Kokoro Connect

When five students at Yamaboshi Academy realize that there are no clubs where they fit in, they band together to form the Student Cultural Society, or "StuCS" for short. The club consists of: Taichi Yaegashi, a hardcore wrestling fan; Iori Nagase, an indecisive optimist; Himeko Inaba, a calm computer genius; Yui Kiriyama, a petite karate practitioner; and Yoshifumi Aoki, the class clown.

One day, Aoki and Yui experience a strange incident when, without warning, they switch bodies for a short period of time. As this supernatural phenomenon continues to occur randomly amongst the five friends, they begin to realize that it is not just fun and games. Now forced to become closer than ever, they soon discover each other's hidden secrets and emotional scars, which could end up tearing the StuCS and their friendship apart.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Inaba, Himeko Main

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Nagase, Iori Main

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Yaegashi, Taichi Main

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Kiriyama, Yui Main

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Aoki, Yoshifumi Main

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Fuusenkazura Supporting

Fujiwara, Keiji Japanese

Fujishima, Maiko Supporting

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Yaegashi, Rina Supporting

Oogame, Asuka Japanese

Gotou, Ryuuzen Supporting

Fujiwara, Keiji Japanese

Kiriyama, Mother Supporting

Watanabe, Akeno Japanese

Yamanaka, Takahiro Producer

Kaneko, Hayato Producer, Planning

Nakagawa, Jirou Producer

Masaki, Daisuke Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jun 17, 2013

SeitenSoushi

Recommended

Is it just me, or do I only review shows beginning with the letter K?
Anyway, just so you know, I'm also including the Michi Random specials in this review.

Story: 10
What would you do if you and your friends started randomly switching between each other's bodies? Or if your deepest darkest desires were suddenly brought to the surface, out of your control?
Here we have a series that takes a supernatural storyline, adds some well-written high-school romance and plenty of compelling drama, and pulls it all together into one amazing package. Although some of the ideas may have been done many times before, Kokoro Connect ... manages to make it fresh and funny, whilst also being surprisingly realistic with how it portrays the effects of each of the phenomena. I felt the drama wasn't overdone at all and every arc introduced interesting new aspects of the story and allowed many sides of the characters to be shown.
Ultimately, Kokoro Connect succeeds in blending its comedic school life shenanigans with more serious emotional moments, a testament to the quality of the writing and the great direction.

Art/Animation: 10
I really liked the art for this series - everything is crisp and smoothly animated. The characters instantly reminded me of K-On!, though upon checking, I was surprised to find that these two series don't actually have the same character designer.
The settings are fairly detailed and we have some beautiful backgrounds and lush scenery. As far as I could tell, there were no off-models or problems with animation.
The characters are all very expressive when they need to be. Whether they are happy, angry, embarrassed or otherwise, their on-screen demeanours fit very well with the excellent voice acting.
Whilst I enjoyed the colourful and upbeat opening animation, it was the endings that really shone in my opinion.
Overall, Kokoro Connect is a very attractive looking show - Silver Link doing a commendable job here.

Sound: 9
The background music is great to hear; they fit the scenes nicely and add to the drama and emotion.
The ending song also fades in before the ending animation, which I always find to be a nice touch when executed well like this.
My personal favourites were the 2nd OP (Kimi Rhythm by Imai Masaki) and the 3rd ED (Salvage by Team.Nekokan [Neko] feat. Katakiri Rekka), though they are all really decent.
In terms of voice acting, I think it was a job well done by all the seiyuu. Even Heartseed with his tired, monotone voice I found to be sufficiently entertaining. Throughout the series, a wide range of character traits and personalities were portrayed.

Characters: 10
The characters are what really make Kokoro Connect. Unlike some other school-based romantic comedies, Kokoro Connect features fully fleshed out, three-dimensional people, each with very real pasts and flaws, which was what made me really care about them as I watched their story unfold. They are apparently all somewhat misfits, so they form a Culture Club of sorts.
Without going into too much detail, we have:
Taichi, an altruistic pro-wrestling fan who has a selfless urge to help others;
Iori, a friendly energetic girl who is popular and loved by all;
Himeko, the cool and responsible one of the group, with considerable skill in information gathering and analysis;
Yui, an expressive karate practitioner, who loves cute things;
and Yoshifumi - their casual friend, who is attracted to Yui (though she resists his advances).
I also have to mention one of the cutest imouto in anime - Yaegashi Rina - who is a caring sister that looks out for Taichi and, despite being younger, seems to give him advice about his relationships.

Enjoyment: 10
Kokoro Connect was really one of if not the best show of its season. Watching the characters mature and develop was very compelling. Over the course of the series, their pasts are revealed, along with their own shortcomings and how they overcome them. The highlight is the character drama, and all in all, the series was practically perfect for me.

Overall: 10
I have to say, Kokoro Connect is a must watch and I recommend it to everyone. It was fully entertaining throughout. As the supernatural phenomena start to take their toll on the five main characters - will their friendship be able to survive? Join them on an emotional rollercoaster as you see them handle various unusual situations, all the while learning more about themselves and each other.

Thanks for reading! Please give feedback if you found it helpful （＾ω＾）

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 27, 2014

jesterthomas

Mixed Feelings

Kokoro Connect is exceedingly mediocre. It is not bad by any definition of the term - the artwork, voice acting, and one particular character (you know who) are great and deserve commendation in an artistic medium saturated with high school romantic dramas. Additionally, the concept of body switching introduced for the first few episodes had a lot of promise and led to a lot of well-executed plot developments. The show never strayed into what could have easily been an ecchi bait premise and culminated in what was, to me, the climax of the show's story in Episode 5 with a (no spoilers) heart-wrenching decision to ... be made by the cast members that actually made me pause and think what I would do in a similar situation.

