Kokoro Connect might be the toughest review I've had to write yet. Not because I'm uncertain how to approach it, like with Sakura Trick. Not because I can't feel like I can properly convey what makes the show great, like with the review of Spice and Wolf that's been sitting around in editing limbo for weeks. Nor because I wish it was so much more than it is, like with Angel Beats!
Kokoro Connect is very hard to write about because I still genuinely don't know how I feel about it. It's not a case of "I know how much I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how good it is". It's a case of straight-up not knowing whether I personally liked it or not. So, I figure I'll write this review, and maybe the process of writing it itself will reveal to me what I thought about it. Please note there'll be spoilers: I'll mention character arcs late in the show, which might invalidate some plot-twists early on, will give details for each of the successive "phenomenons" the show is centred around and will be talking extensively about the ending.
Kokoro Connect follows five high-school students making up the school's Cultural Research Club (also known as CRC): A club where those who for some reason or another aren't in a "proper" club are dumped into. One day, two of the members of the club mysteriously find themselves body-swapped for a short period of time, and the others soon follow, swapping seemingly at random. A mysterious entity calling itself Heartseed, controlling the body of their teacher, soon appears and explains that it's doing this to them because they're interesting people (bit presumptuous of the writers, really), and the phenomenon will stop once the five of them do something Heartseed finds truly interesting.
The body-swapping is how the show was presented to me, and I thought this would be the show's gimmick: the one defining characteristic throughout the whole thing, much like Future Diaries in... err... Future Diary or VR MMOs in Sword Art Online. This turns out not to be quite true, as the show is divided into several shorter arcs, each one with a different random phenomenon disturbing the club's peace for Heartseed to observe. This is a good thing, as each arc's gimmick turns out to be rather shallow, not really leaving enough room for character exploration. It also helps establish Heartseed as an effective antagonist figure: he seems so utterly alien that his seemingly random meddling with the group's lives comes across as mysterious rather than annoying.
The real emphasis on the show lies, of course, on the "interesting people" in the CRC. It's a very character-driven show: each event impacts the five members differently, and they must each face some kind of trauma or crisis before Heartseed decides to stop whatever's currently messing with their lives. As such, it's a big drawback to the show that a lot of them are fairly bland, and those who aren't seem to be stuck repeating the same arc over and over. Out of the five characters that the show presents as being main characters, I can only bring myself to consider three as such: the characters of Aoki and Yui really don't get enough development.
That's not to say they're bad: Aoki is a fairly amusing comic relief character, and, to be completely fair, I get the impression that's all he's really supposed to be. However, I find it a genuine shame that Yui doesn't really get as much development as she deserves: She's actually a very likeable character who seems to have some interesting things going on. She's the pretty girl who likes cute things, but is actually quite a grouch in person. Yui also happens to be a black belt in karate. Her storyline revolves around her fear of men, caused by attempted rape earlier in her life, and her failure to be able to defend herself using her martial arts at the time. This is actually treated very tastefully, and it's hard not to feel sympathy for her, especially considering how strong of a person she's shown to be. As such, I can't help but feel she's criminally underutilized, only really having two episodes dedicated to her. I also really like the portrayal of her relationship with Aoki, who repeatedly and annoyingly professes to be in love with her: Despite Yui's insistence she doesn't reciprocate his feelings it's obvious she does.
The trio of real main characters unfortunately fares quite a lot worse. The protagonist, Taichi, is utterly dull. This is fairly common in anime, but Taichi is what I've come to expect amplified a hundredfold. Aside from one personality trait that the series insists on repeatedly telling us Taichi has (he likes to help people), I can't name a single distinguishing characteristic (no, him allegedly liking wrestling does not count). To be fair, the exploration that's done of his saving-people-thing is actually really effective, but it's over stupidly quick. I'm talking less than a quarter of an episode. I could live with this if the series did what most series do and instead focused on the other main characters, but Kokoro Connect insists on constantly making him the centre of most scenes, not to speak of being the main force in resolving pretty much every storyline. The fact that these storylines are the only way we get to explore the other two members of the trio means that Taichi's blandness forces itself on top of two largely superior characters. At least, the speeches he gives to try and "save" others (which are usually the emotional climax of each arc) are often moving, though they could be more moving if given by a character I gave the slightest shit about.
