Princess Connect! Re:Dive

I've seen a lot of Isekais. I love fantasy, magic and swords. So obviously I had to watch Princess Connect. It even has a high score in MAL.

I don't understand how this sh*t has a better score than the average isekais. It's the worst and there is why:

Story 1/10: Alright, so there is none. it's a comedy show. It should be but it's not funny. It might be fun for 8-14 years old kids to be fair. Konosuba is hilarious, Gintama too. But this, the level of the jokes is so low, it feels cringe. How to stop a cute dangerous enemy that everyone in ... the group think it's a cute and kind ally ? One of the character will resolve this issue by eating it. The design of the monsters are made to make people laugh because they look retarded, like tongue out, big eyes one rlooking at the opposite at the other etc. It's very poor written.

Art 7/10:
Well it's beautiful, kawaii, full of color. As i said, the monsters looks dumb it really doesnt feel real like in Goblin Slayer or Hai to Gensou no Grimgar. So they don't look dangerous but weak.

Sound 5/10:
It's not really noticeable, it's ok.

Character 2/10:
The MC is the worst character ever written. He can't talk like a normal human being. He's useless. He's just OP because he has to since it's the MC. When I say he's OP, he doesnt even know. It's like very cliché. If his friends are in danger, he'll have the power to protect them. If they are not, he's weak. It's supposed to be funny or something. The others characters are not good either. They are very simple-minded. Like, it's painful to watch. And once again it's cliché, so they're going make fun of a cliché personality trait.

Enjoyment 1/10:
It makes me angry. You want to slap the MC, you want to tell them don't do that, do this instead. Please use your brain and think. Where is your education ? The comedy part is not enjoyable, amusing. You can see the joke coming miles away. To be honest it's depressing.

Overall: I want to smash my head into a wall/10.

If anime was made in a factory, Princess Connect is the kind of product that would roll off the assembly line. The show is well presented and packaged very nicely, it has some excellent visuals, character designs and some flashy moments here and there to draw you in, but if you strip away the surface then you're left with something quite bland.

Princess Connect is entering into the saturated market of fantasy-comedy anime without trying to do anything new. The plot and the comedy are all a bit safe, repetitive and dull. There's only so many times a stomach can rumble at an inopportune time ... before the joke is no longer amusing. There is zero plot or interesting character moments, and instead they seem to be placing all their bets on minor, episodic, comedic skits. Unfortunately the especially weak "comedy" and lack of good characters or plot to fall back on, result in a bland and boring show. The characters are designed well and everything is pretty to look at but no one is particularly interesting to watch.

If anime was conceptualized at a corporate level using graphs and spreadsheets, by men and women with no interest in the art-form - they might ask for; a comedy anime, in a fantasy setting, with a conveyor belt of forgettable waifu bait each episode. Throw in some cat-ears, some meme-able faces and a handful of overused character archetypes. They would then pass it down the line, and their factory would churn it out. It would be efficient, inoffensive and pass quality control, but there would be no heart in it. And that's kind of what we have here.


It's a real shame. The animation is great and there's obviously some very talented animators that have worked on Princess Connect. I wanted to enjoy this one, even as some harmless seasonal fluff. Unfortunately, everything else is all too boring and predictable. The comedy is often repetitive and falls flat, and the overall experience isn't at all enjoyable.

what a fucking horse manure pile, i guess we were the fucking gourmet guild all along judging by all the shit we just ate.

hey kids do you like artstyles? its fucking variety hour over at cygames pictures, we've got them in the double digits. and i dont mean in total, i mean per shot. wouldn't want any amorphous fucking blobs that actually watch this shit to get bored, so we'll be switching entire art directions every few minutes. this is of course when we decide to actually have animation, a decision quickly proven disastrous for the common good when we outsource the knights from overlord ... or the cgi effects from 80s arcade shooters. abe knows we cant have cgi tits but cgi spoons are our fucking hill to die on.

okay now that we've got the visual directions done lets get down to characters.

okay now that were done with characters lets get to music. it has one pokemon movie song as its flagship, probably to make doubly sure the declaration of war against digimon got across in case they didn't get the hint when we stole some of their more furry designs. the rest was procedurally generated using samples from only the most carefully curated pieces of inspirational media like season 2 of SAO, Bad VNs and the brazillian national anthem. to complement the overlord knights we also borrowed the clang sound effect from the award winning berserk 2016 adaptation.

