haize78

I finished watching Golden Time last night. And my reaction at the end was: meh. I don't know. I don't even know if I can write a review, because I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly what didn't convince me. 

Anyway, it's worth watching. But just barely. I have no issues with the animation or the music. I do object to the plot and the characters, though. Which are what make or break  an anime. While I was thinking what I should write in this review, I was trying to separate my judgement on the story and the characters from my reaction to them. Not easy. So, objectively, the story is ok. There are no major inconsistencies and you get an ending. And as for the characters, after 24 episodes you do get to care about them. Both major and minor ones. You never mistake one character for another, so that is a plus from the animation and drawing point of view, but also regarding the ability of the anime's creators to give each character a distinctive personality. The setting is college, not high school, so that's different. The protagonists are part of the festival club, where they practice Japanese folk dances which were really fun to watch and listen to. It should be a love triangle, but just by watching the opening and ending you have a pretty good idea as to which girl the protagonist ends up with in the end. No surprise there. 

And this is the END OF THE SPOILER FREE PART of the review. Because to say what really annoyed me about this anime, I have to mention some details and plot developments that someone who still hasn't seen the anime may not want to know. Ok, so the first episodes introduce the characters. You have Tada Banri, laidback, predictable and reliable. And when his first day in college he befriends co-student Mitsuo, he finds himself caught in the middle of the stormy and crazy relationship between Mitsuo and his girlfriend Kouko, whom Banri also becomes friends with. At a certain point, Kouko gives up on Mitsuo and falls for Banri. And she kind of develops into a better person, or at least she seems to be a bit more able to restrain herself and her clinging stalker tendencies. All seems well, until you start to understand a little bit more about Banri's amnesia. After giving the matter some consideration, I agree with the other reviews that say that the amnesia was just an awkward and unnecessary plot device. While I was watching the episodes, I just kept thinking why the hell should there be two separate Banris, the pre and post-accident one, why must one necessarily exclude the other. I mean, the way that it's presented in the anime it's not even amnesia, more like schizophrenia. I really felt there was something lacking there. As the episodes progress, you see Banri struggling with himself, but I couldn't understand why he wasn't even a little bit curious about his former self, I couldn't grasp what exactly it was that he refused to accept when he didn't even consider making the effort to know about the life he was leading before the accident and the kind of person he was and the people he must have cared for and loved. Doesn't make sense. Regarding the characters, Kouko is undeniably the one you remember after the end of the anime. Even though I was rooting for Linda. And Banri is a kind of wishy-washy lead character. I mean, Kouko is deliberately presented as irritating because of all her flaws, so irritating that in the end it's endearing. Banri is just plain annoying in an absolutely negative way because of the lack of depth in the development of his character. Maybe what really ticked me off was the fact that, all considered, it wasn't even a love triangle as Banri is never presented as 1 person who is in love with 2 girls, but always as 2 different guys in love with 2 different girls; and these 2 guys just happen to share at times the same body. I mean, the conflict isn't about the girls, but the possession of the body. Can't help feeling that it's stupid. At the end, in the last episode, there is a sort of "reunion" of the two Banris, but to me it just felt like a half-hearted attempt to get rid of the pre-accident Banri in a quick way so that the post-accident Banri could get back together with Kouko. It didn't persuade me at all. And I'm definetely not going to re-watch it.