Feb 12, 2015
Hm, where to start? At the beginning the show kinda just throws you into what is happening to these people. There is no set up to learn and appreciate the "normal" state of these characters before they are forced into the mess of their situation. It's a common approach for stories with similar tropes. You wake up and your life is fucked up. The story then proceeds to combine deep analysis of internal trauma, pretending to be other people and masturbation. Surprisingly, that's not how it goes in Kokoro connect. Instead the scene is set with the knowledge that something has happened and more importantly,
...
this is the character set. And there I think is where the show differentiates itself from other media that has used the trope. Switching bodies is an extremely personal experience, something that most spend a great deal of time analyzing or at least addressing. Kokoro connect almost brushes it to the side and only uses it to guide the story. Instead of the trope infecting the characters being the story, the trope guiding the characters to infect each other is. It illuminates what the events say about the characters as a group and about the characters as individuals while pushing particular aspects of their personal qualities into the shadows. And so the phenomena forced upon by heart seed aren't really the point. I read somebody describing the show as Deus ex Machina: the Show. In the way that I'm taking about, it almost is. The phenomena are only present to give a bit of life. So, a secondary effect is that the transition between phenomena doesn't really matter, any one of them could facilitate the exact same character development and the story doesn't form arcs as well as many people think.
So, back to the beginning. There's problems, there's characters. And holy fuck is it hard to get the character at first. They're all generic anime characters and have anime names. The content of what makes a person might be connected wholly to the body but holy fuck does that make it hard to understand who is who. I honestly watched it with the character list open the first several episodes. The first goal of the show is to get Taichi to solve everybody's problems, set up a harem and make people have character in one episode bursts of exposing past trauma. Not really, but that's the line that it danced against and almost shifted into for a lot of people. The show manages to do it kinda well, not winning any awards for the execution but reasonably good. Taichi remains a bit of a selfless nobody protag while Yui and other guy lack quite a bit of identity outside of the primary love triangle. However, the facet of the characters that shines is in how they interact with each other. I can't articulate why this was done well or bad or anything as well as I can other aspects, which is unfortunate because this is what made the show good. Many times throughout the series laughs were coaxed out of me and once or twice I struggled to keep myself from hysterics. Other times, particularly and mostly at an episode centred upon Nagase, I was close to tears. That whole episode was just flawlessly executed and when the final theme ends and the previews for the next episode are done, you're shaken and emotionally confused about what you just watch. My motions were in a highly tightened state and it was one of those moments you go, "Fuuuck." and laugh and cry a bit. And any anime that can make me elicit tears or laughter when I'm sitting alone watching it on my laptop with headphones on gets big kudos from me.
These people felt real, or at least more real than for most anime. These people were fun and easy to care about, or at least more so than for most anime. The finale may have been lacklustre and Michi Random may have been all kinds of shit (relative to the main series, it could stand alone as decent, however my thoughts with regards to this are the same ones everybody has so no point in going into that). This review may be overly positive due to the possibly mediocre brilliance of the show paired with its highly enjoyable nature. I may have forgotten a place to comment about how the music is an appropriate and effective asset in its context, doing wonders for the mood. I enjoyed the thing. Two thumbs up and a well deserved pat on the back for Kokoro Connect.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
