Kokoro Connect Discussion Thread

[something]

Originally Posted by nakimushi

Actually, I think I'm the only poster who has commented on it more than once - so it is not really a very widespread sentiment.

I thought a couple people had agreed, but might have read multiple posts fro you thinking it was different people. Heh.

Other than the abrupt introduction of more serious elements in the second episode, during the initial appearance of Heartseed, my issue with this episode was with a comedy scene that came after a dramatic scene, that seemed to have no carry-over from the preceding scene.
To me the characters in that scene seem to act as if unaware to what had happened in the dramatic scene that it followed, almost as if they were in different shows. I do not actually think that all of the transitions have been bad though.

Different scenes, but I guess I assumed it was the next day, or even days later. Could have been the same day though.

Apparently all three girls have (or will have) some sort of problem. If the source of the other two girls' issues are as serious as Yui's, I hope they find a balance between humor and drama that does not trivialize or oversimplify any complex problems. That Yui did not appear to get over her issue immediately is a least a positive sign in that direction so far.

What we know about Iori so far is that her parents are divorced and her mom isn't home much. And there was that brief scene with Iori's mom where Iori seems to be holding back her feelings telling her mom to do what she wants. That's well-trodden ground in anime so I guess they could go the "Iori's mom is remarrying" route.

As for Inaba, hell I can't even begin to guess. I expect her to have the most intractable issues of all.

Well, a random thing I did think about though, is that it would appear that this setup pretty much precludes any characters from actually getting romantically involved. The threat of a random body swap at an inopportune moment would appear to be a very strong disincentive.

The comedic possibilities though... pure gold is to be found there.

[nakimushi]

Originally Posted by something

I thought a couple people had agreed, but might have read multiple posts fro you thinking it was different people. Heh.

You were right, a couple of posters did agree with my first complaint about it in episode 2 when the serious aspects were suddenly introduced for the first time.
However, I'm the only poster who commented on it again after that though.

Originally Posted by something

Different scenes, but I guess I assumed it was the next day, or even days later. Could have been the same day though.

Ah, it had not even occurred to me that even though it was the next scene, it might not have actually been the same day. If so, it would explain what I perceived as a lack of continuity.

Originally Posted by something

The comedic possibilities though... pure gold is to be found there.

I would be very impressed if the writers found a way to pull it off.

[Buckeye]

- Hey Taichi, everybody is an enemy. Even Iori.
- So Taichi is using that pro wrestling philosophy for his jobber status.
- "Yui" is confessing to Yoshifumi. And now, "Himeko" confesses.
- Hey, "Taichi" take those cell phones away. Wait, that's Yui.
- Now, "Yoshifumi" is stripping. I didn't think Himeko would do something like that.
- So Yui is afraid of men. Must be really tough.
- At night, it's "Taichi" and "Yui" out in a park.
- How to get over androphobia? A groin kick by "Yui" did the trick.
- And Yui is back and ready to move forward.
- Himeko collapses.

Another nice episode as it was centered around Yui being afraid of men. And then there was that scene in the park where Taichi and Yui were switched and pretty much had to confront the problem head-on. Next episode, we should learn more about Himeko.

[Fencedude]

I was less than amazingly thrilled about how the Yui situation worked out as well.

[ookamigirl]

Taichi got teased by the girls ^^
Seems like others didn't know Yui's reasons for not liking guys after all.
Well, at least Taichi did his best to help her.
Oh, even Iori has a trauma from the past.
Looks like Taichi is a substitute psychiatrist for them now.
Damn, Iori sure had a lot of dads. So she has a problem of being herself.
Well, when you keep pretending you're someone else, you lose your real self.
Inaba was having trust issues about the whole body swapping thing.
This episode sure was full of everyone's issues....

[FUNiOP]

So all the girls have problems and Taichi is there to fix them all. Huh. Wasn't really that from this show. Is Aoki going to be the comic relief forever? It looks like at least his love for Yui is genuine enough that it could be the catalyst for his serious development. The body-swapping was interestingly largely irrelevant in this episode. They had a brief moment of it, but they didn't really have to. Maybe they gave themselves a quota to put at least some of it in every episode since that's what the show is supposed to be about. Of course, using body-swapping to bring out the things these characters try to keep to themselves and forcing them to help each other get through them is probably the best use of it for anything that's not trying to be pure comedy. The execution is still leaving something to be desired, though.

