HighWire: [Reaction] Charlotte, Episode 8

Warning: Will contain spoilers for episodes 1-8 of Charlotte, and if you haven't seen the episode, you may be sort of lost. You've been warned peeps.

Maybe it's time for me to stop being surprised. If you read my previous Charlotte reaction, you know what I mean, but to summarize, it was just basically a couple paragraphs of me under-estimating just how ballsy Jun Maeda would be with his new project. Then comes episode 7 one week later, which not only surprised me so much that I almost wrote another whole reaction for it, but now this one. Continuously over these last three episodes, Charlotte has continued to push the boundaries of what I think it can do, proving that not only has Jun Maede learned from his mistakes of the past couple years, but has more than enough ability to be able to potentially make one of the better drama series over the last good couple seasons.
Which is saying a lot, because mostly the standouts, at least for me, since last fall have been anime of the slice-of-life/romance/drama genre, like My Teen Romantic Comedy. Zoku, Your Lie in April or Plastic Memories. And as I said, that's surprising for me. I know I was one of the people who has saying before Charlotte aired that there was no reason in the world why Charlotte shouldn't be able to stand out compared to other Key works, but I guess once I watched the first few episodes, there was a part of my heart that didn't really believe it, that sort of pushed out any expectation such as that. And let's be fair, that's not entirely my fault; looking back, the first couple episodes of this anime were relatively uneventful. But yes, maybe now, I should stop being surprised that Charlotte, for all the flaws, is turning out just as good as I possibly could of hoped.
So, hello people of "The Wired", I hope you are having an exalting day, and as always, welcome, to a new episode reaction of the latest collaboration between P.A and Jun Maeda: Charlotte. Let's begin then, shall we?

I'm pretty sure, no scratch that, absolutely positive, that the entire point of this episode was the continue building the relationship between Yuu and Tomori. True, undoubtedly the majority of this episode revolved around the meeting and consequences between Yuu and the vocalist of ZHIEND: Sarah Shen, the post-rock band that Tomori is and her older brother was a huge fan of. Now let's be honest, basically her entire purpose in this episode was to help Yuu get over the remaining trauma of the death of his sister, and also tell him(and by extension, the audience), how much he has changed since episode 1. A little lazy maybe, but the episode made clear that's just how her personality is. and speaking of which, I found Sarah's personality more than interesting enough, and now that she might be permanently out of the narrative picture, find I sort of want to know more about her backstory. Though since we're talking about Sarah, I'll admit that maybe the low-point of the episode was when her singing somehow magically brought Tomori's brother out of his frenzy, but I think it was more than insinuated that Sarah may have had the same disease that now plague Yuu and the others, and I'm willing to extend my suspension of disbelieve to relent that maybe her voice healing him is some sort of lingering by-product.
But for all sorts of stupid that was, the rest of the episode was just superb. True the beginning may have been a little tonally inconsistent to the extremely heavy episode 7 by just how up-beat it was, but I think it was important for the story to lighten up a little, and have us all smile for a bit. Besides the episode more than makes up for it later, resolving the sister's death, and probably delivering the best relationship building moments between Yuu and Tomori we've had yet... which is crazy since he only spoke to her on the phone for about half of the entire episode. It just goes to prove how great both of their characters are; Charlotte is actually going for real emotion between people, and doesn't need to spell out how everyone in the anime is feeling to the audience. In reality, the phone conversations between Tomori and Yuu only lasted a minute or two of very simple dialogue... but in reality said so much more, about their characters, and about the story. That... is good writing. Not the bullsh*t melodrama the drama genre has been unfairly saddled with by unknowing critics for the last half-decade or so. just good writing. It's probably about time for me to start expecting that of this anime.

Honestly, starting to like this girl more and more as this series goes on.

The craziest part is, we are just scratching the surface: there is so much more left for the anime to explore. We still have the other mysterious super-power team, and Yuu's third sibling that he has conveniently forgotten(which will probably be revealed to be that kid's power or something). Now, I don't want to oversell whatever the anime has left in store for us. But I will allow myself to be excited.
This will probably be the last episode reaction I will do for this series, though I'm not discounting a possible review in the future, but might not be for awhile since I do have plans for a review of the currently airing Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace and a follow-up review in the form of one for Gatchaman Crowds insight. But... I think the main reason is that I want to see how this plays out as much as anybody, and at this point as we enter the final stretch of the show, stopping every week to analyse what we have is not going to do much of anybody any good. So, with a hopeful heart and a box of tissues waiting on my desk just in case, I bid all of you lovely people luck with these last episodes. Goodbye for now guys.

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