--- non-spoilery review ---
This is a show based on a game by the same name.
In the game, there is a point where the plot could possibly diverge. During a climactic, sort of final battle, the protagonist gets injured and is given a choice to go back and fight, or to give up, and "reset" the world. Resetting the world means going back to the beginning, and giving up on all his bonds. Or in other words, giving up all the relationships he has formed over the course of the story with all the characters, all the adventures they've had, all the memories. Giving up all this, to "try again".
So you can choose to give up and try again, or not give up and get back into the fight.
Giving up, leads to a bad ending in the game. The protagonist wakes up to Kokkoro singing him a lullaby, the same as when he first met her, but he is crying for all that he lost, even though he doesn't remember.
Going back to the fight continues the story, and the story in the game currently is a continuation of that.
The anime follows this "bad ending" scenario. It is kind of a what-if. An alternate timeline, that continues from his choice of giving up.
This is the premise for the story, and as such, the overall plot should be about the protagonist, Yuuki, regaining all he lost, and this time doing things right.
Instead, he is inexplicably relegated to being essentially a side-character for the show, while the real protagonists are Pecorine and Kyaru. He very rarely has any actual one on one scenes with other characters, and I could probably count the number of times he has any meaningful interaction with Kyaru, Peco, and Kokkoro, on one hand. Even if we add all three of them up.
Whereas in the game, Yuuki has many one on one interactions with the characters, directly creating relationships and friendships between HIM specifically and the other characters, in the anime all of the relationships are built between the other members of his guild, bishokuden, while he just kind of stands around.
This is completely at odds with the premise that they have created for this show, and clashes with the ending.
In fact, the staff frequently make strange choices/changes, only to sort of write themselves into a corner, and then write in things that superficially undo those changes.
The anime has way too many characters that are completely useless to the story, and only serve to eat up episodes that could've been used in expanding existing characters/relationships/plot. Then after their introduction episode, the characters are only brought back in some token, completely meaningless appearance at the end, if they even get brought back at all. Not to mention, all this does is confuse all of the anime-only's who are not going to keep track of all these characters dumped on them every week.
Then we have all the OC characters. Characters who only exist in the anime for gags, or characters who eat up an episode to themselves only to never be seen again (like in episode 1). Here is an idea, why not use existing characters actually from the game for these roles?
Finally, on characters, the anime is missing many characters that are very important to the plot, and whose absence makes entirely no sense. I don't even understand how they could do a proper season 3, because the presence of some of these missing characters in this first arc of the story is pretty important to a season 3.
The anime suffers from an overall lack of direction. A failure to understand what Princess Connect is. It feels like they wanted to do something different from the game, but it ends up just being a vastly inferior version of that story.
If they chose to do this version of the story with an intention to attract new fans to Princess Connect, because they wouldn't be familiar with the story from the game or its prequel, then they have failed at this because you either have slice of life episodes where nothing happens, or fast and loose plot out of nowhere. Couples with the fact the new characters are thrown at you left and right, with no way to possibly remember them, because the anime doesn't care about having you know the characters.
I will give credit where credit is due though.
The art game is on point. This show clearly had a good budget, and talented artists. There are many very well done action scenes, and it is generally very pleasing to look at.
In summary, this is a poor adaptation of a game, but it has a high budget with great art. They should've just stuck to slice of life stuff, because they have no idea how to handle the story or the lore. If you don't know the source material, you will probably find yourself lost as the show goes on.
People who just want to see cute girls, cool fight scenes, and turn off their brains for anything story related will probably enjoy it, I guess.
---spoilery rant stuff---
In regards to key characters being missing, and why this is a problem.
The major problem here, is the absence of Twinkle Wish members Yui, Rei, and Hiyori.
To simplify things, the world that Re Dive takes place in, is a world that is created by Yui's wish at the end of the original game. It is a world created to fulfil her wish, and as such, whenever the conditions of her wish can no longer be met, the world resets and starts again. This is why the world loops. So what is her wish? Her wish is to be with Yuuki forever (I'm paraphrasing). So whenever she, or Yuuki, dies then the wish can no longer be true and so the world resets.
So how can Yui never show up in the first two seasons? Her wish is to basically be with Yuuki. The world is created to grant her wish. Yet the writers treat her like she doesn't exist and is a character from a previous loop.
Further more, the second arc of the story heavily revolves around Yui, her wish, the circumstances of the world, etc. In the game, there is a lot of foreshadowing towards this during the first arc of the story. In the anime, because they have never introduced her, they have also never done any real foreshadowing to the further events. And if they do decide to do a season 3, what are they going to do, make Yui suddenly appear now and act like the viewers should care about her?
There are some other character's whose absence does not make any sense. For example, Masaki. Masaki is Neneka's Princess Knight, just like Yuuki is Labyrista's Princess Knight. So where the hell is he, when Neneka is captured and all that? In the game, he works together with everyone to rescue her. In the anime, I guess he is on vacation. Or where is Muimi? Okuto? etc. All relatively important characters to the story.
Let's go over some of the other plot problems.
For some reason, looping has made certain characters weaker. Namely Yuuki and Kaiser Insight.