That said, it's not like both of the other two are stellar themselves. Iori is a character who I found really interesting for the first arc. She had an internal conflict I'd seen before, but with a fairly new twist on it: She's the outwardly popular, cheerful and loud "I'm not sure which of my personalities is really me" girl. Think Rise Kujikawa from Persona 4, but not quite as upbeat. During the body-swapping arc, the series takes on a genuinely interesting approach to her dilemma, and resolves it in a very emotionally satisfying way. In the second arc, she has the same dilemma again, but much more muted, taking a lot more of a back seat. In the third arc, she has the same dilemma again. She also takes up a large chunk of the plot with it again. It's also done in a way I've seen a million times before. In the fourth arc she sigh has the same dilemma again. It's the main focus of the arc again, too. Admittedly, it's another really interesting take on the problem, experienced more from the perspective of those around her than herself, wondering whether the person they thought they knew existed at all this time. But it's resolved in exactly the same way that it'd been resolved the previous three times, and it's frankly become extremely dull by this point.
That's the biggest problem with Iori: She goes through a couple interesting arcs, but they're repeated so many times that she becomes an annoyance. Whereas at the start of the series I thought of her as a person with emotional issues, by the end of it she seemed more like a wishy-washy bimbo who couldn't put her problems behind her. Much like Taichi, the fact that she takes a front line seat for most of the show really hurts her character.
The two above characters also suffer from just not feeling all that human, Iori especially. Despite all my complaints about both of them, they're both likeable enough to not be annoying, but the two of them seem to be designed to have big, hard-hitting emotional moments of catharsis over and over again, and it's just honestly not all that believable. These moments do often work, but unlike in Spice and Wolf, Angel Beats! or hell, even something as non-character oriented as Dog Days, it's hard to forget that these are characters going through a pretty exaggerated plot beat.
Fortunately, the third member of the trio is by far my favourite character from the show: Inaba. She's a really cool take on the snarky clever one: She's extremely aggressive, in more ways than one. Inaba acts as the de-facto leader of the CRC, despite Iori being the President on paper, and is usually the one who makes sure the group gets through the different phenomenons safely. Despite it never being outright stated, it's obvious that, despite her constant berating of the other group members, Inaba actually suffers from self-esteem issues. These don't come up as plot points, but very clearly guide Inaba through her actions in dealing with the rest of the CRC, and lead her to make things happen that affect her negatively.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is just how funny Inaba is. Her constant annoyance at Taichi and Aoki's antics is intensely amusing, and she knows just how to make other people comically uncomfortable for her own amusement when need be. She's not a funny character in the same way Aoki is: Inaba is not comic relief, but she specializes in making other characters be comic relief, even when they don't want to. This isn't always used in this context, but it's also refreshing how concious she is of her sexuality, occasionally making dirty jokes to make those around her squirm.
That said, her greatest virtue lies in her arcs: She goes through several, very believable, varied character arcs. Each arc of the show involves us either learning more about Inaba or Inaba coming to realize something about herself, and it's by far the best the show has to offer. It just feels natural, which the rest of the show has massive trouble doing.
At this point, I should address the elephant in the room when it comes to Inaba, Taichi and Iori. The first arc focuses on Taichi and Iori developing a romance, which Inaba encourages along. However, the second arc involves Inaba realizing she also has feelings for Taichi, and the two girls agreeing to be friendly whilst fighting for his affections: Taichi still insisting he loves Iori. Eventually, both Taichi and Iori fall out of love with each other, though they stay friends, and Taichi and Inaba begin going out on the last episode, after he realizes his true feelings.