However, the story and remaining characters of the show are mundane, unrealistic and at times even cringeworthy. I will preface this by saying that I am not Japanese - I am an American university student and a relative newcomer to anime. However, I have been around the block and have seen a few extremely well-done romance anime in the same vein as Kokoro Connect (Toradora!, Clannad, Monogatari), so I feel like I have a solid foundation upon which to base my opinion.

Let's start with the story. As I mentioned earlier, the concept of body switching is actually a great idea and works very well in the high school drama setting. It is a mystery to me, then, why Kokoro Connect decides to just scrap it less than a third of the way through the show and change the supernatural events afflicting our main characters. There is so much untapped potential with the body switching premise that I would have loved to see. For example, much of the drama in the second half of the show could have been either avoided or played out much better if an extended body switch had happened between two characters that forced them to interact with the other's family, learning firsthand what their true daily life is like and further clarifying their root sources of trauma. Really, that's almost the entire point of body switching in a non-erotic setting - you are forced to spend a while in someone else's shoes and learn about them by living their lives. Instead we get mental thought transmissions and "acting on your inner desires". The first one is sort of interesting, but nowhere near as deep as body switching. The second one isn't even a supernatural phenomenon - it's called teenage hormones. I personally think this show could have done a lot more with 8-11 episodes of body switching only instead of dragging on for 17.

As for the main plot, it's mostly your typical Japanese high school romantic love-triangle borderline harem drama. There's supposed to be a main villain with Balloon Vine (Heartseed?), but there is really no point to his existence other to hand-wave away the phenomena as some kind of alien experiment. The point of this show is not explaining why these phenomena are happening, it's how the characters react to and deal with them together. You know at the end of the show you're going to get an official couple and that most of the character's problems will have been sorted out to some degree. I only wish that it didn't take so long to get there.

Moving onto the characters, we come to what I think is this show's largest pitfall. The vast majority of the anime's cast are either as bland as raw pasta or act so unrealistically that trying to relate to them becomes nearly impossible. You've got Yaegashi, the stereotypical "boku"-using protagonist that espouses Japanese ideals of modesty, uprightness and chivalry while having practically no standout qualities whatsoever; Iori, a girl whose angst over her identity issues make for a very inconsistent and erratic character over the show; Aoki, the secondary male character and the only person preventing this from being a harem; Kiriyama, a girl with androphobia but whose solution to this problem is to be saved by others rather than confronting it herself; and Inaban, a strong female lead who is brutally honest, playfully violent and a breath of fresh air in an otherwise weak cast. Seriously, if you watch this show for anything, watch it for Inaban. She's great.

The only other person worth mentioning in the show is Balloon Vine, the main "villain" whose stated purpose for causing the supernatural phenomena to happen to our main group of five is literally just to fuck with them. Does this story really need a villain? The show does no legwork in explaining who he is or what motivates him to choose a group of Japanese high school students to experiment on, or why there is apparently a second, rival alien also involved with our main group. Kokoro Connect could have had effectively the same plot by just introducing the phenomena without any explained source and exploring how the characters react to it.

The ultimate reason why I did not enjoy this show was because these characters' dialogue and reactions to the phenomena felt incredibly unrealistic. Yes, this is an anime with body switching. Yes, there exist harem anime that I like, and the concept of a harem is constructed from male fantasy and is as far from real life relationships as possible. However, I feel that Kokoro Konnekt tries to pass itself as a somewhat true-to-life look at how a bunch of teenagers would act in supernatural situations but fails because it can't even master the portrayal of regular character interaction. Yaegashi is such a white knight that I wonder how anyone could have a healthy relationship with him; Iori is irrational even by teenage girl standards to the point where I can't even see why she does what she does from her point of view; and Kiriyama feels hypocritical in that she wants to become stronger and gain self confidence but instead relies almost entirely on Yaegashi for emotional support throughout the show. Even Inaban can act a little unrealistically sometimes.

In summary, Kokoro Connect is mediocre. Its higher than average production values, good voice casting and pretty good character in Inaban prevent it from being a failure, but so many other aspects of the show drag it down from being at least a decent watch. I cringed and interrogated my computer screen out loud multiple times while watching the show because I could not believe why certain characters acted the way they did or why certain parts of the show were just never explained. At the end I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction and that my time should have been spent doing other things.

By the way, I propose a drinking game whereby for every episode of Kokoro Kardashian you watch, take a shot every time you hear the word "Tasukete!", "Mamoru!", "Suki!", "Daisuki!", or "Baka!. If you make it out alive, I will personally reward you with a medal.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 28, 2017

DangerKitty

Not Recommended

Including the four specials, this show is arguably one of the more annoying series I've seen. If you're into pointless high school drama, this show is for you.

In a phrase, this show is "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME!" repeated for thirty minutes, seventeen times. The characters are repeatedly put into positions where it's determined (by the group) that they would all be better off if they talked about their feelings, and then proceed to not talk about their feelings. Everyone is a victim of some "pressure" from their friends, despite all of their problems being caused almost entirely by themselves. Everyone puts on some kind of ... selfless front "for the better of the group" and inevitably makes things worse for everyone as a result.

The story itself is a cool premise, it's just that the characters are all irritating and incredibly dense. The art is solid, and the sound is good as well. The characters are what kill this show for me. All three girls complain that nobody will ever understand them because [insert any given problem], one guy is an annoying white knight type you'd see on a cosplay forum, and the other could be replaced by a sizable rock without changing the story at all.

How this show has anything above a five is perplexing to me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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