[stardf29]

It is a bit weird that the show has covered so much ground already and it's only four episodes in. Maybe the show has only really begun to really get into what all the characters are going through. (We don't even really know what Inaba's sickness is like.)

I probably wouldn't have liked this episode if it were episode 6 or further. Here, though, it almost felt ominous. Like Taichi is running around putting band-aids on wounds, but you know that there's going to be an ambulance taking everyone to the hospital for surgery later. I guess a lot of this does depend on how the show carries out these next 8+ episodes.

Anyways, with that in mind, it's still a good episode. We get to see what's really happening with Iori (which explains her earlier monologue about identity in episode 2), and I like that Inaba's trust issues don't come from some traumatic past and are just there. Overuse of traumatic pasts can get tiring sometimes, and some people just have issues because they have issues (and as Inaba mentions, those can be even harder to deal with because they involve changing your self, not just overwriting some trauma).

And yes, Taichi's "confession" to Inaba and her follow-up "confession" were great.

Looks like next episode will have that scene (the one in one of the PVs). And we've still yet to hit the halfway mark...

[nakimushi]

Originally Posted by stardf29

It is a bit weird that the show has covered so much ground already and it's only four episodes in. Maybe the show has only really begun to really get into what all the characters are going through. (We don't even really know what Inaba's sickness is like.)

Yep, I would expect that Inaba's illness will become more of an issue later. Having her only issue being her lack of trust in others, was not really much of a difficulty, especially considering how easily it appeared to be cleared.

However, to have Inaba say that she was afraid that one of the others would actually commit a crime while occupying her body seemed a just a bit far-fetched to me. Yes, fears can be completely irrational, but with Inaba knowing all of them as long as she apparently has, and also knowing (by experience) that a person cannot control when he or she would switch back (which would largely rule out any possible planning by the potential felon), for her to have that particular fear was not entirely believable to me.

Yui's fear of what Aoki would possibly do while occupying her body in comparison seemed quite reasonable.

Definitely, for a person who is unable to genuinely trust others, even friends she has known for years, I would expect that the experience of body swapping would be considerably more stressful for Inaba. The stress that she has shown over the past couple of episodes was very consistent with that. I just thought that the "commit a crime" fear went just a little too far.

Originally Posted by stardf29

I probably wouldn't have liked this episode if it were episode 6 or further. Here, though, it almost felt ominous. Like Taichi is running around putting band-aids on wounds, but you know that there's going to be an ambulance taking everyone to the hospital for surgery later.

Yes, it does sort of seem like these issues are just a "warm up" for the later episodes.

Originally Posted by stardf29

We get to see what's really happening with Iori (which explains her earlier monologue about identity in episode 2),

Actually for me, it had the opposite effect - it confirmed my belief that Iori was not the actual speaker of that earlier exposition. The style of speech in the former was completely different than the style Iori used in this episode, even though she was talking about the same issue.

That this issue was also apparently Iori's deepest secret, makes it even less likely that she would have brought up the identity issue in the manner it was brought up previously. To me, the possibility that the manner in which Iori was speaking during the previous time, was because she was using another "persona" did not seem likely, the style of speech was just too different.

However, unless Heartseed either takes over another one of them again (in the same way - anonymously) or admits it, there is a still a fair amount of ambiguity which makes either interpretation likely IMO.

Originally Posted by stardf29

I like that Inaba's trust issues don't come from some traumatic past and are just there. Overuse of traumatic pasts can get tiring sometimes, and some people just have issues because they have issues (and as Inaba mentions, those can be even harder to deal with because they involve changing your self, not just overwriting some trauma).

Yes, I agree. It would have been a bit too much for all three girls to have experienced the same level of trauma that Yui did. Aside from Inaba, if Iori had actually been violently abused, it would have felt gratuitous. Her fear of her violent stepfather is sufficient.

Minor quibbling aside, I enjoyed this episode.

[HitokiriShadow]

Aaaaaahhhh.... Hmmmmm. I'm not sure how to react to this episode. One the one hand, it continued to do the things that make me love this show and do them very well. On the other hand.... I have some concerns.

We've now hit all three girl's major issues in a span of two episodes, and still in the first novel/arc. And they all just spilled their guts to Taichi, basically because he's just such a nice, trustworthy guy. The scenes were still great individually, but to get all three in rapid succession is.... not so great. There are potential benefits to getting all their issues out early on.... but there are better ways to do it, preferably without involving Taichi in everyone's issues.

