Princess Connect! Re:Dive

Episode 11

“In which we learn Pecorine's biggest strength is, in fact, a double-edged sword.”

This episode begins lazily enough with Karyl attempting to sleep in even as the others call her to breakfast. What she doesn't expect is that by not responding, she sends Pecorine into panic mode.

As someone who lives to eat, the only reason Pecorine can imagine that someone wouldn't come down to breakfast is that there is something physically stopping them from doing so. Thus, she runs outside and breaks into Karyl's room through the window to “save” her from this non-existent threat—damaging Karyl's favorite stuffed animal in the process.

While a bit of a silly scene and little more than the impetus to get our heroes into the city for the rest of the episode on the surface, it's also a stark reminder of the big issue with Percorine. Karyl tries to sum it up by saying that Pecorine has no sense of personal privacy—but that's just a side-effect of the real problem. Pecorine is unable to see the world from any viewpoint other than her own. Hell, it's more than that: she is completely unable to understand that people as a whole do not share her worldview.

It is her greatest strength and also her greatest weakness. Time and again we've seen her basically bully reality into fitting her ideal—be it Karyl's aversion of her or the two thugs stealing her sword. Most of the time, due to her sheer force of will and her pure spirit, it works out for the better. But as we see in this episode, sometimes it does not. This time the result is just the destruction of a window and a stuffed animal, but what happens next time?

The majority of the episode, on the other hand, deals with Yuuki's encounters with his pre-amnesia companions Shizune and Rino. With the shadow monsters from the woods now attacking people in the city, Shizune and Rino have been sent to make sure that Yuuki remains safe.

What's odd is that the pair are not aware of the identities of Yuuki's new companions. Rino, for one, looks at Kokkoro as a rival in love—unaware that she has received a message from God to act as Yuuki's guide and servant. This in turn begs the question of how much of what's going on are they actually aware of. They know about Yuuki's amnesia and the shadow monsters but are unaware of the specifics of Yuuki's new life. It'll be interesting to discover why this is, as well as why they're supposed to protect him without interacting with him.

The rest of the episode is setup for what is to come. Karyl's master has created a super shadow monster that drains life force from anything in its proximity and sends it out into the city. At the same time, ominous forces with unclear goals are coalescing on the city—and seemingly at cross purposes to each other.

All in all, this episode is a collection of tantalizing hints with very few solid answers—be they about Yuuki's backstory or setting the stage for the final two episodes. At the same time, it manages to introduce four new characters and explore the problematic aspect of one of our main heroines. Solid stuff.

Rating:

Random Thoughts

• Karyl's finally had the “Hanz, are we the baddies?” moment of clarity.

• I love how, in the background, you can consistently spot Shizune and Rino spying on Yuuki.

• Shizune punching the last few minutes of memory out of Rino's skull is a great recurring gag.

• At this point, my biggest fear is that next week's episode will be self-contained and introduce more side characters instead of focusing on our main quartet, their arcs, and the final action climax.

• Man, that post-credits scene is proper noun word salad to someone like me who hasn't played the game.

• “How crazy is that?” count for the week: 0

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.