What They Say:
Banri Tada is a newly admitted student at a private law school in Tokyo. However, due to an accident, he lost all of his memories. During his freshman orientation, he encounters another freshman from the same school, Mitsuo Yanagisawa, and they hit it off at once. Without any memory of each other, their lives become more and more intertwined as if set by the hands of fate. But what is their fate, and will it lead to happiness or another memory to forget…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Golden Time did some fun things the last time around, but it really came down to that final sequence with Oka trying to shake Banri into realizing he needs to treat Koko better. While there’s always issues to be had in any relationship, it’s different when people outside of it try to get involved and shake one or both of them into dealing with something that they see, which may or may not be a problem in the relationship. With Banri having spent time away with Linda recently, which helped him cope with his issues a whole lot by going back home to deal with old classmates, it could be interpreted in a few ways by others that may not be good. The return to campus and the start of classes again after summer break provides everyone a chance to try and reset and start again.
With events here, the focus turns on helping out Yana as he has a bit of a cutoff where he has to help him reveal his feelings clearly to Linda. We’ve seen him try in different ways so far but he’s not had much luck, even with joining the festival club and participating there. He’s not even finding time to have real conversations with her there and has run into setbacks along the way, which we’ve seen in amusing fashion – for us at least. Yana’s a pretty good guy but what he’s finding is that Linda is pretty well protected by certain members of the club that are keeping the two of them from spending any real time together. It’s a little high schoolish in nature, but it makes for some realistic difficulty in how he’s attempting to get to know her better. With Linda regularly surrounded by people from the club, she’s not as accessible as he’d like.
The show spends a lot of time with the kind of simple material that delves into the characters, especially with how Banri has to be shaping things up a bit for his relationship with Koko, but there’s also the focus on them trying to help out with Yana and Linda. But where the show really changes its game is when, during the festival dance aspect that the group is doing in public, it all goes horribly wrong for Banri as the past becomes present and he freaks out completely. With his present day self disappearing all of a sudden, it’s like no time passed between when he was on the bridge and where he is now, not understanding this place, these people or anything else. It’s not a long piece, but the panic and fear that comes from it is really engaging to watch, but also frightening as it leaves you wondering just how bad things will go.
In Summary:
While you have to believe that the show will work everything out in the end with a proper happy place for most everyone involved, there’s also the realization that in some ways it can’t be true based on what Banri has been through in the past. This episode gives us some decent character bits along the way as we see relationships play out, but it’s those final couple of minutes that make you cringe and worry about what’s going on. The show is one that can really make you worry and this sequence certainly does just that for the remaining few episodes of the series.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
