“In that case, I have to die then. I could never bring myself to kill someone and take over their body.”
Impression
Since I haven’t been doing my share of Kokoro Connect over the past few weeks, I’ll comment a bit on the main thing that’s changed since Ep 1 – the drama. It’s been hinted at, but who’d have thought every character would actually be that messed up inside, from Iori and Himeko’s mental thinking to Taichi and his beliefs, which aren’t going to help him in the long run. It’s actually like those Asian dramas I used to watch, complete with the music giving you feels, the angsty facial expressions and people shouting and crying. It’s amazing.
And that’s exactly why I really did believe for a moment that Iori might actually die this episode, despite so much of the show being left over. Last week, everything did seem to be solved quite easily, despite Iori and Himeko’s issues troubling them for a long time. As such it wasn’t surprising that things weren’t over quite yet, though it was partly Taichi’s fault for not seeing Iori as Iori after making a promise like that, even if she was trying to trick him. It’s scary how convincing Iori can be as her Inaban, which made me take her whole trauma much more seriously – she really is good at switching between her different masks and is natural at it, resulting in her question of “which is the real Iori?” making much more sense. I got a little teary during the hospital scene (as did Yui) and it’s sad that Iori has to take all this suffering.
Well, she has Taichi, who she probably will start going out with now that everyone’s survived that little incident. It’s good for Iori and Aoki, who can now chase Yui, though I ship Himeko x Taichi, and strongly believe that this pairing still has a chance, somehow. In all the scenes we’ve seen those two in, they seem really close, with Himeko constantly caring about Taichi and his selfless freak beliefs and Taichi helping her out last week with her issue. Oh and he stole her first kiss. That has to count for something xD
In terms of Taichi and his beliefs, I think that’s a type of trauma in itself, or a “gentle insanity” as Himeko calls it. It reminds me of Emiya Shirou and his saving the world ideals, where everyone should be helped just because you can, and that they’re suffering and you want to understand them. Selflessness is admirable as a trait, but even that has its own limits, and it can become dangerous when you go past them. I was worried that Taichi would actually really go ahead and switch with Iori, sacrificing himself, because it’s actually a thing he’d do for her. I can tell that he’ll run into problems if he sticks to these ideals, because the world just isn’t that peachy.
The guy who messed all this up in the first place, Heartseed, is now even more mysterious than ever. I wouldn’t call him a bad guy, but I have no idea what his goals are either. On one hand you hear him calling the group boring, and trying to cause trouble yet on the other you see him saying how much they’ve grown from this experience, bringing the group closer together. There’s also that stuff about implying the extent of the power he has, which sounded like a threat more than anything. Whatever he was trying to tell them, there’s no need to pretend to almost kill someone for it.
Boy, this was an emotionally draining episode. And to think it started out so well, what with the charming love confession and all. Iori just had to set herself up to get hurt and trick Taichi like that, it’s like making someone promise to never hurt you and dressing up like a punching bag. Then things were returning to normal after their talk, and BAM, off the bridge. Talk about mood whiplash. Then there was the ending, man, it was no question that Iori would be the one to die, and i was actually getting ready to accept her death. Then, the docter came out with the news and the wave of relief hit, followed by rage directed at Heartseed. Those apologies of his felt like a slap to the face.
Himeko X Taichi is my preferred ship too, they bounce off each other so well and Himeko is such a great character.