[[ SPOILER WARNING ]]
Up until Michi Random I was a big fan of Iori, and Iori still is my favorite character, but this arc was executed strangely and I have very mixed thoughts on it all. On one hand, I see what they were going for here. What Iori goes through in this arc isn't all that unrealistic. Holding yourself together for too long and eventually cracking under the pressure, distancing yourself and lashing out at people in the process, is a very real thing, and that's somewhere I and many others have been before. Having an emotional breakdown, no longer being able to be your ideal self, and believing you're a terrible person is a heavy topic to cover and I really do respect them for trying. That said, I seriously question the way this was executed.
What I don't get is why they decided to treat Iori as a borderline villain for over half the entire arc. Iori's downward spiral begins when her negative emotions are being transmitted to her friends against her will, worsening the depression that caused those negative thoughts in the first place. But instead of letting us in on her turmoil, they decide to give us as little insight as to how she's feeling as possible so we'll just antagonise her and think she's just being an asshole. Nearly every confrontation with Iori just ends with her saying a bunch of vague stuff about herself and making a few snide remarks. Even the parts where we do get to hear some of her inner monologue are vague, saying things like "I can't take this anymore" and not much else. Hell, in the final episode they heavily imply the emotional transmissions only ever transmitted her negative emotions and none of the rest.
I really don't understand why they intentionally painted her in as bad a light as possible, all of this could've been solved had they just put this arc more from her perspective. I realize they're mainly trying to give us the perspective of her friends, but if the perspective were mainly just from Iori herself this time around I feel like the topic would've been handled so much better. I want to understand what she's going through, I want to see her emotional conflicts, and I want to see her coping with the weight of her actions. I guess you could argue that the audience having the perspective of her friends is supposed to teach them that their own friends may go through something similar and you should still believe in them even if they're as negative as Iori? But if that’s the case I still feel like having this arc from Iori’s perspective would’ve been more effective at teaching the same lesson. If that were the case we'd actually see and understand what she’s going through as well as how her friends are reacting to it, giving us a fuller picture and a better understanding of both sides.
I think the worst part about all of this though is that this "villain" arc isn't even convincing, at least to me it wasn't. They seem to legitimately expect you to believe that it’s possible Iori has always secretly been this disconnected and never truly cared about her friends. I know this is supposed to play into the whole split personality aspect of her character, but I still didn’t buy it. Maybe this could’ve worked better had it happened earlier on in the series, but at this point we’d seen her open up when she was turned into a young child, when she was dealing with her mom’s abusive ex-husband, and when she was moments away from dying. Under all of these extreme circumstances, you expect me to believe she never once had a moment of sincerity up until this point? If the arc truly did end with Iori being revealed to have actually never cared about anyone, I would've just seen that as them doing a complete 180 for the sake of drama, not a natural progression of her character. When it was all over I wasn’t thinking “I’m glad everything worked out”, I was thinking “what was the point of any of this?”
I enjoyed Kokoro Connect very much up until these OVAs and it's a bit disappointing that the anime had to end on what I see as a sour note. Again, I see what they were going for here in Michi Random, but I think it could've been handled a lot better.
