So I have no problem with single-cour shows in general terms. I think it probably provides an opportunity to have stuff animated that a studio wouldn’t risk the budget of a full 24/25 episodes on, and when you break it down you’re looking at at least two long movies worth of content, which is more than enough time to tell a complete and structured story (even accounting for each episode having a definite beginning middle and end). What I think of as ‘single-cour syndrome’ is when the creators clearly had 24-25 episodes of content in mind (and I strongly suspect possibly even written and/or storyboarded) and they just try to cram as much as possible into the limited runtime without appropriately re-writing the plot.
I would bet heavily and confidently on this being exactly what’s wrong with Charlotte. It’s littered with vestigial subplots and abandoned or truncated character arcs, and there are places where you could almost plot out entire missing episodes based on jarring shifts in characterisation and tone throughout.
This is particularly and immediately apparent between episodes 1 and 2, where the main character Yuu’s personality changes enormously for no apparent reason from a machiavellian antihero to a laid-back passive observer for no readily apparent reason. You could simply explain this as being bad writing, and while that is literally the case, I’m highly suspicious that he did have some character development left on the cutting-room floor that would have connected the dots.
The other main character of Nao has similar problems. Or perhaps I should say ‘characters’ because I became convinced quite early on in the show that Nao was actually a set of identical triplets with three distinctly different personalities. There was Nao 1, the cold stoic, Nao 2 the aggressive, angry delinquent, and Nao 3 the cheerful and outgoing one. …you know I’m being silly there, but it’s a show with supernatural elements and if someone had told me that she actually did have some kind of deliberate personality relating to her powers I probably would have believed them. Again, I suspect that her weirdly fractured personality is likely a result of important character development being sacrificed to make everything fit.
The primary supporting cast (who are both very entertaining) get unceremoniously abandoned two thirds of the way through the show and barely appear again until the end. There’s a really odd bullying subplot for Nao that gets kind of set up in an early episode and then is literally never mentioned again. A mysterious character that’s clearly linked into the overall superpower world-building shows up, has half the episode devoted to establishing her backstory and teasing her importance and then? You guessed it! Never comes up again. The subplot relating to Nao’s family? Oh, so we were just done with that?
I could do this for some time, but I think you get the idea.
You might be wondering at this stage If I would recommend watching this, and you might well be surprised to find that on the whole I’d say ‘Yes’. I think it’s because I feel that Charlotte was originally a good or quite possibly even great 24 episode show, and there are still places where that shines through. Episode 7 by itself made me feel like the whole show was worth watching - I don’t want to spoil what it’s about in a review, but I’ll say it’s one of the best introspective single character episodes of an anime I’ve seen in quite some time. Episode 13 is also extremely interesting and exciting, although it suffers from feeling a lot like a really good episode from a completely different show.
So on the whole, I’d say if you’re willing to delve into the horribly mangled structure that is Charlotte, you might end up finding a pearl or two of something worthwhile.
