Kokoro Connect - Episode 6

Having survived the shocking twists and turns of last week's episode, everything appears to have returned to normal for the main cast of Kokoro Connect - three weeks after the harrowing events surrounding Iori, there's been nary a sign of any body-swapping, and thoughts soon turn to other relatively mundane items like work for their after-school club.

Of course, we're nowhere near done with this series yet, so more trouble is naturally just around the corner, and what a way it chooses to first manifest itself too - a normal after-school conversation between Taichi and Inaba suddenly leads to the latter trying to seduce the former, and the aftermath of this sees Yui smashing a table with her bare hands.  Something is clearly amiss, and when Iori and Taichi feel compelled to see or call one another that evening in an uncontrollable fashion we soon get to grips with what's going on.

Lo and behold, as Yui and Aoki get themselves into a tight spot with the law, up pops Heartseed to explain what's going on - this time around, his crazy experiment seems to involve having his group of five "test subjects" left unable to control their deepest desires to the point where they'll unconsciously act upon them.  In many ways, this is far more risky than any kind of body-swapping shenanigans, and Inaba rightly points out that the group are either going to have to let loose and go with the flow or figure out some other kind of counter-measure when such desires arise.  Although Inaba is acting as leader once again in the face of this situation, she is also yet again seemingly the one the most in the need of some assistance, while this whole state of affairs could threaten to quickly put the skates under Taichi and Iori's burgeoning relationship.

After noting that despite being thoroughly impressed with last week's episode of Kokoro Connect that it's the kind of trick you can only pull off once, I'm almost pleased to see the series headed off in a different direction and leaving its initial body-swapping premise behind.  Admittedly I think there were still at least some legs remaining in its original idea, and I very much hope this chance isn't just going to be a "rinse and repeat" recycling of all of the drama of previous episodes but with a new gimmick at its centre, but given what we've seen so far I'm vaguely hopeful that it can pull it off in interesting fashion.  If nothing else, the show has enough fascinating characters within its roster to give it plenty of legs moving forward - I just hope it continues to use them rather than going down the more predictable routes that it would be so easy to lazily mine.