Review of Kokoro Connect

High school is essentially one of the most important four years of someone’s life. Throughout these years, not only does one fall under peer pressure, indecisive dramas, and separation into different clicks/social-groups, but you are often greeted with the unsatisfying feeling in overcoming mostly difficult, inexperienced tasks. However, the point of entering High School in the first place is to move onto secondary educations and learn not just fundamental cultures of others, but also about where you want to be in society for the rest of your life. During these times of hardships, not many people can gain true confidence; insecurities may rise from thepast, make many doubtful of themselves, and as a result contemplate loneliness, violence, etc.

But what every human really desires is the understanding of others; understanding of our flaws, weaknesses, highlights, memories, lusts, hatred, emotions, intelligence, shed tears, and acknowledgement in our refined existence. In other words, we want friends, people who takes pleasure in involving us in their lives.

Established in the very High School setting, Kokoro Connect is an anime which explores the meanings of friendship in multitudes of emblematic, daring perspectives. Unlike other school rom-com anime, however, Kokoro Connect entangles its plot with dynamics by exposing the likes of evilness in characters and exaggerating certain aspects of the show to enhance not just enjoyment for the audience, but the substantiality in relationships as well. Absorbing the audiences with merely just its supernatural contents, Kokoro Connect also has a strong cast of characters to carry out its investigations of quarrels between the five trouble-children, who all happened to invest their free time into the Cultural Research Club. Of the group, the five members all embody several aspects of stereotypical adolescents. In short, there’s the nice guy who apparently always finishes first (Taichi); his sidekick, who always pursues his crush regardless of circumstances (Aoki); the tsundere female archetype who, conveniently, is a black belt (Yui); an anti-social female who brings about justice in her own elegant ways (Inaba); and, the cute klutz archetype that always brightens up the mood with her visible smile (Nagase). However, there’s always more than meets the eye.

As the story steadily progresses, a creature going by the name Heartseed mysteriously brings about supernatural phenomenon in the group meant to somehow entertain it. Indeed, it did exactly that, and more. The first arc starts with the body swapping technique, where the group is challenged to understand the physical state of others in the group, their current family situations, and not misuse this opportunity for mischief. Unfortunately, even the slightest intervention of someone into your daily life could reveal subtle yet obvious problems one has. Eventually, the mental instability of many in the group begins to disclose, but luckily, friends are there to give moral support and justify the significance of their friends. It would’ve been a simplex and sweet ending if the drama stopped there, but the injudicious Heartseed shows up again and screws everything up. From there on out, secrets of the past, dreams of the future, and the desires of the present are all exposed about each characters. Instead of hiding their fears, lustful thoughts, and ambitions, each character had to overcome their comfort zones, expose their contempt, true feelings for one another, and yet still wish for the acceptance of their friends. Since they're all teenagers exposed only recently to puberty, you could probably imagine what indecent, romantic thoughts some of these personal matters involved.

After many of Kokoro’s emotional roller-coasters, I became very attached to each of the characters. What Kokoro executes so well, not many productions can pull off easily. It develops each character into appealing people in some ways, and makes the audience so involved and invested in the emotional chaos the Series present. Perhaps due to their resemblances to realistic people, seeing Kokoro’s characters make such human mistakes and overcoming it through genuine sentiments gave me a sense of responsibility, almost as if they’re real-life, humane companions. Finally, the writers created dialogues which cleverly expressed some unique aspects of these characters and essentially, we gain our trusts of each eccentric person in the story through such techniques. For example; after several characters slowly developed aggressive, dementia-like traits due to Heart-seed's plans, it corrupted the healthy relationships between the Culture Research Club's members, instead of feeling mad or anger I felt sympathy towards the group just because of Kokoro's conventional script creations and its unhurried, deliberate pacing.

Besides these shady dramas occurring on one side of the spectrum, Kokoro Connect usually has a rather lighthearted, Slice of Life vibe to compensate for all the suffering of these characters. The entrances of some of these comedy scenes are fairly coherent due to its consistency and the lighter weight on the dramatic side of it at first. But after Heartseed’s introduction of deeper conflicts, I thought the comedy would just disappear from there or perhaps alternate into a realm of melodrama. Although Kokoro Connect inevitably executed some overly emotional scenes, the Show still managed to sneak in subliminal, dark humor and its ability to balance out the humorous yet intense sides of things impressed me. Without many spoilers, Kokoro tends to hinder at very humorous yet depraved concepts. Indeed, these comedic elements exceeded my expectation in how awkwardly situations elevated so quickly and became the most absurd stand-up comedies; yet, I don’t think I ever laughed so hard in my life. The atmosphere, set-up, and state of affairs in these jokes all achieve perfection themselves, but the fact that these jokes even makes perfect contextual sense in the script-writing smothered my mind with enlightenment.

During different times of the show where it required a certain type of mood, the animation was there to polish the atmosphere, especially with its apex of horrifying, variegated, blood dripping-like backgrounds. The character designs fared up splendidly with many embellished specialties among places where and when needed. Facial expressions and the blocking of characters also contributed to the comfortableness feel Kokoro sometimes had at first and its ability to immediately transfer that cozy texture into suspense.

The musical introduction added a nice vibe in the air with the OP, and concluded in a fashionable manner with the ED, both of which epitomizes typical, catchy, yet meaningful Jpop songs. Remarkably, the background music syncs with the elements of animation where required as well; during the committing of mischief, lighthearted music plays while dramatic, mawkish music spectacles uncertainty during climatic moments. Notably, voice actor(esse)s even gave spontaneousness and energy to their 2-D characters. In essence, the visuals and melodies ended up contributing very effectively.

All in all, Kokoro Connect, utilizing supernatural themes to its advantages, is a Series illustrating an accurate stance on the dangers and rewards of relationships. Through surreal artwork & humor it brings the seemingly two dimensional characters into life, and builds each character up with depth whilst still in correlation with the story-line. Although extravagantly detailed and over-dramatic at times, Kokoro still succeeds in coping with the balances of its several genres, and radiated powerful messages as intriguing as its provocative, headstrong humor. As an exceptionally done Slice of Life formulated Series; I recommend Kokoro Connect to anime fans who enjoys silly comedies, complicated High School relationships, and wouldn’t mind challenging themselves with the concepts of true friendship, conformity, and being true to your instinctive, romantic feelings.