I have a feeling by the end, most or all of the show's problems will basically boil down to the show's own unfortunately pathological need to have Male Lead, which practically necessitates him being involved at basically every step purely because of light novel conventions and its audience. I'm not even saying he shouldn't be there, just don't have him be The Male Lead. Treat them more or less equally, like an ensemble cast.

Taichi is basically pathologically Male Lead. He's nice and helps people. That's almost the entire character of 95% of male leads (the remainder is how much of a moron they are [particularly with girls] and how much they freak out at the sight of half of fully naked girls). By god, they better do something interesting with that, because otherwise he's been given the smallest sliver of characterization, solely to justify making him the Nice Guy Male Lead.

I think I at least have to give him points for the secret he spilled to Inaban. And WTF at Inaban basically having that same secret.

I still quite enjoyed the episode, as both Iori and Inaban's issues were interesting and their scenes, on their own, were still everything I love about this show. The show just now has some clear issues that are likely to be a continuing (hopefully minor) problem holding the show back from being as amazing as it could and should be.

[something]

Episode 4:

- Inabaaaaaan! ...is fine. Supposedly.
- She wastes no time changing the subject to Yui, and Tachi x Iori.
- Woah there, Inaban. You just pissed Iori off - for real. That was a scary face. Hell Inaban is so hard to read. I'm sure she genuinely thinks Taichi can help, but did she have any other motives for bringing it up?
- Oh and this also confirms Inaban knows what's up with Iori. And Iori knew she knew and made her promise not to talk about it. Both girls have definitely relied on Inaban a lot.

- So Iori's mother is indeed thinking of remarrying? And apparently not for the first time. Five marriages, goddamn.
- Geh that was close. When she started talking about changing her persona to match her second dad's tastes, I thought we were going back to the rape well again. Thankfully not.
- Okay no more marriages maybe...?
- Now we know for sure that Heartseed definitely wasn't talking through Iori when she got all philosophical. What she's saying now matches right up with what she was saying then. Her entire problem is a complete lack of a sense of self. Being shunted willy-nilly from one body to the next, having to play a completely different role at the drop of a hat, that's the wost possible thing that could happen to her when she's trying to define herself.
- Taichi has just about the most generic response ever to that, but really, what else can you say?

- Taichi-in-Inaban having fun puking.
- And now it's Inaban's turn. Her problem? Intense distrust of all other human beings. Whee! Really, Yui's issue was the least problematic of the three as far as the body swapping goes. Because we've got Iori wondering if she'll cease to exist and Inaban having no trust in what other people will do while in her body. Fun fun.
- "I've masturbated to you before!" Hahah. Honestly, I half expected her reply to be "Of course you have." Is there really any possibility that a heterosexual teenage male could be friends with three such attractive girls and not do that at least once? Inaban of all people wouldn't be shocked at that.
- Ahahaha oh wow. That look on Inaban's face at the end. And that laugh. Sawashiro Miyuki to the max! <3

Hmmmmmmmmm! So. What's my reaction to this episode?

We covered a LOT of ground. Enough that my first thought until the preview was that the first novel was originally intended to be fairly self-contained and deal with the girls' trauma somewhat conclusively, but only continued after it found some measure of popularity. That could explain why we did both Iori and Inaban in one episode, which shouldn't have been necessary at all.

But the preview felt like it was saying "hold up, shit ain't fixed yet". I hope that's the case. All three girls (and probably the guys but I'm not going to pretend I care about that) revealed deep-seated problems built up through many years of trauma and its aftermath. And Taichi "fixed" them all exceptionally easily, literally in a few minutes each.

If the "self-contained first novel" idea is right that would explain it; it'd be a little unfortunate but it'd be understandable, and I'm sure we'd find some new interesting narrative direction to follow. But my preference is that nobody is really fixed yet, because I see a lot more potential here. The scars are still there, it's just that the girls have finally opened up about them. Taking an old bandage off a wound might allow for it to get cleaned out, but it also brings the chance of the wound reopening.

What's needed in the latter case is an exceptionally skillful pivot into reopening those wounds in a way that still feels natural after spending time on addressing them, and a solution that doesn't just feel like a more detailed replay of everything Taichi just did. Fingers crossed? I think it can pull it off.