Notes of Golden Time Episode 5

Yanagisawa might have 99 problems, but Kaga ain’t one (anymore)

Summary of Golden Time Episode 5: Tada starts to remember aspects of how he lost his memories during his trip home. He believes that after this happened, his former spirit left his body. After Tada returns to campus, he and Yanagisawa talk about how Yanagisawa rejected Kaga in the last episode, and how he feels bad about how it happened. They both then run into Kaga, who is acting extremely strange. this strangeness is only temporary since Yanagisawa leaves shortly after, which prompts Tada, Kaga, and Linda all to start a conversation. Both Tada and Kaga then decide to join the Festival Club, and their first meeting consisted of dancing, which we learn Kaga isn’t very gifted at. We then see a flashback to Tada while in the hospital after his accident where it’s revealed that Linda was the one who talked Tada into coming to Tokyo and attending the university he’s in now.

This is about the time where I ask myself what I’m witnessing

My Take: Tada’s former spirit keeps on following him around. It gives us the insights into his mysterious accident which gave him amnesia. Although this is an interesting way to inform the audience of Tada’s past, it completely takes us out of the atmosphere of the show. What I feel is wrong about this is how we don’t get the same sense of discovery that Tada gets. Or, basically, we start to know aspects of his life that possibly he doesn’t know. That’s no fun! It’s much more rewarding to find out aspects of a character/situation at the same time a character discovers it. The way I see it is like this: Tada’s past is like a mystery, and it’s no fun when watching a mystery if you know important aspects of what happens, yet the characters who are in said mystery don’t know what you know.

Going back to the spirit of Tada, but why did they decide to go this route? Did we really need some (possible) supernatural elements to this show? Sometimes, this show feels less like a drama that focuses around a handful of likable characters and more like a character study of Tada.

Yanagisawa: master of the witty retort

Kaga is coping with being rejected by Yanagisawa. It just shows that she can be normal, but she gets much too emotional about everything. I sort of like that because it shows that she’s at least trying to be a better person, but she just doesn’t know how to at this point. It’s like she’s having to integrate into society. Of course something like that would be really awkward.

Tada and Kaga decide to join the Festival Club where they seem to do nothing but dance. I like how neither of them really care for the club, but just joined for other reasons. Tada basically joined because of Linda and Kaga basically joined because of Tada. But the Festival Club just seems so generic and boring. We should see what’s happening with Yanagisawa and the Film Club.

So it turns out that not only did Tada and Linda know each other before Tada got amnesia, but we come to find out that she is the one who persuaded Tada to go to Tokyo and enroll in the university. I like this, and how nonchalant Linda is about everything. She never shows any complex emotions towards Tada, yet we know that those two were close at one point. I hope we get to know more about her in future episodes.

I initially liked how Tada lost his memories. I initially said that it was a legitimately good turn of events, despite it being such a archetypical thing to do in anime. I still believe that. However, now I’m starting to get a little annoyed by it. It seems that all Tada says is “amnesia” now. I understand that it would be his main focus to figure it out, but Tada has to be the dumbest ‘detective’ around! Why doesn’t he actually ask people questions about his accident? He woke up in the hospital, so obviously somebody had to have found him and brought him there. Instead, he’s left clueless about every single aspect regarding his accident. Come on!

Suddenly, Kaga came to the realization that dancing was not her forte

I can’t help but feel that this episode was sort of bland. Unlike last week’s episode where I felt that too much stuff happened, this week I feel that not enough stuff happened. Or, at the very least, not enough new stuff. I say that because these characters have fallen into a pattern of sorts; they do the same general things in every episode. The only real difference here was that we got a lot of Tada’s post-amnesia back-story, although necessary, had a great deal of unnecessary information.

Gee, I wonder if this counts as foreshadowing

Blandness aside, I still liked this episode. This definitely has been the weakest episode so far, and it worries me about what the next 19 episodes are going to be like. I just hope we’ll eventually focus more on all of the characters that have been established and not just Tada and Kaga.

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