Kokoro Connect - Episode 13

With the cat forcibly exited from its bag, Taichi finds himself with no choice but to tell his friends about the information provided to him by the "second Heartseed" despite the warnings of dire consequences were he to do so - lo and behold, those consequences take immediate effect as this story arc comes to a close.

Now, rather than having a convenient time slot to prepare for any reversals in age, these changes can happen at any time of the day or night, making this bizarre problem impossible to hide - unless the group stays within the abandoned building that they've practically made their home, which is exactly what they do.

This would all be good and well (aside from making some flimsy excuses to parents), were it not for a developing family crisis on Iori's part - with her mother about to take her errant and violent drunkard of a second father back into the family home, she's desperate to get back to check on things; a situation not helped by some suitably vague phone calls.  Torn between sitting out the current situation with her friends and racing off alone to check on her mum, Iori is caught between a rock and a hard place - that's what friends are for of course, as they offer their assistance in ensuring that any problems are resolved without compromising any of the group with regard to their own problems.  Unusually, even Heartseed emerges to offer his own unique brand of assistance given the group's problems with "Number Two" (no giggling at the back), even if his suggestion of help is shot down by Iori so that she can continue to follow her own path.

So ends another story arc of Kokoro Connect (and what would have been the series as a whole had it not been extended).  This was certainly the weakest arc of the bunch, and it suffered from a few issues, most notably that it had a few plot points to sprinkle across the story, but none of them really had enough "flavour" or emotional depth to really work as a hook - both Yui and Aoki's problems were pretty tame compared to some of the stuff that the series has tried to handle, while Iori's part of the story held much more promise but didn't really have enough time or depth to deliver upon it.  In spite of this, the arc as a whole held together reasonably well in terms of continuing what has gone before - I only hope that it isn't a case of ever-decreasing returns for the show's story as it struggles to recreate some of the sharper moments of its original story arc.  Even then, Koroko Connect has succeeded in being far more compelling than I would ever have expected it to be, and there's something to be said for that if nothing else.