Kokoro Connect

Him♻Her Up↕Down Front↔Back Forward▶◀Reverse❕Pain🔗Friendship🔗Shame🔗Love🔗Bonding

Bring a change of clothes.

At Yamaboshi Academy, club participation is mandatory. 5 independent & solitary kids end up forming a club to hide the fact that 🅾 of them actually found a club: The Cultural Research Club. Its English acronym is STUCS - like, stuck, which describes our 5 leads. (I doubt that's by accident. English puns are common in East Asian features) + "Every organization is bound to have a few rogue elements," we're told. It adds up to good writing. KC opens w/ an aerial shot & then we /zoom into/ our 5 main protags' lives.

Here's the STUCS flagship members:

Taichi, or clueless nice guy/selfless-freak, per Inaba - his club of choice was the pro wrestling club. It doesn't exist. Nice try.

Aoki - he heard there was a Players Club. Unfortunately for him, it's as active as the pro wrestling club.

Iori - stumped, she asked her homeroom teacher to pick one for her as a surprise. Her exuberance can get the upper hand, at times. "You never know if she's doing it on purpose or not," is what we hear. She flashes her panties, but they look like shorts. Giggling it off, she seems mischievous & it's endearing. She's for a °juicier° club 📰. Innuendo & naughtiness are her schtick. We will learn why she "acts out".

Inaba - she joined the computer club & immediately quit b/c she got into a spat w/ the president. She's a 5th wheel in STUCS, partly b/c she enjoys 🔎bserving more than partaking.

Yui - she's a sucker for anything cute. Her application to be in the Fancy Club failed b/c it had already shut down.

When we meet Yui & Inaba, each looks uncomfortable in her own skin. In fact, that's /exactly/ the case. On STUCS 1st morning, they haltingly tell the others that for a brief moment the night before, their bodies↔switched & switched back. It's not long before Taichi-M shifts into Iori's body-F - The hands auto-go to the breasts to cop the 1st feel of a lifetime. Next morning, there's a 3-body-switch! Things are tangled. The swaps become more frequent & our STUCS start to panic. (I don't want to be /stuck/ in someone else's body!) An "observer" introduces himself to them: Heartseed. He's low-energy. No inflection in his voice. His every syllable sounds as if he's abt to fall asleep before the next. 'Don't worry abt being spied on 24/7', he reassures (that would take °energy°). Forget arguing w/ him; he just won't: Too strenuous. I gobbled this Heartseed guy up (maybe b/c the golden throated David Matranga does the English voice dubbing). He's the nebulous character that's been jerking the puppet strings. He inhabits bodies of the weak, like Teach Go, to talk to them. The STUCS agree on rules for the M/F switches, but curiosity & a sense of daring threatens the balance. KC is abt selfishness; how our fears & desires can shape our personalities/how we interact w/ others. 1-by-1, our protags' personalities & actions are deconstructed.

Can a selfless freak truly be a selfish freak? Taichi has a hard decision. It's actually not hard, it's just hard for him b/c he's never sorted out his priorities (or settled on the correct ones, rather). If he does what he MUST do, somebody might get hurt. He can't get over that 🚧. That's part of growing up. We must do The. Necessary. Things., even if it hurts someone's feelings. Weakness does much more harm. "If you have resolve, conviction, & a firm grasp of what's important to you, everything else just kind of flows. If you don't know what's important, you don't know what to do half the time." Thus is the class president's summation. The context is the *right thing to do; it's not a narcissist manifesto. Taichi realizes: "I did some thinking & I realized that I am a selfish, self-centered person. Once My Mind Is Made Up I lock myself in & ignore all other possible conclusions, & if I think I'm right abt something, I'll never admit I'm wrong, & that stubbornness gets in the way sometimes. I'm a selfish jerk." Selflessness can be a mask, & it can also be a device to present ourselves as perfect. KC challenges viewers. This type of psychological deconstruction is one of the reasons that I've fallen in love w/ anime. Taichi IS a selfless person. He cares abt other people, wants to fix every hurt, & right every wrong. He'll sacrifice himself 1st rather than let someone else be harmed. Hero-complex is his form of self-centeredness; his form of pride. He injects himself into situations as if he's the panacea. Does that make him bad? Absolutely not. He's as good as it gets. What we have to realize is that just as our psychology isn't simple, our goodness isn't either. Human beings are born 100% selfish & maturity is learning to shake it off like snow on our backs.

