Even wearing a relatively medium sized dress, she still finds a way to show off her thighs
- Episode Summary: Our protagonist, Banri Tada, gets lost on his way to the university on his first day of law school. Through a series of events, he meets a fellow law student named Mitsuo Yanagisawa who was trying to find his classes under similar circumstances. The two of them hit it off, and start getting to know each other when suddenly Kouko Kaga, a childhood friend of Yanagisawa, shows up and whacks him with a bouquet of roses. Yanagisawa then explains that she is his childhood friend who has a plan to get married to him, and he doesn’t want to be in that plan. After Tada and Yanagisawa get to know a bit about one another, Tada meets a girl from his class named Chinami Oka, and the two seem to hit it off. Then, Tada goes onto the school grounds and is assaulted by a barrage of clubs seeking members. He is pulled to safety by an upperclassman named Linda, and the two of them also start to hit it off. At the end of the day, Tada bumps into Kaga at pure chance, who proceeds to take his phone after he gets a call from Yanagisawa, and leaves him saying that she hopes the two of them can continue to be friends.
Are you sure this is the first impression you want to give to the audience…?
- My Take: The name recognition behind this series can’t be understated. Golden Time is a series that was created by Yuyuko Takemiya, who most notably created the Toradora! series. As with Toradora!, Golden Time also started off as a light novel series which eventually got animated. Also you should note that I have not read the light novel, so I am completely blind with this series.
- First and foremost, my first impression is that Golden Time is very appealing to me personally. This first episode basically categorized the confusion of orientation days, and I found it to be very identifiable.
- So our protagonist appears to be Banri Tada. Tada comes off as such a regular guy…it’s such a shame that he’s been thrust into the drama between Yanagisawa and Kaga! I could see all these scenes of genuine discomfort coming from him when both Kaga and Yanagisawa were going at it, and it made me wonder just what would be going through my mind in that situation; on the one hand, it feels nice to have new friends in a new place, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to be dealing with my new friends’ drama literally from the time we met. So I’m very curious as to what Tada will bring to this show.
- Our next character, Yanagisawa, is the man who is trying to escape his childhood friend. He doesn’t seem to afraid to tell complete strangers about his life. I sort of like that about him. His story is actually really interesting, too. Apparently, he attended a very prestigious string of schools and could have sailed along into a prestigious university, but he gave it up just to get away from Kaga. Although that would be massively unrealistic, it’s a nice way to show just how much he doesn’t want to fit into Kaga’s life plans. I don’t know if that says more about Kaga’s character or Yanagisawa’s character.
Oh, great. He’s going into a flashback now
- Our last major character is Kaga. I find her to be such a fascinating character. I’ve heard about the “ex from hell”, but she takes it to such an extreme. I want to find out more about her. I want to find out just exactly why she is chasing Yanagisawa in the way she is. Everybody says she’s beautiful, so she could have no problem finding another person. I don’t know, maybe she doesn’t want to go through the grueling process of getting to know someone new. Who knows? Anyway, I find her to be interesting…albeit a little bit creepy and scarily demented.
Wait, which one is the crazy one again…?
- The first episode of Golden Time left a very positive impression on me. So far, it seems to have a fairly interesting premise and some fascinating characters. I can see many ways this show can go, and it could be great. Let’s just hope that the future episodes are just as good as this debut.
