Since early days, Man as a species has always soared to incredible and strange heights of progress. The male species while flawed in some areas manages to remain somewhat dominant in certain fields and enhance its rule and continues to do so. But what’s sometimes rewarding about being a man is what you can learn as you grow older, from the people you encounter to the lessons you learn and seeing that experience shape you for better and sometimes for worse. In anime like this you get that experience, along with what life can teach you and sometimes…how important it is to study.
Golden Boy is (for lack of a better word) a journey, one that isn’t wrought with that much peril or hardship, but it’s really about life and how through moving around from one place to another do you see the great things life can offer…while also seeing some hilarious if not perverted hijinks along the way.
Based on the manga by Tatsuya Egawa that ran from 1991 to 1998, Golden Boy tells the story of Kintaro Oe. A 25 year old University drop-out who despite having met the requirements for a law degree, left Tokyo University without graduating, now wandering part-time worker roaming through the country of Japan on his trusty Mikazuki 5 bike he’s become a “student of life” and learning more about it through each new experience, on his travels he meets a handful of incredibly beautiful and sometimes deadly women who he falls for in his own perverted way and despite failing to make good first impressions he has them falling to his feet by the end of it, while managing to be a good person.
The OVA of Golden Boy is split up into 6 episodes covering the story of the manga.
Episode 1: Kintaro manages to obtain employment as a janitor for an all-women software company managed by a scantily clad Madame President currently in development of a new program.
Episode 2: Working as a campaign staffer for a mayoral candidate, Kintaro lands the awkward position of being a tutor to his boss’s daughter.
Episode 3: Kintaro, now working in an Udon Restaurant while learning the craft of making the food itself is caught in the middle of relationship problems with restaurant owner’s daughter.
Episode 4: In the dead of winter, Kintaro manages to end up teaching at a swimming pool run by a trim, toned and beautiful (and also intimidating) swimming coach (and former Olympic athlete) who he then challenges her to a swim all while learning how to swim.
Episode 5: Landing a job as a servant in a traditional-style mansion of a wealthy family, Kintaro stumbles across Reiko Terayama. A stunning young woman with an extreme sexual fetish for Motorbikes who he then proceeds to challenge her to a race.
Episode 6: The final episode where we see Kintaro as an errand-boy for an animation studio while they are in the process of making their next big movie, while he is there however he’s offering a hand of support to a cel painter who’s beginning to lose hope and enthusiasm in her job.
Episode 2: Working as a campaign staffer for a mayoral candidate, Kintaro lands the awkward position of being a tutor to his boss’s daughter.
Episode 3: Kintaro, now working in an Udon Restaurant while learning the craft of making the food itself is caught in the middle of relationship problems with restaurant owner’s daughter.
Episode 4: In the dead of winter, Kintaro manages to end up teaching at a swimming pool run by a trim, toned and beautiful (and also intimidating) swimming coach (and former Olympic athlete) who he then challenges her to a swim all while learning how to swim.
Episode 5: Landing a job as a servant in a traditional-style mansion of a wealthy family, Kintaro stumbles across Reiko Terayama. A stunning young woman with an extreme sexual fetish for Motorbikes who he then proceeds to challenge her to a race.
Episode 6: The final episode where we see Kintaro as an errand-boy for an animation studio while they are in the process of making their next big movie, while he is there however he’s offering a hand of support to a cel painter who’s beginning to lose hope and enthusiasm in her job.
Now the thing with Golden Boy as a series with how everything runs is its characters and how they shape the story, specifically for the main character. Kintaro Oe encounters so many women through his journey of life and they are sadly there one minute, gone the next. But despite that however they do leave a big impression, from icy cold but also sultry characters like the Ferrari-driving, skimpily Madame President to even kind and supportive but also possible love interest that wasn’t meant to be like the daughter of the Udon Restaurant owner each of them have a purpose and they leave something behind that in a very strange way all fall for the charms of Kintaro and by the end of it they desperately want to have sex with him or just want to have him as a really good friend or even boyfriend to have him push them in the right direction. So there’s a cause and effect thing with Golden Boy and the kind of influence Kintaro Oe has on the characters, then of course there’s the main character himself.
