a total jerk about it. Yeah, he’s a bit of a jerk, but still a penny-ante jerk.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Once he activated his powers, I thought Lelouch for about half a second, then remembered that he gave people commands they had to follow; the titular Geass. Yuu merely possess folk. So dat ain’t even in the same ballpark…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
This was a very good first episode which holds lots of promise for the series. I liked the fact that Yuu was a jerk regarding his powers. Most teenage boys probably would use that power to check out a cute girl’s boobs. And I liked the way he used his power to his advantage with no thought to helping others. In fact, he used it to get those he didn’t like in trouble. Not everyone granted a superpower is going to use it for good. Or turn into a super villain. There are going to be some like Yuu.
Though he really crossed the line when he put Yumi’s life in danger. That goes past being a jerk. But he got his comeuppance when she dumped him when he just assumed she’d put in all the effort of maintaining their relationship. And she really didn’t seem at all regretful about doing it. Maybe she had been around him enough by then to realize that he was a jerk.
I liked the fact that all the powers we’ve seen so far are actually quite limited. If there comes a point in the show when the characters must use their powers seriously during some sort of major crisis/confrontation, that will force them to come up with an imaginative use of their powers and add a tension that wouldn’t exist if their powers were greater.
All in all, I like Ayumi’s character. But I do wonder if besides being relentlessly chipper and childish for her age if she’s also on the dumb side.
The missing sibling, or whoever that third person was, holds out the chance for drama and/or tears.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Lots of super-hero stories use the Poor Misunderstood Me as either a Start of Darkness or a The Call Finds You origin. So here, that is evaded by making him a pure dickhead.
I rather love it when characters start off with a limited power set. It gives them room to grow, and it avoided the Super Awesome Characters are Super and Awesome at the beginning; which is kinda boring. For my choice, I hope they actually put some thought in how the powers can expand, keep it limited yet interesting, and don’t go for the Drama, Conflict, and Derp Unleashes My Not at all Final Form!
With Ayumi, I felt the writer’s fingerprints all over the introduction. “This character is a jerk, we need to have a cute, sweet, innocent little sister to contrast him right around…..here”. A programmed moved in an otherwise well scripted outing.
Yeah, there will be tears…
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I just had to rewatch it! The Hoshi-no-Umi (Sea of Stars) Academy is a name that Ayumi instantly loved, and Yuu remarked, as an offhand joke? That it felt like they named it with her in mind. Clue?
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
I think there’s more to Ayumi being enrolled in the associated elementary school than her just being Yuu’s sister. Do powers run in a family? Which could have something to do with the missing third person in that flashback. Or is there another character with precognition who saw that she’d develop her own power? I favor the idea that powers run in families, however.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I’m suspecting she either may hae powers herself, or she is important to Yuu’s development, and that is learning to control his powers and/or herding the “bad guys” of the story…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
When I rewatched it, I read the admissions mail that they sent (the envelopes), so I had caught that reference as well. I kind of hope that Ayumi gets some power and handles it well, although one of my Charlotte Jun Maeda Bingo squares is “Ayumi is destroyed by her emerging power.”
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Now this is more like it! I haven’t watched any PA Works related series for quite some time because they didn’t catch my eye but Charlotte (Which I find is an odd title since there aren’t any characters with that name) made the exception. The talk of abilities and facilities that house people with them give Index/Railgun/X-Men style vibes.
So Kouki Uchiyama is the lead’s voice actor. No wonder I was slightly annoyed hearing Yuu talk at times. After Uchiyama voiced a character I utterly despised a few years ago, I can’t help, on occasion, think of that character whenever he uses that condescending tone.
I’m already liking Tomori. No doubt she’ll be there to continually keep Yuu (I’m getting a whiplash using that name after last season. Jeez) in line. Her ability definitely feels incomplete. With more practice, she may able to conceal her presence from multiple people.
Takajou’s ability isn’t what I’d call “Teleportation”, personally. Looks more like super speed and he has a hard time controlling his movements once he engages. When I think of the teleportation ability, this is more of the picture I’d have in mind:
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Is this one not kyoani given his association?
Princess Charlotte.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
No, I checked the MAL page and even skylion mentioned it at the header. Charlotte is definitely one of P.A Works’ products.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
My thinking is that Charlotte is used in the same context as Akira. So perhaps a much to be alluded to, but hardly seen character. At this point I don’t know if they are riffing on that whole-heartedly, but it’s what I’m going with….
