HighWire: [Reaction] Charlotte, Episode 6

Warning: Will contain spoilers for episodes 1-6 of Charlotte, and if you haven't seen the episode, you may be sort of lost. You've been warned peeps.

Jun Maeda certainty knows how to troll expectations doesn't he? Charlotte, the newest anime original project by Visual Novel company Key and writer Jun Maeda has been one of the hardest anime to pinpoint this whole season. Sometimes, it feels like a carbon copy of Angel Beats, and sometimes it feels like nothing Key has ever done before. Of course, if I ever review Charlotte, I've elaborate on these points, but what I want you to take away from this is that, of any anime this Summer 2015 season(perhaps besides from Gakkou Gurashi), Charlotte has been the one to touch on the most varieties of emotion. Interest with episode 1. Curiosity with episode 2. Fun with episode 3. And contentment with every episode since then. But with the ending of episode 6, I think we've caught a glimpse of Charlotte's true colors, and how the tone will be from now on. If you don't understand, let me lay it out for you simply.
Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, if you're not watching Gatchaman Crowds Insight this season... get on that. Today, a reaction to episode 6 of Charlotte. Why episode 6, and not any before? Well, as the layman would say: shit just got real.

So, let's get the big one out of the way first. Is Ayumi, our adorable little "imouto" this summer season, really dead? Well... my instincts tell me... probably not. Now granted, she did fall from a very significant height and with chunks of rock raining down on her... which is bad, but killing her off doesn't seem like something Jun Maeda do, the stakes of this anime just haven't been high enough for that. Now don't get me wrong, I understand pretty much the very point of this episode was raising stakes for the second half of the anime, but that seems a little drastic regardless, killing off a characters, doesn't it? No, most likely Ayumi is going to be hospitalized badly after this, which would not only still keep the stakes high and add a sense of urgency, but also would keep the anime's tonal identity intact. I mean, we've basically had 3 episodes of nothing but "Adventures with Bat-sh*t Crazy White-Haired Girl and Friends" so something significant like this happening as, what I assume to be the main plot coming into view, makes more than enough sense from a story-writing perspective. If Ayumi really did die... I can't say that wouldn't make things a little more interesting than they already are, but that would such a large step that I really can't see it happening(also come one, she's adorable, I don't want her to be dead). As for our main character, who currently has a large column falling on top of him... he's probably good. Teleportation guy will probably push him out of the way in time, just like how he snatched that arrow out of the air to stop it from killing Tomori earlier. So, yes in conclusion, everyone is probably still alive.

Now I've got to wonder... was this the calm before the storm?

But let's move on to the other big thing this episode dropped on our heads: there's other groups searching for these teenagers with psychic powers. Okay, I have no actual proof of that, but honestly, who else could that girl at the very end be? Undoubtedly, this is how the main plot of Charlotte is going to be introduced, because, well how else? How things are going to be from now on, whether the "tracked down by scientists" sub-plot will actually go anywhere, or if it'll be something else entirely, probably will all be determined next episode. And yeah, I'm pretty excited. We're at the most crucial stage of this anime, and whether not Jun Maeda will screw it up is a question that I really want answered. Because as Charlotte stands on the threshold of being considered an admirable addition to Key's legacy, one misstep is all it will take to throw everything off balance. Goodbye for now guys.

Edit: Welp, I was wrong about that.

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