Kokoro Connect is, definitely, a Masterpiece. However, what is really awesome about it is that considering its premises I would have never expected it to become a 10/10 in my list. It has ALL the (apparently) cliché aspects of your typical rom-com anime, starting from the five characters: we have Main Character-kun (Taiichi) who is a selfless freak always trying to help everybody and whose way of thinking is basically good, well-seen, positive and stuff; we have Best Friend-kun (Aoki) whose role is basically to act like an idiot and is regularly and violently abused by whoever is close to him; then we have Kawaii-chan (Iori) who is always cheerful and cute and hates to see people sad and youknowtherest; Bitch-chan (Yui, at least at first) who’s being exactly what she is and is one of the abusers of Best-Friend-Kun; and then finally we have the inevitable Tsundere-san (Inaba) who well, is being an apparently cold bitch and then you find out that she actually is one (maybe?).
Now. This is all stuff that you can easily find in any other rom-com anime with this kind of setting. What is it that makes Kokoro Connect better than the rest, though? It is the very LACK of randomness of those characters and, consequently, of the whole series.
Absolutely NOTHING happens or ‘exists’ for the sole sake of it. Behind every event, every action AND reaction of every character and behind any of their states of mind and ways to be there are always singular or multiple reasons which precisely explain WHY those things happen or are like that. Do not underestimate this fact, because you RARELY see such dedication to things like that and even MORE RARELY you see it done as greatly as in Kokoro Connect.
This anime also belongs to the Supernatural genre, which basically describes the whole setting of the series. The five characters are subject to strange phenomena throughout the anime, but what actually happens is not as important as how it influences the personal relations of the five. These strange phenomena involve faculties or abilities we maybe dreamed of or wished we have, such as telepathy or body switching; all things which we thought would be cool or entertaining, well… Kokoro Connect analyses them really well and you’ll notice how wrong, in certain occasions, your expectations have been about having such powers.
I have my own way of rating music (and any other artistic aspect) in an anime: if I do not notice the music while watching, it means that it simply accompanies well the show and I give it an 8/10. If I DO notice it, it can either be because it’s very well done (9/10) or, on the contrary, it’s very poorly written or executed (7/10). Then it can turn into a 10/10 if the music is REALLY awesome or it can be a complete disaster and just level down to a 6/10.
Kokoro Connect, in this scale, is a 9/10, both musically-wise and artistically-wise. Certain scores are particularly interesting and kind of exotic for anime standards, and I simply loved the art.
So, bottom line, who would I recommend this anime to?
EVERYONE. Everyone who’s interested in watching something BRILLIANTLY DONE. I wouldn’t recommend it because it has some NEVER SEEN ORIGINAL ASPECT or WOW SO MANY FEELS YOU’LL DROWN IN YOUR OWN TEARS, no, I would simply recommend it because I have rarely seen something, after all, very SIMPLE being pulled off THAT nicely.
