Golden Boy: How Educational

I have seen so many memes from this series over the years. Question is: is the show itself worth it? Or should I have just stuck to the memes?

The premise is simple. Kintaro Oe is a wanderer who hops from job to job and hits on women. After making a complete fool of himself at his latest workplace, he does something incredible, makes the girl fall for him, then bikes off into the sunset without so much as a kiss. Rinse and repeat for six episodes.

It’s a decently fun premise that’s used to strong effect in these six episodes. Kintaro makes for a fairly fun protagonist, wandering about and flirting and being stupid for no reason other than to learn and for the freedom of it. And he’s so damn expressive that it’s hard not to chuckle at him. Even if he can be a bit of a Gary Stew, with how things just miraculously work out for him no matter how badly he fucks up.

As for the other members of the cast, they’re not especially memorable. Fuck, I’m not even sure they have names. Most of them are just women whose character traits are:

• Is woman
• Is sexy
• Angry maybe

Also, this is very much an adult show. Which means it focuses a lot on that sexy aspect. There’s even some mild nudity. And when the boobs bounce, they go wild. Golden Boy goes to extensive lengths to make its ladies as attractive as possible.

Its not just the ladies, either. The animation in general is wild! The animators went nuts with pretty much every scene to heighten the sheer ridiculous stupidity of Kintaro’s various fuck-ups or stunts. Even the small actions have more frames in them than most modern anime!

As great-looking as all the jokes are, the comedy itself is hit or miss. Some of the gags are genuinely hilarious, like Kintaro’s ‘swimming’ and all of his various ‘serious’ face moments (his expressions are peak anime comedy, you can’t change my mind). But a lot of the written comedy is just basic anime pervert humor.

That’s about all there is to say about this one, really. It’s an incredibly short watch, so you can crank all six episodes out in an afternoon. And I would recommend doing so! Golden Boy is simple, it’s fun, and the animation is gorgeous.

Also anime boobs, did I mention the anime boobs? There are a lot of those.