I'm not exactly experienced with love stories, but this feels like a pretty new one to me. It's really the show's strongest point, largely carried by how good Iori's first arc is and how likeable Inaba is. The original romance between Iori and Taichi feels like it's movie-style true love, and Inaba appears to be set up as the other girl who's in love with Taichi, whose affections he'll never really return. The show does a brilliant job of playing with tropes in this way, and it genuinely had me tricked, not because I really believed in Iori and Taichi's relationship, but simply because that's the way romance works in fiction.
However, the fourth arc, which might have been the show's strongest arc if not for the fact that it's focused on the same character arc Iori has gone through three times already, does a really good job of de-constructing the relationship between Taichi and Iori. It's a very fresh way of looking at a romance, too, and one that I feel is really level-headed: it's recognized as having been a great thing in its time, even if it was fuelled by deep issues that both characters had and as such was bound to eventually end when they got over said issues, which their romance helped them do. Well, the show claims that both of them had issues. Really, Iori had issues and Taichi was just around.
This subplot also synergizes very well with Inaba's character. The fact that Inaba is by far the most interesting character in turn helps keep the subplot interesting, whilst the evolution of the subplot is a large part of what allows Inaba to keep changing in interesting ways. I honestly think both would be lesser without the other, allowing this particular part of the show to be greater than the sum of its parts. It's really her attachment to Taichi that lets us see several new facets of Inaba later in the show, and it's precisely that that puts her above the other characters.
That love story is really the only subplot the series has that carries over all of the arcs, unless you count Iori's groundshog-day style loop of the same arc to be a subplot. This is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the fact that the four arcs are pretty much distinct stories allows each one to have breathing space and not have to deal with whatever happened in the other ones. On the other, it means that each arc has to wrap-up everything that happens with in it in the rather short timespan they're given, meaning smaller plotlines often feel rushed or unresolved. This is particularly obvious in the third arc: Aoki and Yui develop some issues from the particular gimmick of the arc, (whereupon random members of the CRC turn into children for a set period of time each day), but these are each resolved in less than half an episode. It's a shame, too: Aoki seemed like he'd actually be relevant for once.
Despite this drawback, the arcs are, all-in-all, fairly well done. Each of their gimmicks is cleverly tailored to reveal certain emotional issues from members of the CRC, and they each have enough of a storyline that they feel satisfying to watch. The only real issue is the over-reliance on Iori and Taichi, but this is an issue that only really becomes apparent when looking at the show as a whole. If I had to say, the weakest arc was probably the third: It was by far the weakest take on Iori's arc, the gimmick was the least interesting, and it was the one where Inaba had the least presence.
Before moving on to ratings, shout-outs to a few "real" side-characters: Heartseed I already talked about, and makes a fantastic antagonist-if-not-villain. Goussan, the teacher, is a likeable slacker with a surprising ability to make sense, and feels like he's a really cool guy. Finally, Fujishima, the girl who's Taichi's rival in winning Iori's affection early on makes for some great comic relief, and is shown to be a touchingly good human being later on.
Character and World Building: 7/10
The fact that this score isn't higher is what confused me about Kokoro Connect, because, if it was, Kokoro Connect would be absolutely phenomenal. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the show focuses on, and it's also the part that it's got the biggest flaws in. There's some genuinely good characters here. As much as I complain about Iori, she could be really interesting if used with a lot more moderation: hell, she's got really good moments even being as overused as she is. Unfortunately, her character is absolutely ruined by being on-screen too much, and she also clouds the rest of the cast. Taichi, similarly, has some really interesting character development which is over in a blink and then proceeds to be the biggest wet noodle in the history of the world, covering up the interesting stuff about the other characters in the process. Fortunately, the show manages to have an absolutely fantastic character in Inaba, as well as a really good supporting cast. It also does a fantastic job of making the CRC feel like friends: it's clear that these people all deeply care about each other.
