Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 6, 2013

Kokoro Connect is an anime that takes a page out of the Freaky Friday playbook—or perhaps more appropriately, five pages. This often charming but patently kind of weird outing takes traditional shōnen trappings and wraps them up in a kind of bizarre sci-fi package when five kids who are kind of misfits have to decide how to participate in a required after school club assignment (lovers of slice of life anime will know that these after school clubs are a huge part of Japanese school life). The five end up forming their own Cultural Club, which is kind of a catch all for these kids who, being square pegs, don’t easily fit into the round holes of the other clubs. That aspect of the series has been told innumerable times before in other anime, but Kokoro Connect ups the ante by then having the various kids’ consciousnesses start to hop around into their club mates’ bodies, Freaky Friday style.

The series may tend to opt for a slightly pretentious (and some might argue trite) answer for why this peculiar chain of events is taking place, but most of the fun of the series comes from the actual switches which take place. Kokoro Connect probably predictably plays some of these changes for their slightly salacious aspects, but the show has a surprising amount of heart as well as it starts to unveil the personalities of the five kids involved. It’s an anime riff on “something borrowed, something blue”, where the “weddings” are souls transmigrating to join with new bodies. The show doesn’t always click completely, but it at least has a bit of an unusual twist (five, actually) going for it which may recommend it to those who might already be drawn to shōnen but perhaps are tired of seeing the same old plot points play out again and again.

Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kokoro Connect is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The design aesthetic here is nothing too remarkable, but the color palette is often incredibly bright and vivid, and may in fact be the most memorable thing about this visual presentation. Line detail remains very crisp and well defined, and aside from a few transitory moments of banding, this is a very nice looking high definition presentation.

Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kokoro Connect features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes in both the original Japanese as well as an English dub. The series is almost totally comprised of dialogue scenes, and this small scale sound design is served quite well in this format. Everything comes through perfectly clearly and the mix is very well prioritized.

Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Japanese Promos (1080p; 1:39)


• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 4:36)


• Clean Closing Animation (1080p; 4:34)

Kokoro Connect: TV Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Most longtime fans of anime aren't immune to the fact that the genre can tend to revisit the same niches over and over again, with only incremental changes differentiating one show from another (this is of course a rather gross generalization, but those who watch tons of anime will hopefully understand my meaning). Kokoro Connect at least offers a bit of an innovation, even if the ultimate reason for that strange goings on has been posited by other shows in slightly different ways. The series is often goofily amusing, and it actually has an unexpected degree of heart as well. Recommended.