"Golden Time" Anime Review

***This is a spoiler free review***

Golden Time is an anime that really put me on a rollercoaster ride. There were moments where I legitimately thought it was the best drama I had seen in awhile when other times it had me wanting to drop the show entirely.

Story: 7/10

I will say that the story for Golden Time is fresh, has twists and turns, and had very serious and emotional scenes. I will also say that there are a lot of "cheap" tricks the show uses to make certain events happen for convenient reasons. A quick rundown of the opening is that we follow new college student Tada Banri as he meets new friends Mitsuo, Chinami, Linda, and Kouko. The opening act of the anime had me extremely interested with the possibilities the show could span into. Banri automatically finds someone he likes, he becomes really close friends with Mitsuo, and there was many hints at future foreshadowing events. One thing I would like to point out is that the show did an incredible job at creating "real" feeling scenes that I will remember for the foreseeable future. The friendship between Banri and Mitsuo felt "real" and the events that occur between this cast felt very "real". Also later on in the show when s#!t gets real, I genuinely felt emotionally torn at what I was watching.

Now I cannot comment on what I thought felt "cheap" about the show since it would ruin a major plot point but just know that while the show really pulls some things out of its a$$ in order to make sense of certain events, for the most part it ties the story together well enough in the end.
I do not like rating certain arcs by themselves but the beginning of the show far outshines the ending act.

Animation: 6.9/10

It was....basic but still looked pretty good. The animation studio used some really basic colors and there was a sense of dullness BUT they did an amazing job with facial expressions which really helped out in the emotional scenes. Character models looked pretty good (Kouko was so kawaii :D).

Sound: 7/10

Music=pretty good
Voice actors=amazing level
Voice actors did a really awesome job while the music was good but not great. Openings and endings were not memorable.

Characters: 9.5/10

Extremely tight nit cast that provided so many different scenes. One minute you are laughing at a funny scene while four minutes later you are flipping your chair into the air cursing out Kouko for being Kouko. Every character was important which is very important since a lot of anime try to stick generic stand in's for purpose made situations. Each character had a job and performed that job spectacularly. Now I won't lie and say that I loved each one of them. There were many and MANY moments when I really wanted to jumped into the show and beat the living fu#@ out of some of them but in the end I really did enjoy what each one brought to the table.

Overall: 7.6/10

I really, really, really got involved with this anime. Some of the moments in this anime were the best I had experienced in a long time while others really made me want to leave it for awhile. It will grab your full and undivided attention with its witty cast and believable performances; just be prepared to really get frustrated.