Story: 6.5/10
It's serviceable. There's the one outlying brilliant arc of the love story, and the general storytelling is just above average, which pushes it a bit over the neutral 5, but there's genuinely not much to say here. It's not what the show's about, anyway.
Presentation: 3/5
The show is good looking, if fairly generic. It's well drawn, but the characters faces have a weird uncanny valley feeling to them that I dislike, especially when it comes to their facial expressions. They also appear to have a bad case of the "changing proportions" disease, where faces seem to be slightly different from shot to shot. I'm also not fond of the show's use of close-ups on faces: whenever this is used in anime I always feel oddly uncomfortable, and Kokoro Connect seems to really like doing it. The first opening theme is very memorable and fits the show perfectly, everything else in the sound department is forgettable.
Enjoyment: 12/15
Dammit, despite all the flaws I couldn't help but enjoy myself. I really liked the characters, and wanted to spend more time around them even when Iori kept banging on about the same stuff. It got me hooked, and I wanted to see how these arcs would resolve. Illogically, despite the fact that the show is merely good at the one thing it sets out to do, I still enjoyed myself a fair amount. Kokoro Connect managed to somehow charm me, even if I can't see how it did, and I think that's what led me to come into this review so utterly confused. It's a show that requires you to sit through a lot of unenjoyable stuff, but, hidden under this sea of flaws, there's a show that I could potentially have truly loved, rather than just had a good time with.
Overall: (7+6.5+3+12)/40
28.5/40
(Just Over 7/10)
Kokoro Connect is flawed. At a very fundamental level, it manages to be good at the one thing that it needed to do great, which is a huge fall. But, under all that, under the overusage of Iori and Yui's tragic lack of screentime, under Taichi's blandness, lies a show that's capable of producing such characters as Inaba, or setting up situations as unexpectedly interesting as its love triangle. It's tragic, really: It's a show that could've been one of the best, but is merely good. The fact that its good points manage to bring it up so much only serves to highlight how huge Kokoro Connect's flaws are. Yet it's still serviceable, it's still enjoyable, and, if asked if this is a show that deserves a watch, I would give a confident, if not energetic, "yes". I just wish Kokoro Connect was the show that I know is buried somewhere within what it ended up being.
Kokoro Connect is very hard to write about because I still genuinely don't know how I feel about it. It's not a case of "I know how much I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how good it is". It's a case of straight-up not knowing whether I personally liked it or not. So, I figure I'll write this review, and maybe the process of writing it itself will reveal to me what I thought about it. Please note there'll be spoilers: I'll mention character arcs late in the show, which might invalidate some plot-twists early on, will give details for each of the successive "phenomenons" the show is centred around and will be talking extensively about the ending.
Kokoro Connect follows five high-school students making up the school's Cultural Research Club (also known as CRC): A club where those who for some reason or another aren't in a "proper" club are dumped into. One day, two of the members of the club mysteriously find themselves body-swapped for a short period of time, and the others soon follow, swapping seemingly at random. A mysterious entity calling itself Heartseed, controlling the body of their teacher, soon appears and explains that it's doing this to them because they're interesting people (bit presumptuous of the writers, really), and the phenomenon will stop once the five of them do something Heartseed finds truly interesting.
The body-swapping is how the show was presented to me, and I thought this would be the show's gimmick: the one defining characteristic throughout the whole thing, much like Future Diaries in... err... Future Diary or VR MMOs in Sword Art Online. This turns out not to be quite true, as the show is divided into several shorter arcs, each one with a different random phenomenon disturbing the club's peace for Heartseed to observe. This is a good thing, as each arc's gimmick turns out to be rather shallow, not really leaving enough room for character exploration. It also helps establish Heartseed as an effective antagonist figure: he seems so utterly alien that his seemingly random meddling with the group's lives comes across as mysterious rather than annoying.
