Review of Kokoro Connect

**Please note this review is about the 13 main episodes as well as the 4 OVAs, for a total of 17 episodes.** Kokoro Connect is, at it's core, a fairly stereotypical and cliche Slice of Life anime. High school setting? Check. Mixed gender group of close friends who have romantic feelings for each other? Check. Crying, growing as people, trials and tribulations that result in characters getting to know each other better? Check. And yet, despite falling into many of the traps that a huge number of Slice of Life anime so often fall into, I quite enjoyed Kokoro Connect. It does enough well as a wholeand has a cast of developed, likable characters that it was, for the most part, able to make up for its shortcomings and be an enjoyable ride.

Art-

It's a pretty show for sure. Being a relatively recent anime it doesn't look dated at all. All five members of the main cast are visually distinct and have their own hair color and characteristics. The animation is smooth and never feels choppy or awkward. It's not the kind of show that goes for magical, over the top visuals so I don't know that there is any one moment that truly blew me away visually but it's consistently very pretty throughout and there are no qualms to be had about the way it looks.

Sound-

In the English dub, which is what I watched, voice duties are handled by a cast of established veterans. If you check my profile, three of the ten members of my favorite people list- Monica Rial, Luci Christian and Emily Neves- all provide voice work for this anime and, as always, they nail it. Luci Christian tends to consistently be the best voice performer in the large majority of anime she's in and I'd say that's the case here as well, delivering a strong, believable performance as Inaba- a character with quite a bit of emotional range and likely not an easy character to portray.

Greg Ayres is a voice actor I'm not generally a fan of, and he's definitely annoyed me in more than one of his previous roles, but he delivers a solid, non-whiny performance as main character Taichi in this anime.

The soundtrack is sneaky good in Kokoro Connect. One track in particular gets reused perhaps a smidge too often, but the music consistently fits the emotional tone of the scene very well and there were a couple standout tracks that would be pleasant to listen to independent from the anime.

Characters/Story-

One of the main charms of Kokoro Connect is that the main cast, while stereotypical and cliche in a number of ways, are all genuinely likable. They're all reasonably developed, though two of the characters certainly get less development than the other three, and they all contribute to the story in a meaningful way as opposed to just being there for the sake of being there.

The first arc in particular was great and was definitely my favorite arc of the show. It had great pacing, veered just a little tiny bit into dark territory but not too much, had emotionally compelling content and a very satisfying conclusion. While I did genuinely like all three of the other arcs, for me none of them were quite as good as the first.

I specifically felt that the show lost a little bit of steam near the end, with the third and fourth arcs both being a little weaker, slower and more boring than its predecessors, but my biggest complaint about these arcs is that they definitely started getting more than a little preachy and became less than subtle with their "this is what we want you to take away from this" messages. It got a bit cheesy after a while when characters would, with zero subtlety or ambiguity, exclaim things like "I have value! My life is worth living! I'm going to live with my fears and make the most of each day and enjoy my life!". Perhaps I'm just the wrong target audience for this kind of show, but I'm perfectly capable of understanding what message an anime is trying to convey without having it shoved down my throat.

Aside from some of the cheesy cliches, there were also some serious conveniences. The anime did do a good job of covering its own tracks and having explanations for some of the obvious problems with what it's showing you, but there were still undoubtedly a few times where things worked a certain way or happened at a certain time because of course they did.

Enjoyment-

As stated, the first arc was really good, the second arc was good and then I felt it went a little bit downhill, but at no point was I disliking what I was watching. If I had to grade the arcs, the first through the fourth, I'd give them a 9, 8, 7 and 7 respectively, none of which are bad scores. The ending didn't blow me away by any means but I ended the show happy with what I watched as a whole and I'd watch it again in the future.

Overall-

While undeniably guilty of possessing many of the stereotypical Slice of Life cliches, as well as a few cheesy conveniences and preachy moments, Kokoro Connect does a lot of things well from its charming, likable characters to its pleasant soundtrack to its varied plot threads to its strong voice performances. All in all if you're a fan of the genre I'd absolutely recommend giving it a watch. I enjoyed the show. :)

OBJECTIVE RATING- 8
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 8