Aoki hears all of this & concludes: "I don't think it's possible to do something completely altruistic, you know what I mean?" Bingo! Humans are beautiful, but tarnished. Anyone who thinks s/he has pure motives is deluded. Do what's right & don't worry that there's a kernel of selfishness in there somewhere. It's impossible to pick it all out.

Though they do get into the topics of sex, love, & attraction, KC is nothing like those sexualized "kids" cartoons that we see in anime. They go deeper. One of the girls in the group suffers from androphobia (fear of men) b/c of an attempted sexual assault when she was in Middle school. She's terrified b/c men are so strong - stronger than her. (Taichi actually kicks himself in the groin, during a body switch, to show her how easy it is to ward off a male - selfless-freak!)

In ep4 we leave the bright side & examine some of the menacing fears that surface re: the potential to act w/ impunity in someone else's body. One person in the group trusts nobody: Cops arrest bodies, & judges throw bodies into prison. None of them are to be trusted w/ "my" body! The dark side ends up being much worse than taking the rap for somebody else's crimes, however. KC's psychology complexifies fast. "If I show people how weak I am, they won't need me anymore," says one protag who is determined to always be strong. We dress up our lives w/ a variety of BS, but if/when reality smacks us, it all drops away. Serious things happen that make these kids deal in °truth°.

One protag compartmentalized her personality to survive early life. Now she feels phony & doesn't know who she is. She's told that 'in every case you are still you,' & that 'everyone wears a mask at some point.' Perhaps she does it more frequently than some other people, but that doesn't matter. Lots of people will change themselves to fit the situation. Nobody's strong enough to ignore everyone else & be themselves. In KC they get to walk in another person's shoes, to look at themselves from the outside, & see the people in their lives from new angles. They will sort out some wrong choices they've made, and revisit regrets & key moments that may have led to behavior & personality changes, so that they can now release them. Drop that baggage off & be free.

Next their desires get unleashed uncontrollably. These kids get a crash course in dealing w/ shame & embarrassment. At 1st it's the girl who gets sex crazed(?). The writer addresses this a couple of eps into this motif. Aoki, wannabe Players Club member, does bring up that he's got a filthy mind (never met a guy that denied it). Basically it's his ironclad determination that keeps him from jumping on the girl that he likes, he says. Practice doeth make perfect. The point of the whole vignette is that our desires can be so strong that we might feel that we're helpless against them. & the answer is: Ironclad determination. ♻To quote Prez again: "If you have resolve, conviction, & a firm grasp of what's important {the *right thing to do} everything else just kind of flows."

In the later eps, irony 🥊 a couple of these characters in the jaw. Some of their emphatic judgments abt others are actually more fitting of themselves. Idk anything abt author Sadanatsu Anda, but that's the type of insight a person picks up when s/he hits a low point. It's more true than you would think. We are all blind to our own stuff. Don't doubt it. 🙈

Rated 7.75 on MAL, KC is a 2012 release of 17 25-min English dubbed eps. There's no subtitles & the show happens to feature Japanese writing as communication w/ no interpretation. Just have a voice actor read the words out loud for us, pls! It's up & down w/ some eps, scenes, & motifs that could be better. It's worth watching b/c the 📝 is at times outstanding, & the treatment of the protags' personal struggles & interior psychology is quite insightful. Some of the art is gorgeous. It's not a comedy, but they do a much appreciated Princess Bride call out w/ a gallant As-you-wish.😍

QUOTES📢

Never forget that kindness can hurt someone instead of help, at times.

I found that complaining abt things that only bother me a teeny bit is a great stress reliever.

〰🖍 IMHO

🎬72 📝76 🎭7 💓5 🦋3 🌞6 🎨7 ⚡4 🎵/🔊6 😅4 😭4 😱4 😯5 😖0 🤔84 💤35 🔚 7 (The End is not a conclusion as the manga goes on)

Age 15+ sexual innuendo & joking ° girls' breast sizes are revealed ° boy admits to girl that he masterbated while thinking of her ° Taichi in Iori's body goes for the breasts ° another female student happens to be looking. She offers to help... She's very good w/ her hands... Taichi's rescued by himself/Iori in his body. (It's not as confusing to watch. Don't let my garbling scare you off). None of it is gratuitous. What happens, & the words that are said, all have a purpose.

Rated TV-PG-13

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