The real emphasis on the show lies, of course, on the "interesting people" in the CRC. It's a very character-driven show: each event impacts the five members differently, and they must each face some kind of trauma or crisis before Heartseed decides to stop whatever's currently messing with their lives. As such, it's a big drawback to the show that a lot of them are fairly bland, and those who aren't seem to be stuck repeating the same arc over and over. Out of the five characters that the show presents as being main characters, I can only bring myself to consider three as such: the characters of Aoki and Yui really don't get enough development.
That's not to say they're bad: Aoki is a fairly amusing comic relief character, and, to be completely fair, I get the impression that's all he's really supposed to be. However, I find it a genuine shame that Yui doesn't really get as much development as she deserves: She's actually a very likeable character who seems to have some interesting things going on. She's the pretty girl who likes cute things, but is actually quite a grouch in person. Yui also happens to be a black belt in karate. Her storyline revolves around her fear of men, caused by attempted rape earlier in her life, and her failure to be able to defend herself using her martial arts at the time. This is actually treated very tastefully, and it's hard not to feel sympathy for her, especially considering how strong of a person she's shown to be. As such, I can't help but feel she's criminally underutilized, only really having two episodes dedicated to her. I also really like the portrayal of her relationship with Aoki, who repeatedly and annoyingly professes to be in love with her: Despite Yui's insistence she doesn't reciprocate his feelings it's obvious she does.
The trio of real main characters unfortunately fares quite a lot worse. The protagonist, Taichi, is utterly dull. This is fairly common in anime, but Taichi is what I've come to expect amplified a hundredfold. Aside from one personality trait that the series insists on repeatedly telling us Taichi has (he likes to help people), I can't name a single distinguishing characteristic (no, him allegedly liking wrestling does not count). To be fair, the exploration that's done of his saving-people-thing is actually really effective, but it's over stupidly quick. I'm talking less than a quarter of an episode. I could live with this if the series did what most series do and instead focused on the other main characters, but Kokoro Connect insists on constantly making him the centre of most scenes, not to speak of being the main force in resolving pretty much every storyline. The fact that these storylines are the only way we get to explore the other two members of the trio means that Taichi's blandness forces itself on top of two largely superior characters. At least, the speeches he gives to try and "save" others (which are usually the emotional climax of each arc) are often moving, though they could be more moving if given by a character I gave the slightest shit about.
That said, it's not like both of the other two are stellar themselves. Iori is a character who I found really interesting for the first arc. She had an internal conflict I'd seen before, but with a fairly new twist on it: She's the outwardly popular, cheerful and loud "I'm not sure which of my personalities is really me" girl. Think Rise Kujikawa from Persona 4, but not quite as upbeat. During the body-swapping arc, the series takes on a genuinely interesting approach to her dilemma, and resolves it in a very emotionally satisfying way. In the second arc, she has the same dilemma again, but much more muted, taking a lot more of a back seat. In the third arc, she has the same dilemma again. She also takes up a large chunk of the plot with it again. It's also done in a way I've seen a million times before. In the fourth arc she sigh has the same dilemma again. It's the main focus of the arc again, too. Admittedly, it's another really interesting take on the problem, experienced more from the perspective of those around her than herself, wondering whether the person they thought they knew existed at all this time. But it's resolved in exactly the same way that it'd been resolved the previous three times, and it's frankly become extremely dull by this point.
That's the biggest problem with Iori: She goes through a couple interesting arcs, but they're repeated so many times that she becomes an annoyance. Whereas at the start of the series I thought of her as a person with emotional issues, by the end of it she seemed more like a wishy-washy bimbo who couldn't put her problems behind her. Much like Taichi, the fact that she takes a front line seat for most of the show really hurts her character.
The two above characters also suffer from just not feeling all that human, Iori especially. Despite all my complaints about both of them, they're both likeable enough to not be annoying, but the two of them seem to be designed to have big, hard-hitting emotional moments of catharsis over and over again, and it's just honestly not all that believable. These moments do often work, but unlike in Spice and Wolf, Angel Beats! or hell, even something as non-character oriented as Dog Days, it's hard to forget that these are characters going through a pretty exaggerated plot beat.