now that we're done with that let's get to psychology. who are you, you absolute bottom of the barrel human being, that consumes this? you worthless fucking parasite, people suffer worldwide unable to consume media and you use your lucky genetics like this? you waste it on a gatcha adaptation which probably required less thought put into it than using a random fucking plot generator.
you fucking shit taste pioneer, you insufferable visionary of shit, you excrement seeker. going beyond just consooming mediocre shlock and trudging the putrid waters of absolute garbage instead. and even worse, you have lost the very semblance of taste and critical thought to the point you will extoll this goddamn disaster using any retard logic in your arsenal.
it makes me sick, imagining you laugh at these non-jokes. it disgusts me to the very core of my being imagining you cheer every time a poorly-imported gatcha game character appears in all their horribly designed glory, voiced by joe rogan impersonating a chimp and written by a fucking microwave, a fucking shell of a being you once were.
"it's comfy!" you will splurge out, watching non-characters do nothing for 20 minutes. you will nod along with a smile, as half of the last episode recaps all the good times we've had until now, before ripping off its own enemy from the previous episode. "classic karen!" you will laugh while your ears bleed and the sane part of your brain screaming back to no avail. "the face! she did the face!" you wheeze, while the face i make is that of loss.
"cant wait for you to get to best girl!" you say, oblivious or perhaps willfully ignoring the fact there is not a damn thing worth seeing here. what the fuck is the point of being best girl in a show with its only redeeming quality not being parallel paradise? i almost feel like begging you to come to your senses but you know what they say about madmen. they got you, and you got us. truth is the game was rigged from the start. now there is only dread until cygames releases the next installment of their magnum opus, continued further in connect season 4. they've obviously laid the foundations to a whole cinematic universe with legendary unforgettable characters like alpaca furry, forgotten sister #3, generic npc and stolen asset. can't wait for 13 more episodes of rehashed jokes straight up lifted from better shows (still awful, but better) like that one time they legit just 1:1 copied the first 10 minutes of shokugeki no souma's premier episode. i am estatic and quite fucking euphoric to know i will one day enjoy once more the amazing comedic masterpieces such as THE FACE, endless screaming, attack on titan season 3 finale, MC being vored by random passing furries (classic), vapid dialogue whose only sign of being supposedly funny is terribly paced comedic timing and occasional sound effect from the local library, and pecorine liking food ahahahahahahahahahahaha what a fucking zinger my dude.

When I first started watching this anime, I thought the art looks pretty good for an isekai anime. But, that enjoyment is short-lived because as I continue watching this anime, I noticed that the protagonist is incredibly boring, stupid, and annoying at times. The other characters in the anime are your average air headed type, which is fine for the anime if done with moderation. However, the anime emphasized the airheaded nature of these characters too much. Next for the story, I wanted to know why and how the protagonist got to transported to this world. This reinforces the stigma ... that a lot of isekai animes use isekai elements for plot convenience. In addition, this is done poorly in this anime because the beginning of the anime does not show anything to explain how or why the protagonist got transported to the anime's world. For example: did he die in his old world? , or did he gets summoned to the anime's world?

UPDATE: I have finished the show. The plot doesn't make any sense- I don't feel as if there is a plot at all. I stand by my word. It's not a good show but I guess you'd find this interesting if you played the game.


Why do people like this. What's wrong with the world?

It really doesn't deserve the "high" score. It's just a Chinese knockoff Konosuba but the main cast is dumbed down where their average mental age is 4.

Story:
Nothing is ever explained. It's probably just a generic isekai but there is a horrible lack of development. The plot is nonexistent. ... They don't even have the overdone "truck-kun" scenes. At least that would give some sort of narrative. Again, nothing is ever explained. Who is that initial girl? I don't know. Why are the characters there? I don't know. There is no backstory.

Art:
Generic, but quite cute I guess.

Sound:
Normal I guess? There weren't any standouts, but it wasn't bad?

Character:
Where do I even start. Cookie cutter characters. You can basically name any RPG trope and bam- new character. I wouldn't even nitpick this part if they breathed a bit of life into the characters but they're all just so boring. It's nothing I haven't seen before.
The MC literally has 3 lines in the entire first episode. He knows how to say his own name, money is important, and some other meaningless line. He is mentally 3 years old and only knows how to grunt and 'ehe'. It's been a long time since I've seen such an unlikable MC.

