“The world will collapse and end, I was told mercilessly.” A translation of the first line of the opening song, Bravely You, for the anime Charlotte, of which this is a review of part two to said show. As with the last time I did a review of a sequel, I don’t believe this will be useful. If you watched part one, why are you reading a review of part two? You already know if you like the show. If you haven’t watched part one, why are you reading a review of part two? Reviewers are going to assume part one is considered common knowledge and you’ll spoil the twists for yourself, like Ayumi’s death.
Continuing on from the first half of the season, we see Yuu trying to get back to normal life after dealing with the major stages of depression. If I go any further into this plot summary it will spoil the rest of the show so I’ll leave it there.
Everyone who isn’t me seems to hate the final episode of Charlotte, as it theoretically could be extended into an extra cour. Obviously I disagree with this and will use the final episode of the last set to explain. Yuu is suffering through the stages of loss after Ayumi’s death and spends an episode coming to terms with it. A lot of people thought this was rushed as well, but by the pacing of the episode, it did exactly what it was supposed to do, by giving a montage of events where Yuu goes steadily more insane until he’s brought back to his senses. In the case of the final episode, it functions as a final test, to wrap the show up in its entirety. This removes what could be a never fulfilled hanging ending, with one of finality and hope for the future.
One of the other complaints is that the show frames Japan as an angelic place, with the rest of the world just child-abusing terrorists. This ignores the fact that the only reason Japan has a safe place for the gifted children is that they happen to have a time traveller who gives up everything to fix the country and even then can only do it on the last try. Heck, there are still bad guys in japan, there just happens to be a significant resistance because of knowledge of the future.
The release includes the extra episode OVA, textless OP and ED, web previews, an English trailer and English bloopers, some of which are legitimately hilarious. Everything else I can say about Charlotte I wrote in my review of part one.