Key is an anime production company I’ve followed for years and is somewhat meaningful to me. Though most of the anime they produce aren’t necessarily “fantastic”, I watched a lot of them when I was younger so I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to them. These are shows such as Clannad, Air, Kanon, Angel Beats, and more. Charlotte was released in 2015 by Key which was years after I stopped watching anime for a while. So, to help get myself back into anime, I decided to watch Charlotte.

Charlotte is a short, thirteen episode anime that follows the story of a high school-er (Yuu Otosaka) who discovers he has a special ability to take control over someone’s body- but only for a few seconds. He is soon discovered by student council president Nao Tomori, assisted by Joujiro Takajou, whom also have special abilities. Yuu is persuaded to join their high school, a school created just for people with special abilities.
For the first six episodes, unfortunately, the anime drags very badly. Every episode follows a formula of the student council discovering someone in the city with an ability and then going after them. The writing uses very cliche stereotypes and signatures and just makes watching an episode a chore. These first six episodes feel like a washed-up story some fourteen year old wrote in the span of a week. It wasn’t as enjoyable to me and I watched a single episode every few days.

If not for the second half of this anime, this show would have a much lower score. After a sudden change in direction in plot, it gets interesting. It begins to feel like the story is actually going somewhere. It’s still not great, but it’s better than the first few episodes. It was at least enough for me to watch more than one in one sitting.

This paragraph contains spoilers.
The lackluster writing is still prevalent in the last few episodes, unfortunately. This anime had a very odd last episode. I am a stickler to realism, but even this level of ridiculous sub-par writing is something I think everyone can agree was sloppy. in this final episode a character travels the entire planet and single-handedly cures tens of thousands of people of the special ability disease. It is a normal, 20 minute length episode and it is absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention, two episodes prior, two completely new villains were introduced and then killed off in the same episode. And, one just kind of got away.

So what does this anime do good? Well, it has “Key writing”, so it does have some emotionally good writing in a few instances. I think the show visually looks very pleasing and I love white haired smart bitches so I loved Tomori. And, when it takes that sudden dive of interesting events, it really reels you in, even if it still isn’t great writing per say. There are some comedic moments and the music isn’t bad. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s an interesting universe because it really feels like such a raw, lazily written one, but it’s at least somewhat enjoyable.

Overall, Charlotte is not a bad anime, but it’s also not very good. It’s very mid to me. I feel it could’ve been much better had the first half of the show had better direction (and maybe do away with the recycled stereotypical anime character writing). I think I would recommend it to anyone who thinks they might be interested in it or key anime, but that’s really it.