Enjoyment:
Jokes were pretty bad. The characters aren't given enough time to develop so I couldn't get attached to them. It doesn't help that there's also no plot for me to get invested in.


Overall,
This is one of the worse isekais out there. Please do yourself a favor and watch something else. I will never get my 20 minutes back.

The story begins with the MC in a dream or something and there is a girl who's watching over the MC, then we meet a girl who's supposed to be serving the MC for whatever reason, and then he eventually gets a harem and then nothing happens for several episodes. Until the MC meets another 2 girls (who we know absolutely nothing about) his "sisters" who only appeared in the episode for a short time. Basically what i'm saying is, their wasting time on random filler parts instead of progressing the story or developing the characters, we still know nothing about the MC and why ... he's so special nor do we know anything about the girls, there's no character development anywhere in the show. My point is, STOP THROWING IN NEW CHARACTERS WITH NO BACKSTORY, epsiode 13 was a great example, they just throw abunch of mysterious characters in and don't tell us anything about them



The story was dreadful, the whole show had no thrill at all, there was nothing special about the anime whatsoever. The MC was naturally Overpowered, he didn't have to work for his powers at all, the action is horrible, most of the episodes are fillers and there is barely any story progression.


It's below average by far, the animation was the only good thing about it, the characters were average and the MC is so bad i couldn't put it into words, the whole show is just a disaster, it's like they didn't know what direction they were going in so instead they just made 90% of the episode something random and then the other 10% was story.


The show really wasted it's potential, it could've been a really great anime if the story was more direct and not as many filler parts and the art was above average by far but the characters and the story was like they took scenes from other animes they thought were good and tried to cluster them all together which turned into a fail cause we never knew which direction the anime was going in.


Spoiler part: Am i supposed to feel good about the ending? We still know absolutely nothing about the MC, nor do we know anything about the girls introduced, we haven't gotten rid of the evil white haired girl, Pecorine's parent's still don't remember her, do i even need to go on? All that happened was the MC defeated some big boss with his OP powers that he was born with. The ending was HORRIBLE one of the worst ends i've ever seen in anime history, nothing good came out of the end.


did i mention the MC was boring af?

For a Director who mostly worked with ecchi anime, Not including any ecchi comedy moments or fanservice or shimoneta was a grave mistake. The anime seems very boring and painful to watch. Only the good art work barely keeps you going. In such a harem anime with such beautiful characters there could at least be some fan service for example zooming in to the heavenly body parts and stuff.

Kanasaki Takaomi has worked in quite a few animes that I really loved. And a good number of them have ecchi-comedy. But in this work the parts that were ideal for ecchi comedy ... was replaced with some boring painful scenes. Some part was good but most of them were very bland.

The recent attack on anime from the UN makes me worried and seeing anime which was made to have some happenings not having any adds to it.

(This is overexaggerated and all of this is my personal opinion, if you like this anime, I won't judge you one bit.)

Okay, who am i kidding, this show is a literal dumpster fire.
I followed the 3 episode rule.


So, lets start, because i want to make this quick.
the MC is literally the worst MC i have ever seen in a show, i have so far not seen an MC worse than Yuuki. Unoriginal, poor design, and the MC also ends up like a ragdoll, which i also gotta mention.
The only thing the MC says is "MHM" and a couple of other words.
The only effort that actually ... went into this is the character design of the girls because that's the whole literal point of the show. (thats what im guessing at least lmao)
I wasn't expecting much of this anime from the start but god damn what is this move named "princess strike".
guys beware the dangerous move "princess strike".
like, what's next? don't tell me. "fire blast"
This show is literally no different from other fantasy shows or Isekais and it's the sadly the same unoriginal concept that so many follow.
Overall Review: 4/10

I really wanted to like this anime. I really did. I had heard good things about it (people compared it to Konosuba, which I love), and a lot of the people I know seem to love this anime. Additionally, the art itself looks nice, and the character designs are great. It started out well enough: I liked the first two episodes (though I found Yuuki VERY annoying, and the jokes were a bit overdone), and had a favorite character by then, Karyl.

