Charlotte – 10

Now we know why Yuu acts brain-damaged sometimes

Time for a perspective shift, for a while at least.

 

Edge of Tomorrow?

Time to start a cabal

I kind of thought that we’d get a single time-travel loop, and have Shunsuke be lucky enough to avoid the pitfalls of what happened in his previous lifetime. But what we really get is an Edge of Tomorrow style plotline, where Shunsuke goes back again and again and again to try to make sure that the bad things that happen don’t happen this time. We don’t get a lot of detail in what happens, and what he’s changing, but to my thinking, that’s fine. Because that’s not what this show is about. Instead we get enough to see that Shunsuke and Yuu and Ayumi are all living together, and we get more of a quick go-through of the tribulations that he has to deal with, like knowing all the people that don’t know him yet.

Yuu gets to be a goody-two-shoes wearing sweaters

It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff here, although it’s generally a competent telling of a multiple time-leap thing. There’s the point about going to the adults who used to have abilities to get some sympathy and cover. There’s the ‘learning what lottery numbers will come up’ bit. And then there’s the “losing my powers” bit, as the half-baked aspect to Shunsuke’s power is that he goes blind the more he uses it. This puts a limit on how many times he can go back and restart. But conveniently, the last one is the one where he is able to set the current, “most everything is working out”, timeline in motion. That one last jump finally being completely blind (and how does he explain that to Ayumi and Yuu, when he suddenly wakes up blind?) he just has to go along with things that happen, but gets the school made and everything’s going as planned. I wonder if the school in particular had something to do with it, tho, since it seemed like a very specific point to throw in. Some points are just stupid, tho. If Kumagami is going to get recognizable for doing so much outreach, he’s going to become recognizable with his hair covering his eyes or with it not. Why doesn’t he just wear fake glasses or something?

The Most Powerful

Did Nao pick up on his reaction?

Now that Yuu has completed the undoing of Shunsuke’s work to get his memories back, he’s going to be the savior. Yuu gets schooled on what his true power is, and that is the ability to steal others abilities. Again, not a particularly original power, but it is somewhat different that he does it even when he doesn’t know about it, and that the person the power is stolen from doesn’t get their power back. It’s good that he didn’t know that, because I can see that someone like that, even if he’s on the ‘right’ team, would be too dangerous to keep alive. But in order to save Ayumi, that’s all fine, then. It’s even ok to steal her power before she can use it.

The worst threat ever: Cutting your bangs straight

So Yuu heads back to the past, and while he tries to not let on that he’s from the future, eventually he has to tell Nao. There was no slavish dedication to the idea that everything else should be left alone, which I thought was good, as this time Yusa doesn’t come visit Ayumi, but Nao does. And Ayumi does still get her ribbing in about Nao and Yuu’s relationship, to which Nao still objects… but Yuu does not, tellingly. Apart from that, they go to the school, and even though Joujirou and Yusa get picked off, Nao is able to help Yuu keep Ayumi from getting attacked.

Time for Ayumi to meet Shunsuke

And that was it. What? No complications? No cliffhangers? No unintended consequences? Well at least not yet. Perhaps the worst thing about this episode was the neat way it was all done. Yuu conveniently goes back to the very day that Ayumi develops her power. Why? And how does Shunsuke know that? They don’t tell us why he went back to the day he did, like it was the day he developed the power or something. But even then, why would Yuu go back to the day AYUMI got her power? On top of that, everyone believes Shunsuke and Yuu when they go back in time. Ayumi’s power is neutralized, Ayumi is saved from Konishi, she gets scared as intended. Everyone’s happy. Everything wrapped up neatly with a little bow, without too much having to wait around, no problems.

Except we do have three more episodes to go through. Will they be about Yuu getting nabbed by the bad guys? Or will they be about Nao and Yuu getting together? Or maybe even Yuu becoming godlike… for the next year and a half until all his powers go away. And speaking of, maybe it’s monstrous of me, but if I was Yuu, going back to the past to try to save Ayumi, I’d probably loot as many powers as I could take with me: Nao, Kumagami, Joujirou, anyone else I could think of. Because those people are going to get their powers back when I go back in time. FEAR MY COUNTLESS INCOMPLETE POWERS!!!!! uhhh, *ahem*. Well that’s that, until next week.