And this episode exponentially magnifies the problem that carried over from last episode. Heartseed continues to be a poorly written character in that his purpose is to be a plot device to drive the story, rather than be a character that forms part of the story. It's extremely silly and far-fetched that the purpose of making the cast suffer is for his own "personal enjoyment". Sure, I've seen antagonists that derive pleasure from the suffering of others, but it was more in the grand scheme of things such as revenge at the world for making that antagonist suffer in the first place, or as a side element to world domination. But here, here's doing it for "the hell of it" which makes a very unimpressive and unconvincing goal. Heartseed reminds me of one of those internet trolls that cause a ruckus and derive satisfaction from it because they have nothing better to do.
Because of Heartseed, most of the other problems branch from that namely the rather forced drama that's being portrayed here. This series completely lacks in subtlety and although I wouldn't call it melodrama per se, the emotions and actions that are being portrayed by the cast feels artificial in the same way [forced] melodrama artificially tries to make the audience cry. In Kokoro Connect's case, the one reaction it's definitely trying to gouge from the audience is to hate "Heartseed", which it is more or less succeeding in a literal sense. However, there is a difference between loving to hate a character and just hating a character because it's poorly developed. For example, Fate Zero's Kotomine and Madoka's Kyuubey were excellent examples of characters you love to hate because they had legitimate goals and the actions and means to achieve those goals. In Heartseed's case it's just a case of poor character development and a laughable purpose in his quest to make our characters suffer in the way they are atm.
I'm also beginning to feel tonal whiplash in this series in that it seems to shift from slapstick/"semi-ecchi" comedy to near-melodrama, a problem that existed from the very start, but now it's starting to take a toll. In particular I am starting to groan at the way the series is treating its male characters.
So please Kokoro Connect, fix this s***. I appreciate the way Kokoro Connect is trying to be ambitious compared to the average slice of life and the way you are taking the hard route of not making a joke out of the body swapping (or in the case of this episode, body hijacking) premise, the execution of it leaves it requiring significant levels of improvement.