Five students who don’t know each other and don’t really care what they do when they enter High School end up joining the same, non-existent, school club called the Culture Society – which consists of them just sitting around talking and having fun. When we join the story they have all since become friends through the club. Things begin to go wrong for them when an unknown entity decides it is board and starts to play games with their lives, beginning by making them randomly swap bodies. The club members fight their way through this bizarre phenomenon as they learn to deal with their individual pasts and problems. Finally things seem to be going better for them after the entity tells them they will no longer be swapping bodies – but things are only just getting started.

The show is technically clean. I have found that it is easy for me to dismiss certain things by telling myself you see the same thing at the beach, or on TV commercials, or even now-days at the supermarket check-out stand. This show has, that I can recall, two incidents in which nothing is technically shown but falls into that category of “nothing bad really happens but still shouldn’t be approved of”. One incident involves one of the ladies partially undressing and crawling over a table. The other incident (I don’t want to ruin the story so just go with me on the assumption that nothing naughty is going on during this scene) is with a different girl “coming to” without wearing anything up top, the shot of her as she stands up has her covering herself with her arms and is very brief.

Kokoro Connect introduces some interesting concepts into what is essentially a high-school comedy/romance story.  What makes a person a person? To paraphrase one of the characters in the story: A person, the essence of who they are, is defined as a combination of their unseen self. Their soul, personality, past events in their life. Yet we identify individuals by physical attributes. When we think of a person we think of their physical appearance, not their intangible attributes that make them who they are. So if those unseen characteristics are removed from one body and placed in another body, who is that person? Are they still the same person or are they somebody else?

A different concept proposed by the kids in this story is specifically to do with one’s past. When something important happens, wether good or bad, to us as people it is fresh in our memory and hearts. We remember vivid details about what physically happened and we feel very strongly about the emotions caused by that event. As we grow older and “move away” from the event, those memories and feelings dull and fade, but they still color our future choices and actions. Someone may fall in love with another person because that person reminds them, on some unconscious level, of a childhood sweetheart they once had. What if this person is returned to his youth for a brief period of time, a time when his feelings for this sweetheart were at their strongest. When he then returns to his current age all those feelings would be once again fresh in his mind, and in his heart. Does he really love this new person in his life, or is it just because she reminds him of someone else? What if the latter is true, what then…?

I enjoyed this show because it brought in some of these interesting discussions as part of the story. It didn’t present them as a “sit down and listen to us talk philosophy” but rather worked them into the story of their lives as they try to cope with these strange events. While the show itself covers things like love, fear of others and things of that nature, the same conversations can be applied to our faith. To my own faith. When I accepted Christ all those feelings and emotions were strong and front-most in my mind. Over the years they have dulled and paled as I have grown older. How would my life change, how would I change my life, rather, if for 3 hours I was returned to that point in time where I had just accepted Christ and then came back to my current self with all those memories and feelings fresh?