Just finished up Golden Time and I guess I'll write down some of my thoughts:
Going into this show, the only thing I really knew was that it was by the writer of Toradora, so I had fairly high expectations, with Toradora being one of my favorite romance anime. Because of that, I can't help but compare the two shows in my head, and unfortunately, Golden Time doesn't quite stack up. While it has fun characters and an interesting premise, it never quite reaches the dramatic highs of Toradora and its lows are significantly lower.
For a while, my main problem was with the amnesia plot and how it was used. I wont spoil anything, so I will just say that, while it allowed the plot to take some interesting turns, amnesia is just too played to work. My other main issue was with the writing. While the characters making extremely dense decisions is common in a lot of anime, it pisses me off every time. Toradora managed to work around that, by making the characters fleshed out enough that you can understand where these decisions come from, but in GT, it sometimes seems as if the characters are bipolar, rapidly flipping between one mood and another, solely for plot purposes. Also, its worth nothing that certain characters, or points in the story seemed a little too similar to Toradora, making me think that the author should maybe branch out a little more.
However, thats not to say I didn't enjoy the show. The fact that the show actually developed a relationship was quite refreshing, and while it was largely executed in the Toradora style, this made it feel more like Honey and Clover and Say I Love You. Some of the conflicts brought up throughout the show were really interesting to see and at times, the protagonist actually felt like a real person in a real relationship having real issues. This also played a part in the fact that I didn't know what was going to happen at the end of the first episode. There was always some doubt in my mind about what the next step would be, and while it didn't deliver on all of the interesting roads it could have taken, I still enjoyed it greatly...









