Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2

Episode 8

The majority of this episode's runtime is spent on Kokkoro's adventure with our newest guild of the week: Lucent Academy. The story revolves around two demon girl teens who plan to save their school by transferring to another one—thus raising their school's average GPA. It's a surprisingly cunning plan for the pair (who are unable to memorize their multiplication tables past the 6s) and sends us on a fun little misadventure when their applications are stolen by a band of brigands running off with everything in the post office. The absurdity of the whole situation allows Kokkoro ample opportunity to show off her surprised face; in fact, it might be the silliest the show has been this season—which makes sense when you realize it has to be this way to offset the much more depressing scenes with Yuuki and Pecorine.

In some ways, Yuuki and Pecorine are two sides of the same coin. Yuuki is the forgetter—unable to remember anything about this world, the previous world, or the real world. Pecorine, on the other hand, is the forgotten. No one is able to remember who she really is. This episode has these two heroes coming to terms with their respective situations.

Yuuki, in his amnesiac form, has built his life around making friends and helping said friends with their problems. By doing this, he has been able to grow as a person while learning about the world around him. He values his best friends—i.e., Pecorine, Karyl, and Kokkoro—more than anyone else. It's because of them that he is who he has become.

But now, with the return of part of his memories of the previous world, he knows that he had a group of friends that were as dear to him as Pecorine, Karyl, and Kokkoro are to him now: the girls of Twinkle Wish. Yet, in the end, he wasn't able to protect them. And although everyone else he knew before the reset has reappeared—albeit in slightly altered forms—Twinkle Wish is still MIA, implying that they were killed and thus couldn't be reset.

Knowing of his failure has led him into depression—the first time he has been assaulted by that emotion in his amnesiac life. He's forced to reckon with the fact that not only did he fail his friends in his past life, he forgot about them in his current one as well. Luckily, his talk with Labyrista shows him a way forward: to take that failure and use it as motivation. He may have failed Twinkle Wish, but he won't allow the same thing to happen with the Gourmet Guild.

Pecorine, on the other hand, is in the middle of an existential crisis of sorts. Alone on a job with the rest of the guild busy, she has nothing but her deepest fears to keep her company. Pecorine is a young woman who cares deeply for the common man. She loves her people almost as much as she loves her family. She is willing to put herself on the line even for the sake of thieves and bandits, sincerely believing that they can become better people. For a woman like this, what could be more horrible than being forgotten by all those you care for?

Pecorine has already gone through this once—and the social isolation nearly broke her. But through hard work and an (sometimes forced) upbeat attitude, she has managed to gain something similar to what she once had. While she doesn't have her old family back, she has made a new one in the form of the Gourmet Guild—and while “Eustiana” remains forgotten by the people “Pecorine” is a hero loved by the people of her kingdom.

However, this accomplishment has put her on an emotional precipice. She doesn't want to be seen only as Pecorine—not least by her dearest companions. She wants to tell Karyl, Yuuki, and Kokkoro all about Eustiana, but at the same time, she is afraid.

She's been keeping her companions at arm's length emotionally, and telling them will close that gap. But what if she lets them in and everyone forgets about her again? Having built herself a life once more, can she really risk losing it all again? But as Karyl, Yuuki, and Kokkoro show up, one-by-one, to help her in her task—with Kokkoro bringing along all the people she's befriended as Pecorine—she realizes she wants to tell them the truth, damn the consequences.

And with this heartfelt, powerful moment, we are left on an emotional cliffhanger of sorts: how will Karyl react to learning of the part her master played in Pecorine's pain? We'll just have to tune in next week to find out.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• My memory may be failing me but I don't think we've had an episode introducing the Mercurious Foundation. I guess they've been befriended off-screen given that they're in the final scene with everyone else.

• Io asking Ayumi (Yuuki's stalker) if she'd seen Misaki and Suzuna got a laugh out of me.

• Since Ayumi is always watching Yuuki, I'm guessing that Yuuki's vantage point was overlooking the post office area—but he was too far into his own head to notice what happened there.

• I had legit forgotten that Ayumi is part of the Weiß Flügel Landsol Branch guild, but it makes sense.

• Aside from Kaizer, Ames, and Yuuki, the only people who remember the world before the reset are the members of Labyrinth, right?

• I was shocked that Suzuna's Union Burst didn't flat out kill the bandits. It's a true boss-killer in the game.

• I'm not sure what to make of the Karyl and Kaizer scene. Are we supposed to think there are two Kaizers?

Princess Connect! Re:Dive is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.