8 episodes later, I felt done with this series. I dreaded watching it, and actually added another anime as a distraction so I only ... had to watch one episode of this mess a day (incidentally, I ended up loving the other anime). I only finished watching it because I was really close to finishing it at that point, so I figure I should. Why did I hate it so much that I dreaded watching it? Keep reading on to find out.

First, I absolutely HATE the MC, Yuuki. He's annoying, useless, and those one liners get really old, really fast (I'm so sick of him just going 'mm!' and giving a thumbs up for everything). He never gets any character development, he never even tries to regain his memories, and that joke about him getting eaten because he's so useless is NOT FUNNY. Luckily, he doesn't carry the show (the show favors Pecorine, Karyl, and Kokkoro), so I would be able to overlook him if it wasn't for the fact the rest of the show.. sadly, isn't much better. The plot doesn't seem to go anywhere, even after 10 episodes. It's just kind of more of the same: Fight random monsters or hang around town, cook weird food, and introduce guilds from the game without any proper introduction other than a name drop. Remember that ad from Johnsonville where the lady states "___ shows up, and says "Johnsonville brats are made in the USA"? That's how the series introduces the other guild members. These random girls just show up, the series name drops them, they do something minor in the episode, and then they're GONE. We're somehow supposed to somehow remember their names or care about them, even though they only say la few lines. There's only one exception (they show one, Rima, twice), but for the most part, each episode just randomly introduces like 3 new characters, and THEY DON'T COME BACK. If they came back, I'd get their point. If they had characterization in the episode that made them memorable despite only appearing in one episode, that'd be fine. But they don't. They just appear, they tell their names, they're there for a bit, then are GONE. And this goes on for at least 6 episodes. It's very frustrating. And the main female cast? They're not much better. Kokkoro doesn't change since episode 1. We do learn some things about Pecorine after her initial appearance (such as she can also make furniture), so she's not completely skipped over in terms of characterization, and Karyl goes from a bad character to 'good' later on, and seems to start to value the group she travels with. So she has some development as well. But as the show has like 20 characters, having 2 of them actually change is just a drop in the bucket.

Additionally, the bad characterization isn't the only flaw: It's VERY formulaic. It goes like this for almost every episode: The characters want to get food or something stupid, these random girls appear, and there's a battle of some sort, usually involving food. And nearly every episode, Yuuki gets eaten by some animal and Kokkoro does the X face. It's REALLY repetitive, and almost unwatchable.

That isn't to say everything is bad, though. The series does have good art, and the designs are really good for the main characters. The other girls designs are also OK, but not as good as the main cast. The acting is also good, and the OP and ED are OK. And as much as I dislike the formulaic plot, bad MC, and poorly introduced characters, I still like Karyl. I find her an interesting character, and I do want to know who she's working for, and why she can't/won't dump working for this person. I hope the last three episodes address this, but I somehow doubt it.

It's really sad when there isn't a lot of good things I can name about this anime. I definitely would recommend skipping this. It is NOT Konosuba. That actually introduces its new characters properly and isn't formulaic.

Edited upon finishing episode 13: Now that I finished it, I can say that I still feel most of my previous points are valid. Episode 11 was more of the same. Episodes 12 and 13 were FINALLY good. These episodes finally discussed some lore again, and there's an interesting revelation involving Pecorine. If the rest of this series was like episode 1-2 and 12-13, I'd give this series a 7 or 8. But it isn't. I'm torn whether or not to watch the next season (and whether or not to recommend you do as well), as I found the last two episodes interesting, and figure maybe the next season will be like those. But as a whole, I still have to give this series a 3. I liked 1-2 and 12 and 13, but 4 episodes that are good of 13 isn't very good. And those bad episodes ruined this series SO much for me. I don't recommend it due to like 85% of the series being trash.

*short review*

Princess Connect stands as a straightforward example as to why you need an actual story and well written characters, as opposed to painfully one-dimension caricatures, in order for a work of fiction to be enjoyable by those of us who pay attention to the quality of a shows writing praxis.

