Ruminating on Hello Charlotte

Ever since we finished viewing the entirety of Hello Charlotte, we've been thinking a lot about it. There's been a lot of theories and symbolism projection made by the person we were watching play the episodes, we just also have a lot of thoughts and feelings... maybe even some painfully familiar feelings towards the series as a whole.

To start with, the firdt episode simply opening up on a pretty promising premise. A strange yet somewhat familiar world, full of Humans (characters), Puppeteers ("players"), Overseers (Game Devs), and Aliens (we personally view these as more like plot pushers/flags/coding anomalies/etc.). Is it a perfect way to interpret these things this way? No, nor is it what we believe is 100% the intent, but it's what we can see it as. Anyways, it opens up as a wonderful little world full of things that are yet to be explained or introduced, leading you to plummet deeper into the story and characters and their lives. It kareens into the direction of this world being able to access multiple smaller worlds, created by god entities the game refers to as Oracles, as well as a lot of theming around the consequences of what being one can have. Such as thinking you can simply "reset the situation" and try again, or that you could just destroy the world you made and start from scratch. And the end of the episodes leads with Charlotte, the main character, fusing with a dying god out of sympathy, and to try fixing an impossible situation.

The second episode immediately has a major whiplash that felt... strange. In a good way, but strange for the previous entry for us, especially with tone. The first episode had an air of wonder and teasing for the player to unravel the world. The second episode took quite the leap to move into... quite frankly consumption. In fact it was curious just how much everything was described in a way of devouring or being devoured, someone might even mistake or poke fun assuming it was about vore or some such. But it was about being... consumed by heavy heavy things. Being consumed by depression, being consumed by perfection, being consumed by the masses, by doubt, fear. Being consumed by the terror that is the status quo and social expectations. By the future and your preparedness or not for it. To the point that there is a literal plot point to consume another dying god. Which extends into consuming the rotten world and it's filth and insanity and everything wrong with it so that a new world could be made, removed from such ugliness.

Okay so where are we going from here then? Well, much like there being a shift from the perceived direction from ep1 to ep2, things pivot even further from what we expected. Charlotte has turned from the kind and relatably charitable girl into... well kind of a terrifying and wrathful girl. It... almost kind of made us realize... that in some ways we're not much different from both of these Charlottes at times. We do our best to be supportive and sweet and charitable, but deep inside us is an incredibly wrathful, spiteful girl who would wish desperately to destroy the world ten thousand times over. We often have points where we just feel like this disgusting and foul beast consumed by malice.

It wasn't until the very end of the 3rd episode where we realized how much this story went from preparing this wonderful world to be told to you with the intent of experiencing... well a story. What it ended up being by the end of it is... well a very visual and very surreal form of playable venting. A creator, a "god", or more correctly in the context of the game, an "Oracle", who at some point had felt broken and irrepairable, overcome with so many emotions of disgust with themselves, their inability to create something they, at least at the time, considered a high bar story. Even in the game, their not-so-subtle insert even talked about creating the perfect protagonist, needing to write a story worth loving by many, while confronting themselves with a different character, that may or may not have been someone who they idolized, over reassuring them about some common things creators often feel. Like originality of their stories, or leaning too much into a trope, following something that's popular at the time, etc.

It... really kind of hit us in a hard place. We mean, hell, we ourself are projecting ourself on the internet as an omnipotent "oracle" of our "world". We frequently burn out. We frequently think some (not all) of these very very deeply troubling ideas portrayed in these episodes. In all honesty, it's haunting.

At one point we wondered, with how much polish and charm the game had from episode 1, we wondered why we hadn't heard it talked about, or why it wasn't being compared to something of the likes of popular "feels" games like undertale and such.

Now we understand why it isn't. And in a way we're... thankful? Not because we don't think it's worth the love. But because we sincerely doubt many could grasp the depth of the game. We doubt most people could feel what we felt.

But it will feel imprinted on our core nonetheless. That's all.