Now, this doesn't make any sense, because this never happened in any other loops, it isn't suggested to be something that would happen if they did another loop in the game, and there is no real reason why Kaiser Insight would lose her special ability, and not any of the other Seven Crowns members. Kaiser Insight is not the one creating the loops and has nothing to do with it, so why would it affect her?
Allow me to elaborate on her ability, and why this is a problem. Each member of the Seven Crowns has a special ability. The abilities have a special name that I am not going to bother trying to translate. Neneka's is the ability to copy things. She can create copies of herself or other things she has copied (for example other people), or she can change her own appearance as well. Labyrista is object creation/change. She can manipulate the world. Christina is a combat only ability which basically allows her to change the enemy's hit chance to 0% and her own hit chance to 100% (guaranteed dodge and attack).
Kaiser Insight's special ability allows her to read all of the world's data, and by doing so this allows her to predict her enemies movements etc beforehand, making her difficult to fight (ignore the fact I am saying her instead of him). This ability ALSO allows her to know about previous loops, because she can read the world's data.
There are only a handful of characters who know about previous loops, because their special ability allows them to. Christina's, for example, is a combat only ability, and so she knows nothing of previous loops. Because Kaiser Insight can no longer use this ability, she should no longer have any knowledge of the previous loops. Furthermore, she should also be much easier to fight.
In my review, I wrote that the writers had pointlessly written themselves into a corner on occasion in the show. This is an example of that. If Kaiser Insight can no longer use her ability, which is what makes her strong, then she would no longer be much of a threat for the cast. So in order to rectify the problem that they created, they have Labyrista inexplicably fight her and lose, only to get captured and give her powers to Kaiser Insight. So what was the point in making this change to Kaiser Insight's character? Debuff her to make her weaker, only to buff her again through something else. Why not just have her not lose that ability in the first place?
It's the same story with Yuuki. They create a needless dilemma with Yuuki in that he cannot use his powers because of all the looping, only to give Kokkoro a key out of nowhere to fix him. So why have this plot thread in the first place?
They also actively avoid all mention of the real world. I imagine this is why Muimi is not in the show, because she actually has memories of the real world, and tries to explain it to others. The real world is VERY important to the story of Princess Connect. Outside of that extremely brief scene with Kiiri, where you can't even really tell what's going on and might not even know it is the real world if you haven't played the game, it never gets brought up.
Labrysta's entire objective is to free everyone from the MMORPG they are stuck in, and to send them back to the real world. It is also Ameth's goal. Yet we never really see any of this in the anime.
At the end of the season, Peco reunites with her parents. It is a tearful joyous moment. But... they are just NPC's. They are not her real parents, and any memories she has of them are fake. I feel like they are trying to ignore the real world aspect of the anime, and treat it as though it is just a fantasy world like in konosuba, so they can do things like this. However, it is a complete disregard of Princess Connects plot, and overall themes.
There are many other problems with the anime.
The fact that Yuuki barely speaks, and when he does he only speaks like a toddler. In the game he is a silent protagonist because of the fact that it is a game. However he can still speak normally, and shouldn't be treated this way in the anime.
The fact that they removed all romance. Peco and Kyaru are in love with Yuuki in the game (as is virtually everyone...) whereas in the anime, most people don't seem to give a poop about him.
The changes to characters, such as Kyaru and how she acts with Peco. Kokkoro's character. So many others. Some are still the same though.
The fact that they do not understand the story of Princess Connect. For example, at the end, Yuuki gets gravely wounded. Labyrista says if he chooses to go back and fails, his very existence will be completely lost. This is nonsense, because if Yuuki dies, that just means that a new loop will start. He has died many times in fact. The anime also presents it as though Labyrista is the one causing the resets, when in actuality, she has nothing to do with it.
Or consider that in the game, in the most recent story part, Labyrista gets mortally wounded via a blade, but she saves herself by basically stitching her insides back up together on the fly. She does this because of her special ability, and the fact she is a doctor. Then she does the same thing again shortly after. Meanwhile in the anime, she gets stabbed once and it's gg.
The contradictions they make to the story they themselves wrote. Labyrista fights one on one with Kaiser Insight, which is very out of character for her. It is a gamble. Kaiser Insight mentions this, and Labyrista explains that it is because they are out of time. Yet at the end when Yuuki gets wounded, she asks him if he wants to reset or not, like it's no big deal to go through more loops. I thought we were out of time?
Honestly, I could go on forever. But I have already written a bunch of text that nobody is going to read. So I will stop here.
Just allow me to say what I think they should've done instead.
I think they should've made an adaptation of the original game. Most Princess Connect players are not familiar with the original game, because it wasn't that popular, and it ended service after just a year or so. It also didn't have any anime scenes like in the current game, Re Dive. At the same time, the original game is really important story wise for the current game, so fans would've gotten a lot out of it, and new viewers could get into the anime and then jump into the current game which continues immediately after.
Then for a second series, they could've started Re Dive. They could largely follow the game, and they wouldn't have to reintroduce all the characters because we already know them from the first series. I think this would've been really interesting.
