Little Busters! gets serious.
- …and look how hip Yusa is, by wearing her baseball cap sideways, so she can stand out…
- …and so little miss annoying girl arrives to join the others at the academy, much to the delight to the male creeps in her class. But I will give you this much: it has become so much more interesting how the writers of Charlotte decided to combine two contrasting characters into one, literally…I believe that it would been so incredibly more dull if Yusa and Misa were two different people (as in two different human beings). But again I’d have to flip it. Why? Well because Studio Key have a history of having two siblings as main characters. Clannad has the constantly pissed-off Kyou and her airhead twin Ryou, Kanon has the terminally ill Shiori and her protective sister Kaori, and Little Busters! has the tomboy Rin and her bonkers onii-chan Kyousuke.
- However here, we don’t really see the spirit Misa care much for her ditzy younger sister whose body she possesses occasionally. Last week in her/their introductory episode, it seemed like she really wasn’t bothered if Yusa would be the one who’d be sent off to these mysterious scientists that Nao loves to natter on about…or even if she were to be sent to a juvenile hall (for the actions Misa did…like picking fights and setting stuff on fire). And in this episode, in the so incredibly dull and predictable baseball episode, she was constantly moaning on how Yusa didn’t exercise and work out. Misa may well have a different tune later on in the show (you know how other Key adaptations have ‘arcs’ devoted to one girl), but I don’t know. Charlotte is 12 episodes long, so there is no real time to focus on specific characters and give them ‘arcs’.
“Yes. Haruhi sent us.”
- Here we find a high-school baseball player who cheats his way into making the headlines of sports magazines, but instead of Yuu, Nao and Joujirou (who use their abilities for their own gain), this guy just wants to play baseball alongside his fellow catcher/best friend. Very touchy and heart-warming. No, honestly it was. Perhaps we’ll see the next episodes like this one; ones that have actually touching back-stories. Yuu’s backstory showed him to be a lazy bum who cheated his way into the best schools in town, while Nao’s one turned out to be extremely disturbing (that brought out her fear and hatred for scientists). Last week was rather good (in that cute and very watchable way), with the deceased Misa possessing her younger sister and secretly causing havoc without Yusa’s knowledge. Joujirou has none, and quite frankly, I couldn’t care about it. He has already become the joke character, and any past story he has would seriously pale in comparison to the others.
- And so we have our 5 (or rather 6) main characters now. It remains to be seen what kind of supernatural ability Imouto has. No really, I have no idea at all. It could be the ability to bring peace, love and understanding to all corners of the planet (she has that cute imouto face to do such a massive task)…
…or it could be her pizza sauce.
- While I won’t bitch and moan and critique about the summer P.A. Works curse straight away, I’m beginning to get worried. I just…don’t understand the appeal of this show right now, nor do I see how any of them are connected, outside of the fact that they all have supernatural abilities. While last year’s summer show literally led us nowhere and had quite possibly one of the dullest and open-ended anime show ending ever, Charlotte seems to have a lot on its shoulders…or rather P.A. Works do. They knew Glasslip sucked, and they knew the fans hated it, so making sure their next summer show won’t suck becomes that much a larger task to undertake.
- Going back to my worries in Charlotte, the ending of Episode 1 had us all in major thought on whether Yuu and Imouto had another sibling (neither of which they can remember). These so-called mysterious scientists that Nao are scared stiff over haven’t emerged once (and you’d think, now we’re a third of the way through, they would). With this filler episode, it just leads me to think whether the entire show will run on them, as opposed to one whole story (like P.A. Works’ last Key show did). And I don’t like the idea of a Studio Key show operating solely on filler episodes.