Fortunately, the third member of the trio is by far my favourite character from the show: Inaba. She's a really cool take on the snarky clever one: She's extremely aggressive, in more ways than one. Inaba acts as the de-facto leader of the CRC, despite Iori being the President on paper, and is usually the one who makes sure the group gets through the different phenomenons safely. Despite it never being outright stated, it's obvious that, despite her constant berating of the other group members, Inaba actually suffers from self-esteem issues. These don't come up as plot points, but very clearly guide Inaba through her actions in dealing with the rest of the CRC, and lead her to make things happen that affect her negatively.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is just how funny Inaba is. Her constant annoyance at Taichi and Aoki's antics is intensely amusing, and she knows just how to make other people comically uncomfortable for her own amusement when need be. She's not a funny character in the same way Aoki is: Inaba is not comic relief, but she specializes in making other characters be comic relief, even when they don't want to. This isn't always used in this context, but it's also refreshing how concious she is of her sexuality, occasionally making dirty jokes to make those around her squirm.
That said, her greatest virtue lies in her arcs: She goes through several, very believable, varied character arcs. Each arc of the show involves us either learning more about Inaba or Inaba coming to realize something about herself, and it's by far the best the show has to offer. It just feels natural, which the rest of the show has massive trouble doing.
At this point, I should address the elephant in the room when it comes to Inaba, Taichi and Iori. The first arc focuses on Taichi and Iori developing a romance, which Inaba encourages along. However, the second arc involves Inaba realizing she also has feelings for Taichi, and the two girls agreeing to be friendly whilst fighting for his affections: Taichi still insisting he loves Iori. Eventually, both Taichi and Iori fall out of love with each other, though they stay friends, and Taichi and Inaba begin going out on the last episode, after he realizes his true feelings.
I'm not exactly experienced with love stories, but this feels like a pretty new one to me. It's really the show's strongest point, largely carried by how good Iori's first arc is and how likeable Inaba is. The original romance between Iori and Taichi feels like it's movie-style true love, and Inaba appears to be set up as the other girl who's in love with Taichi, whose affections he'll never really return. The show does a brilliant job of playing with tropes in this way, and it genuinely had me tricked, not because I really believed in Iori and Taichi's relationship, but simply because that's the way romance works in fiction.
However, the fourth arc, which might have been the show's strongest arc if not for the fact that it's focused on the same character arc Iori has gone through three times already, does a really good job of de-constructing the relationship between Taichi and Iori. It's a very fresh way of looking at a romance, too, and one that I feel is really level-headed: it's recognized as having been a great thing in its time, even if it was fuelled by deep issues that both characters had and as such was bound to eventually end when they got over said issues, which their romance helped them do. Well, the show claims that both of them had issues. Really, Iori had issues and Taichi was just around.
This subplot also synergizes very well with Inaba's character. The fact that Inaba is by far the most interesting character in turn helps keep the subplot interesting, whilst the evolution of the subplot is a large part of what allows Inaba to keep changing in interesting ways. I honestly think both would be lesser without the other, allowing this particular part of the show to be greater than the sum of its parts. It's really her attachment to Taichi that lets us see several new facets of Inaba later in the show, and it's precisely that that puts her above the other characters.
That love story is really the only subplot the series has that carries over all of the arcs, unless you count Iori's groundshog-day style loop of the same arc to be a subplot. This is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the fact that the four arcs are pretty much distinct stories allows each one to have breathing space and not have to deal with whatever happened in the other ones. On the other, it means that each arc has to wrap-up everything that happens with in it in the rather short timespan they're given, meaning smaller plotlines often feel rushed or unresolved. This is particularly obvious in the third arc: Aoki and Yui develop some issues from the particular gimmick of the arc, (whereupon random members of the CRC turn into children for a set period of time each day), but these are each resolved in less than half an episode. It's a shame, too: Aoki seemed like he'd actually be relevant for once.
