Review of Kokoro Connect
(I have watched all 17 episodes of this) Kokoro Connect is a story about a new group of high school friends who create a club because they really have nothing better to do and just want to spend time together. It's not the most original setup having been done in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Clannad, K-On, and many other animes, but this show still pulls off this idea well. The story begins when the club members are visited by a teacher who is the homeroom teacher for three of the five members. He is normally a cheerful and very easily manipulated teacher by his students,but instead he comes in looking like he is in a trance. It turns out that some "interdimensional being" (I'm not really sure what it is) is controlling him and tells the students that he is going to play a game with them. They have no choice but to surrender and go along with the game. There game changes several times during the seventeen episodes, each time giving the members a new problem and new drama to go through. In the first game, they switch bodies at random times. I won't spoil the others, but they are all interesting and keep changing enough to keep you interested and to keep messing with the students.
If you read on MyAnimeList or Wikipedia that this show is a comedy/drama, and you're expecting the comedy level to be about even without the drama, then you're mistaken. There are several sexual jokes in this show that are funny, but for the most part this show is a sad drama/psychological look at five normal high school students with normal problems and how those problems are all brought to the surface in an extreme situation.
The art in this show is good, but really not something mind-blowing as is the sound in the show. On another note, the openings never really impressed me, but the third ending song (Episodes 10-13 I believe) is one of my favorite ever.
What I think this show really succeed in is the characters. Inaba Himeko is my favorite female anime character. She is the one who tries to act mature and help everyone in the group, but she ends up forgetting to help herself and ends if in deeper problems sometimes because of it. The main character, Taichi, is not one of the strongest main characters I've seen, but he is still a good character. He act the mediator in the group helping everyone else get over their problems. He also has the least actual problems himself (at least at most times). The last character I'll mention is Iori. She seems like your typical comic-relief character at first, but it is revealed pretty quickly that she has more psychological problems than anyone else in the group. Towards the end it gets a little annoying at points how all the other characters seem to not realize what is wrong with her, but I still like her character.
Overall, I really liked this anime, and it's one of my favorite romance series. It takes a normal, school-club situation and does it well with the added supernatural body swapping, etc. games thrown in as a more original idea.