I decided to write a review for Kokoro Connect as many friends of mine have differing opinions about the show so I wanted to express mine in order to give as much emphasis about the enjoyment I got out of this anime.
Kokoro Connect was a bit of oddity at first, initially I found it to be quite a typical high-school club anime, and as much as I love them, I was a bit bored at first but the story quickly took a drastic turn as the first phenomenon occurred; Kokoro Connect will often make you feel very comfortable with the way the storyline is progressing before shoving an unexpected plot-twist at your face to confuse you as much as possible.
As bad as that sounds, it was this feature of the anime that kept me hooked from start to finish, and as I say that, I shall move on to the rating breakdown;
Story: 8/10
As said previously, Kokoro Connect has a knack of throwing incredible plot-twists at unexpected moments and this massively affected the anticipation I had for every coming moment of every episode; Kokoro Connect is the very definition of apprehension. The three main storyline arcs had their ups and downs, but always made up for it in the final parts of their respective sections. Despite this fact, there was a period of time between about episodes 7-10 that were INCREDIBLY slow moving and effectively reversed the anticipation formula of which I mentioned earlier. Once Episode 11 hit though, the storyline picked up massively until the end of Episode 13 in which the show left us on a large cliffhanger for the upcoming 4 episodes that will be released next year.
Art: 8/10
A hit or miss, the art of Kokoro Connect could be considered a slightly underrated style of animation. If there's anything I hate more in an anime, it's when all the characters look the same, but fortunately similar to K-on!, this anime has very lush animation and tries to create a high level of difference in the facial expressions, clothing and just mainly the character design in general. The scenery is also created with a high level of detail and the openings and endings are just beautiful, notably "Cry Out" which is the second ending of the series.
Sound: 10/10
The voice acting of Kokoro Connect is provided by well know seiyuus such as Miyuki Sawashiro and Takahiro Mizushima, and some people might find this a bad thing, especially if they've watched many anime with these VAs. But despite this, all the voice actors in Kokoro Connect provide a smooth, detailed, emotive and most importantly realistic degree of voicing. All their voices suit the characters well and I couldn't have asked for better ones. The music in Kokoro Connect, oh man, is it good. You'll be recognising the main tune by about episode 4 in a wide variety of remixes, themes and arranges. Scenes are perfectly fine tuned with the addition of these amazing tracks and I hope the series continues with this great standard.
Character: 7/10
The characters in Kokoro Connect are both stereotypical and unique in their own ways. Taichi is the standard selfless teenage male who gets all the girls and is completely unaware of it until told so. But despite this fact, he does provide his own character and still maintains a high degree of individuality. Without revealing too much, I can say that, unlike most selfless characters, Taichi gives a reason for his character and this solely is the reason that I think he is so likeable.
Another notable character would be Nagase. Nagase is very hard to describe in this review due to most of her personality is heavily influenced by her past and describing it would be a large spoiler, but it is evident that she has a very undefinable personality and her tone and character is heavily effected through the course of the anime's story and you would have to watch it to understand her reactions and personality.
The three remaining characters of the club are Himeko, Aoki and Yui. While all unique, these characters still have a high degree of development that are yet to be described, and having read all translated chapters of the light novels I can tell you that they will be fleshed out in the future.
Enjoyment: 9/10
Kokoro Connect was an anime that I was slightly reluctant to jump into giving all the views that my close friends had on it but now I can say that I will never regret my decision to watch such a fantastic anime. The only main reasons I did not give this a 10/10 enjoyment rating was because I felt that about three quarters through the anime the storyline paced very slow, giving me weeks of anticipation for the moment that the storyline would finally pick up. The other main reason is that I felt very incomplete finishing this anime and the storyline was left at a very emotional point and that, in turn made me feel like this anime didn't give me the final impression I expected it to give; this is probably because we're yet to see the final 4 episodes.
Overall 9/10.
Kokoro Connect was a great experience, and I look forward to the final episodes with glee.
*This was my first review so if you have any comments about the quality of it or how I can improve please message me :)*
Star~
