Golden Boy

*“Did I do something noble unwillingly?” Golden Boy is a wonder of an anime. At its surface, yes, it looks like it is nothing but a sex comedy. Once you’ve seen it, though, then you understand that Golden Boy *is not your ordinary sex comedy. The miniseries (for lack of a better term, it’s not edited to be considered a movie but it’s also only six parts, so you can’t call it a series either per say) focuses on a 25-year-old law school dropout named Kintaro who travels through Japan on his mountain bike. Kintaro loves two things: learning (he makes notes frequently about his experiences in various part time jobs) and women (he also makes frequent notes about the women he meets), and one usually leads to the other. And when that happens, boy, hijinks will ensue. It’s evident from early on that Kintaro is genuinely smart, aside from the fact that he dropped out of college after completing all the requirements but before graduation. But what isn’t evident until later on is that Kintaro is a flawed hero. Kintaro is a pervert, yes. He joins jobs sometimes because the woman he meets and immediately gets infatuated with works there. But beyond that, we see that Kintaro is actually a caring guy. When he accidentally deletes three months of work at a computer company, Kintaro stays up all night and makes an even better software so that his former employer doesn’t have to face serious consequences. When he finds out a noodle shop owner’s daughter is getting scammed by a prospective suitor for her family business, he steps in and defends her. When an elderly man who fixes his bike is being threatened over money by the yakuza, Kintaro gives him the necessary funds to save him. And when an animation studio is in danger of missing an extremely important deadline, Kintaro calls on everyone he knows to help save the day because he wants to see people thrive at their jobs. Is he the horniest man alive? Maybe, but at the end he genuinely wants to learn and help people, and along the way every woman he helps realizes he’s a genuinely good guy and falls for him. Alas, they are unable to catch him; Kintaro is a free spirit learning the meaning of life. I love a lot of things about this anime. The designs are obviously a major part, and Kintaro manages to pull off some fantastic exaggerated faces and movements that really bring life and humor to the character and scene. On top of this, creator Tatsuya Egawa (who is also a minor character) is perhaps one of the best manga artists to draw women; every woman in this show has great designs. The writing is pretty good too. There are admittedly some weird moments in some parts, but overall these are minor and are just “oh Kintaro” moments. I think there are two scenes that show how great the field of animated comedy can be, and both happen to come from this series: Kintaro’s swim test and the bike race. Both scenes are genuinely hilarious because they show how funny animation can actually be in my personal opinion. It’s not over the top in exaggeration and I personally think they’re delivered very well. If you don’t watch the whole series, at least watch those two scenes. I also noted the quote “Today’s lesson: the human head cannot turn three hundred and sixty degrees,” and “we haven’t developed the subplot yet!” as I felt those were particularly funny lines. I think that’s all I really need to say about why I liked this. I wound up finding the entire dub (which I think is the best way to watch it) on the Internet Archive if you’re wondering where to look. It has the quality of your average 90s anime dub, but I think it works here. Enjoy!