This anime has a lot of qualities you would expect from a good show. Well done art, decent animation, OK jokes from time to time, a nice easygoing fantasy setting. But the story is horribly predictable, filled with cringe cliches we have seen done better hundreds of times. And yet even that could be ... forgiven if the character cast had any personality. They don't. Princess connect has some of the most stale characters I have seen in an anime for a long time. There really is no way to emphasize how horrifyingly cliche and boring they are. There is nothing about any of them that stands out. This absolute failure creates a massive problem: Princess connect is essentially just Konosuba, but replace the wacky cast of interesting and relatable characters from Konosuba with the most boring and generic cast imaginable. Instead of Kazuma's selfish, fun, and unpredictable personality, we get a super generic nice guy self insert MC Marty-Stu with absolutely no self agency to speak of. Instead of Aquas multiple faceted ego, we get a total doormat female sidekick that checks all the boxes of amateurishly written generic puppydog sidekick who only serves a role of blind support and absolutely nothing else.

In conclusion, Princess connect is an OK anime if you turn your brain off, but dreadfully boring otherwise. It makes for good "background anime"( IE: anime that you have on a second monitor while doing something else ) due to the nearly nonexistent easy-to-follow plot and decent visuals. But it doesn't really have any real value beyond this.

Verdict: Hard pass on this trash. There are better things to do with your time.

I wanted to love this show. It is right up my alley. I love all kinds of isekai harem shows and this one started out fun and interesting with a fun premise....at first. I'll try not to spoil anything but The MC lost his memory.....which apparently makes him mentally handicapped. By episode 10 he gets in the water, says "salty" and starts playing around in it like a kid, and that's the only thge he realy says in the entire episode. Later in the episode a repeatedly squeezes a sea cucumber till it spits it's guts out and has no reaction to it. They legit ... made him someone who is mentally handicapped and not just someone who lost his memory. He never says a full sentence EVER. The most you get out of him are grunts, thumbs up, and stupid single words like "salty" As if he was a baby. It is beyond frustrating once you realize he doesn't ever grow out of it and he will always be like that. Half the plot points are his dumb a*s just wandering away like a mentally handicapped child it's not only boring but when you realize oh the resolution is that he just wandered back and nothing happened of any consequence.

The other characters luckily take up most of the screen time and they are fun characters. But the absolute stupidity of the MC realllly knocks this show down a quite a few pegs. Hopefully season 2 will stop this stupid gimmick and actually give him a personality.

Some time ago, I once read a youtube comment that describes the anime perfectly:
"The main character behaves like a failed lobotomy patient."

This show would have felt like the second coming of Konosuba to me, if it weren't for the fact that the main character has literal subhuman intellect and needs the other members of the cast to wipe his own ass for him. The quality of MCs can make or break a show, and as much as this anime has a Genshin Impact-level of unique characters in its population, they aren't enough to save the show when everything is happening around this toddler of ... an MC.

Boring anime with almost no plot or humor, waiting for the story to progress in the first 6 episodes and I just gave up after seeing nothing really happenening, I only started watching this anime because all my friends seemed to think it was amazing yet the characters are just loud and obnoxious, for example Kyaru/Karyl was loud with no real reason to be whereas the main character says a few words in the whole time I watched, even though having the same director as Konosuba the comedy seemed to just not exist.
i felt as if the story followed every basic isekai's plot of the ... main character is op and their companions always have a weak or super strong person that can't be rivaled.

I forced myself to sit through the complete season. I had to do it in bursts, otherwise there was a chance that my small intestine would crawl up through my stomach to strangle me in order to put myself out of my misery.

Okay: First the positives.

The animation isn't horrible. It's not great, but it's "acceptable". The voice acting is actually on point, and the theme music is okay.

Okay the negatives:
Literally EVERYTHING else. The backstory is alluded to but rarely explained, (except the OBVIOUS bits, (I mean she's wearing a CROWN for hells sake)) the characters are flat and 2 dimensional. ... The writing is ALMOST up to a grade-school level. With a little tweaking it might actually get a C- in a 3rd grade assignment. The pacing is just as bad. Random characters are introduced at points with no actual introduction, they just show up, save stuff, and rack off. Powers go off just because the plot needs them to.

I, I can't go on. Writing more about this anime makes me have to remember and think about it, and I don't want to have to go into a corner and rock and whimper.

Your mileage may vary. But it probably won't if your over ten years of age. I gave it a 5, but that's ONLY due to the few good points I mentioned. I tried to make myself sit down to watch season 2 so I could review it. I couldn't, I got 2 episodes in, and the revulsion was to much. It's one of the FEW anime I've had to just flat out drop.