Princess Connect was an anime that never crossed my mind when looking for anime to watch this season. From the promo images to the fact that it’s an anime based off of a phone game, it looks very cookie cutter. And to a point, it is. That being said, I was put on to it by several friends who said that it was funny. While I haven’t watched nearly enough anime to come up with this statement myself, I believe Princess Connect is the surprise anime of the Spring 2020 season. For an anime that’s essentially an advertisement for a phone game, Princess Connect is surprisingly funny and charming.

Princess Connect follows Yuuki, a young man whose memory has been wiped for unknown reasons. It seems that he has severe brain damage as well, not being able to do common tasks or complete a sentence. Kokkoro is a young girl that was apparently summoned to look after Yuuki. Without her, Yuuki would have probably drowned in a puddle by now. Pecorine is a powerful swordswoman who could eat a horse. Her seemingly endless energy is fueled by her eating binges. Kyaru (or Carl) is a catgirl that is a spook sent in to watch over Yuuki and Pecorine by a nefarious organization. She is an ever classic tsundere. These four form the ‘Gourmet Guild’, a guild whose purpose is to “study all of the delicious food in the world”.

Princess Connect is mostly an episodic anime, with two plot points hinted throughout the season colliding together at the end. Since this anime is based on a phone game, I’m guessing that the episodic nature is based on quests in the game itself. Most of the episodes are light-hearted and have no real implications outside of the episode itself, which suits the anime’s theme fine. When the anime tries to be serious is when it falls off. The ‘serious’ part is cramped into one episode, which throws you off from its normal flow. Don’t watch this show if you’re expecting something emotionally gripping.

What Princess Connect is good at is getting a laugh out of you. I probably laughed at least once every episode, which is pretty good since I’m not usually someone who laughs at anime. The combination of a ‘main character’ that lacks common sense and cognitive skills and him trying to pretty much anything is very entertaining. A friend told me that the less he speaks, the better the episode is likely to be. I agree with him. With that being said, being funny can only take a show so far--it takes Princess Connect from ‘bad’ to ‘slightly above average’.

Although I’ve been a little mean to it, Princess Connect is a very charming show. It’s a very good anime to watch for the entertainment value it brings. It’s at its weakest when it’s trying to be serious, which gladly it holds off until the end. Yuuki is a good main character, mainly because he’s an anti-self insert main character. Although I don’t care for her too much, many people like Kyaru a lot too. The entire Gourmet Guild has good chemistry. I hope that this anime has caused interest in the phone game to go up, which in return should give us a second season. Especially since the main conflicts in the anime were never resolved. I know I said that the serious parts of Princess Connect were the worst, but I would like to at least see a resolution to Pecorine’s or Kyaru’s issues, or at least know why Yuuki has amnesia. Maybe we’ll get to see it after a vaccine comes out.