Princess Connect! Re Dive, this is about as typical CyGames Pictures show possible. It hits all the normal boxes for a show produced by them. It looks absolutely amazing and stunning. The characters are a ton of fun and enjoyable to watch. And the story is decent enough to keep you interested and make the characters change and grow.
Lets just start with the visuals, they have made something that just looks stunning. The backgrounds are vivid and detailed. The characters are incredibly well done with detail and full of life. And it is just so smooth, you never see any hitching or odd frames. Throw in the great lighting and exciting fluid battles, and you just have a winner.
I’ll mention sound this time around, just because I loved many of the voice actors. They all match the character perfectly and I just loved listening to them. Overall, I didn’t care for the music much though. It didn’t have anything that stuck out to me, just stayed mostly in the background, and faded out for me.
Onto the characters now, in typical gacha game fashion you have an absolute ton. And in typical fashion, outside of the main cast, they don’t stick around for long. You get to enjoy them for an episode, maybe 2 if they are important and then you move on. But each of the characters you meet along the way is fun and enjoyable and special in some minor way. Most of them don’t have a detailed backstory, and mostly just stick with a typical trope that makes them fun. But they don’t stick around long enough for this lack of depth to become an issue, after-all they are only around for 24 minutes. Some characters do suffer from a lack of focus or explanation for them given their importance, and that is kinda disappointing.
The main cast is much better developed of course. They each have some sort of backstory and development over the course of the show. Well, mostly. The exception is Kokkoro who I feel just didn’t have much development at all outside of escorting and taking care of Yuuki, the protagonist. But in total they feel like they actually changed after hanging out in the group and are rather different from the way they were at the beginning when you meet them.
To wrap this up, lets run through the story. It did a good enough job for a gacha game. With it teasing out a story that let the major characters develop decently, didn’t feel rushed, and still told a satisfying story with a decent conclusion to the arc. I did feel like the main story might have needed a bit more time to build, and that the jump from fun side stories to the darker main story was rough. Afterall you are going from a group gathering food or helping some village, to a demon king wiping out villages and some dark tragic character backstories. The main story ends up with some twists and characters that never get explained and plot points that feel odd. Things that I feel like would get better explained with a sequel, or just playing the game.
But in total, the show worked for me. It wasn’t perfect by any means but is wasn’t the worst video game adapted anime I’ve seen the season. And it made me want to play the game, so I guess it succeeded in trying to make me a new customer. That is if the game ever gets an English translation. Overall, I’d give the show a watch if you are looking for a fun enjoyable experience with good characters.
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