But to make matters more confusing, I think of SHAFT when I think of Charlotte.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Agreed. THAT is the Charlotte that automatically comes to mind. Delicious Caek(head). :3
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
It’s one of those auto-associations that come to mind. Although the number of ecchi shots/situations already suggested it isn’t done by kyo.
*files under maaaaaaaaybe*
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I’m actually hoping they stomp their own ground without any, or few, overtures to other super-hero type stories.
Uchiyama has done a variety of work, from Raku in Nisekoi and and Soul Eater from well, Soul Eater. But yeah, he does have that tone down pat for this role.
Tomori seems to be the break-out character of the bunch, and something tells me she will be the face of the series; enough to invoke the I am not Shazam Trope…
I want to see more of Takajou’s ability before I make any calls…
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Well, it appears that Takajou’s ability is indeed a form of super-speed. But it might have some sub-abilities with it, unless the creators are taking some heavy creative license; the purview of all comic booky writers.
Namely, he doesn’t break Yuu in half in that initial tackle, and the “stone skipping” in the river afterwards is treated as a joke instead of a fallout of the power used. Yuu should be dead and shredded….so should Takajou for that matter, unless he has a schmancy double-talk “protective shield” around him when he activates his powers that takes his “passengers” into account. Think Cannonball from the X-Men…
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
I knew something was off when he referred his ability to teleportation with it looked more like he was covering a long distance with speed. Because the term “Teleportation” is usually defined as displacing one’s self instantaneously from place to place regardless of distance. Meaning from point A to B without so much as moving your legs to get there. Even Kuroko Shirai from Index/Railgun perfectly displays that.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I was thinking that it might be something where he can very quickly transport to another location, but then has the momentum / kinetic energy required to move that distance in a vanishingly short period of time. That energy then has to be dissipated for him to stop.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yep and you can go a step further with xmen since Nao is forming a team to go after other super powered humans that abuse their powers, but of course none of the powers are OP they all have a weakness like limited time to use, getting hurt or being invisible to one person at a time…
That was me towards Yuki Kaji after Guilty Crown I hateeeeddd hearing him, but lately I’ve grown to like him.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Kaji Yuki kinda had to get out of the “whiney character guy” lump…
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yeah during that time he had a lot of crybaby roles xD
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Now Yuuki Kaji has roles like Silver Mask/Hermes (Arslan Senki), Issei Hyoudou (High School DxD), Alibaba Saluja (Magi), Meliodas (Nanatsu no Taizai), Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan) and Akina Hiizumi (Yozakura Quartet). That’s a huge difference.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yeah he got better roles after GC so I don’t hate him as much anymore haha
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
I felt so bad watching this first episode. I kept screaming “THIS GUY IS AN A-HOLE!!!!” Man, you don’t just crash a freaking truck to get the girl you want! Did he even wonder if crashing the truck could’ve killed the driver?
Also, I never felt so good watching an MC get dumped.
Oh, but Imouto-san definitely brings up a good side in his character, even though she’s annoying. And it’s not like there isn’t more annoying lolis running around in the animeland.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Looking back at the events, it seems the thought never even crossed his mind. So basically, the driver was nothing more than a means to an end unworthy of his concern. Calling that “cold” is an understatement.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Well, he’s already a teenager, so there are going to be some problems with him thinking of others with the same value he has for himself; and given how he acts I’m thinking he has little value for his own regard at times. Then you add this sort of ability, and things are going to be a “hot” mess.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
I loved watching Yuu abuse his powers I don’t recall seeing any past characters besides Lelouch from Geass use his powers for “evil” and Yuu did it all to impress a chick? I think most guys would do the same to show off to win the heart of a girl they like xD
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
This was a fun first episode! Yuu is quite the ass, but let’s be real most guys with body swapping powers would instantly abuse it! I mean look at Yamada and the seven witches? The first thing he did when switching bodies was check out the goods and also used some powers to cheat on a test and yes Yuu is a Lelouch type in that he also used his powers for evil…
Now as a somewhat huge Jun Maeda fan I can guess that the cute Imouto will have some tragic past or future in this because those cute characters are usually the ones that suffer the most! That and we got a preview with the father figure with them in a dream or was that his sisters power? Maybe she can peek into dreams or maybe it’s more about memories? If so wow Jun Maeda is going to have a blast with creating tragic dreams/memories.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
For fans of the Urobutcher Bingo, Mari Okada Bingo, Nisioisin Bingo, and Ikuhara Bingo, PA Works proudly presents Jun Maeda Bingo…play along!
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
-waits for sick moe girl in snow- if you get that you get a free cake! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Her daddy crying above her comes together?
I want ma cake. GIMME.