Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 1 Review
プリンセスコネクト！Re:Dive

I don’t remember exactly where I was introduced to Princess Connect! Re:Dive. It may have been a stream from Western Otaku. Or it may have been images from Japanese artists on my Twitter feed. Regardless, both happened at roughly the same time. As such, I decided to give this fantasy anime adaptation of a mobile, gacha RPG a try.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The Story, in Brief

The elf girl Kokkoro is dispatched by her family at the request of Ameth-sama to help a hero named Yuuki, who has amnesia. She escorts Yuuki into the city of Landsol. However, since money is scarce, Kokkoro gets a simple mushroom gathering quest she and Yuuki can do. While doing this, they encounter a girl who’s fainted. They feed her and give her the nickname Pecorine, which pleases her.

Pecorine helps them and after a series of adventures, which also included the cat-girl sorceress Karyl, the foursome form a guild about food called the Gourmet Guild. However, Karyl is a double agent, reporting to her cat-woman royal leader. Unfortunately, said royalty is creating Shadows to harm folks. Karyl has to make tough decisions on where her loyalties lie. Yuuki struggles with his slowly restoring memories. And Pecorine has to tell a truth to Kokkoro before the guild can move forward.

Comedy Ups and Downs

One of the things that immediately grabbed me about Princess Connect! Re:Dive was its strong start. It was unexpectedly funny. Yuuki not having any memories and barely being able to function led to some very funny events. Pecorine’s hunger reminded me of Lina Inverse from The Slayers. Further, it was hilarious seeing the aftermath of her defeating some monsters and complaining that they weren’t edible.

However, as the series went on, the humor really died off. That wasn’t because the series got serious. That didn’t happen until the very end (for the most part). But it was just that the writers just decided to mostly neglect the humor. Either that, or they wrote things they thought would be funny, but weren’t funny at all.

Poor Plotting

Although the main characters of Princess Connect! Re:Dive are likeable, the layout plot in the series was rather weak. Unfortunately, plot takes a back seat in order to get one-shot stories that feature various other (female) guilds from the gacha game. I have no problem showing the other characters from the game. I thought Azur Lane did a really good job at telling an interesting story while bringing in a TON of game characters.

While there are smatterings of plot elements here and there, mainly dealing with Karyl’s divided loyalties, Yuuki’s memory loss, and a look at the Shadow threat, the plot doesn’t really get addressed until the final two episodes. The story is interesting, but sadly, the series ends without answering a lot of questions. And indeed, it raises more questions.

Had there not been an announcement of a second series, I would have been irritated. But since there will be another series, we’ll see what the writers do with that.

Adaptation

Sadly, the Crunchyroll subtitles are not up to AstroNerdBoy standards. Japanese honorifics are flushed ’cause “reasons”. Never mind the characters often act Japanese, or each Japanese food like onigiri. But whatever.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Princess Connect! Re:Dive started off strong, especially on the comedy front, then tailed off with meh stories to bring in other characters from the game. However, it ended with a plot push that raised a lot of questions that will hopefully be answered in a second series.