Despite this drawback, the arcs are, all-in-all, fairly well done. Each of their gimmicks is cleverly tailored to reveal certain emotional issues from members of the CRC, and they each have enough of a storyline that they feel satisfying to watch. The only real issue is the over-reliance on Iori and Taichi, but this is an issue that only really becomes apparent when looking at the show as a whole. If I had to say, the weakest arc was probably the third: It was by far the weakest take on Iori's arc, the gimmick was the least interesting, and it was the one where Inaba had the least presence.
Before moving on to ratings, shout-outs to a few "real" side-characters: Heartseed I already talked about, and makes a fantastic antagonist-if-not-villain. Goussan, the teacher, is a likeable slacker with a surprising ability to make sense, and feels like he's a really cool guy. Finally, Fujishima, the girl who's Taichi's rival in winning Iori's affection early on makes for some great comic relief, and is shown to be a touchingly good human being later on.
Character and World Building: 7/10
The fact that this score isn't higher is what confused me about Kokoro Connect, because, if it was, Kokoro Connect would be absolutely phenomenal. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the show focuses on, and it's also the part that it's got the biggest flaws in. There's some genuinely good characters here. As much as I complain about Iori, she could be really interesting if used with a lot more moderation: hell, she's got really good moments even being as overused as she is. Unfortunately, her character is absolutely ruined by being on-screen too much, and she also clouds the rest of the cast. Taichi, similarly, has some really interesting character development which is over in a blink and then proceeds to be the biggest wet noodle in the history of the world, covering up the interesting stuff about the other characters in the process. Fortunately, the show manages to have an absolutely fantastic character in Inaba, as well as a really good supporting cast. It also does a fantastic job of making the CRC feel like friends: it's clear that these people all deeply care about each other.
Story: 6.5/10
It's serviceable. There's the one outlying brilliant arc of the love story, and the general storytelling is just above average, which pushes it a bit over the neutral 5, but there's genuinely not much to say here. It's not what the show's about, anyway.
Presentation: 3/5
The show is good looking, if fairly generic. It's well drawn, but the characters faces have a weird uncanny valley feeling to them that I dislike, especially when it comes to their facial expressions. They also appear to have a bad case of the "changing proportions" disease, where faces seem to be slightly different from shot to shot. I'm also not fond of the show's use of close-ups on faces: whenever this is used in anime I always feel oddly uncomfortable, and Kokoro Connect seems to really like doing it. The first opening theme is very memorable and fits the show perfectly, everything else in the sound department is forgettable.
Enjoyment: 12/15
Dammit, despite all the flaws I couldn't help but enjoy myself. I really liked the characters, and wanted to spend more time around them even when Iori kept banging on about the same stuff. It got me hooked, and I wanted to see how these arcs would resolve. Illogically, despite the fact that the show is merely good at the one thing it sets out to do, I still enjoyed myself a fair amount. Kokoro Connect managed to somehow charm me, even if I can't see how it did, and I think that's what led me to come into this review so utterly confused. It's a show that requires you to sit through a lot of unenjoyable stuff, but, hidden under this sea of flaws, there's a show that I could potentially have truly loved, rather than just had a good time with.
Overall: (7+6.5+3+12)/40
28.5/40
(Just Over 7/10)
Kokoro Connect is flawed. At a very fundamental level, it manages to be good at the one thing that it needed to do great, which is a huge fall. But, under all that, under the overusage of Iori and Yui's tragic lack of screentime, under Taichi's blandness, lies a show that's capable of producing such characters as Inaba, or setting up situations as unexpectedly interesting as its love triangle. It's tragic, really: It's a show that could've been one of the best, but is merely good. The fact that its good points manage to bring it up so much only serves to highlight how huge Kokoro Connect's flaws are. Yet it's still serviceable, it's still enjoyable, and, if asked if this is a show that deserves a watch, I would give a confident, if not energetic, "yes". I just wish Kokoro Connect was the show that I know is buried somewhere within what it ended up being.
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