Kintaro Oe is what I’d probably describe as a free spirit, he doesn’t stay in one place and he’s on the move constantly from one job to the next and learns about life and jots it down in his note-book one experience at a time. Learning everything from computers, to housekeeping, to cooking etc, Kintaro Oe’s life is never boring as he’s picking up new skills from each new job he takes and each new person he meets, the biggest flaw to Kintaro however is that his lust for women and his sexual desires are insane beyond all measure. His uncontrollable libido to his fetish of toilets where the women he meets sits upon them (which becomes a gag through the series) does raise several questions that upon first impression Kintaro Oe would just look like a straight up pervert with no redeeming qualities whatsoever
Despite that however, Although Kintaro Oe is perverted and often times can and will look like an idiot he’s the total opposite of one. Apart from being incredibly self-reliant and eager to learn new skills, Kintaro is an intelligent, kind and incredibly daring individual that upon winning the hearts of the women that fall for him through his unique way of learning through life he never takes advantage of them and knows his own perverted behaviour to his own limits. He’s honour-bound by these feelings and does his absolute best to strive to achieve new goals and new challenges, Tatsuya Egawa writes: "Before leaving kindergarten, I wrote these words in my notebook: 'I really like to study’.
Production for Golden Boy is one that has held up incredibly well which despite being a product of the 90’s is something that makes series oddly enough quite timeless. Animated by Studio A.P.P.P. (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Project A-Ko, Cream Lemon, Robot Carnival) & directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Black Magic M-66, Blood The Last Vampire), Golden Boy is a really well animated series and only gets better with age. The series does a really solid job at capturing the expressive and exaggerated look of Egawa’s manga and does every bit it can to be hilarious but also pounding moments through of excitement and quiet moments of character progression, very chilled out episodes like episode 3 where it’s purely a character driven episode to let the audience stop and breath are nice to watch while also see a human side to someone as progressive and often times perverted like Kintaro. However episodes 4 & 5 really are examples of where the animation really goes over the edge at being hilarious and exciting to watch, watching Kintaro have one on one races weather it’s through swimming or cycling on dangerous cliffs really get the heart pounding and they are good ways to watch the anime go nuts with it’s budget. Because it’s very rare to watch someone literally cycle on a telephone line without getting electrocuted, it’s something that has to be seen to be believed even if it’s in animation. Apart from that the character design work by Toshihiro Kawamoto (Wolf’s Rain, Cowboy Bebop, Power Dolls) really help capture the look of Egawa’s manga at how beautiful the women look and how even in motion the characters still manage to convey moments of sadness, hilarity and joy but also pure, seething anger is really quite enjoyable.
Audio for Golden Boy is so much to take away from because of how this series doesn’t waste any single drop of energy and knows how to use that energy wisely. The score by Jōyō Katayanagi is really all over this place; Katayanagi hasn’t had a very busy career as a composer for anime and what work he has done has left not that much impact but here it manages to pull that off. The score for Golden Boy is sultry, emotional, funny and very exciting and really helps drive the story forward through each track and while at times it can seem forgettable because very few tracks aren’t that memorable, the score is memorable in what moments it’s used and how it captures those moments so perfectly.
The English Dub for Golden Boy is unique, that’s a word that has to be used specifically for an English dub of a Japanese anime because of how that dub is used and here it’s used perfectly. The English dub carried out by ADV Films stands out because of one notable distinction, Doug Smith as Kintaro Oe. When you think about voice acting and when you think about voice acting in anime there are specific actors that just fit perfectly for certain parts, Doug Smith is one of them and Smith just does that old school form of voice acting which is “Creating a Character” instead of just “Creating a Silly Voice” and he pulls it off flawlessly for Kintaro Oe. He was born for this role and it shows, Doug Smith goes all over the place with lines and goes over the top with his performance and more importantly, Does. Not. Care. For a series like this that’s heavily comical Smith makes the character believable by just going off script and letting him perform the character in a way that is hilarious through the change of moods but also displays a level of humanity to Kintaro in moments when it’s needed, Doug Smith really doesn’t get enough notice as a voice actor because here his talents stands out so clear that it’s impossible to ignore and impossible not to burst out laughing at. But apart from Smith all the veterans of ADV Films play their characters flawlessly well, from people like Tiffany Grant, Sue Ulu, Spike Spencer, Kim Sevier, Tristan MacAvery, Allison Keith. The Ensemble cast for Golden Boy here is well casted and no talent here is wasted.
| So overall, Golden Boy is an anime of a man’s man. A man that we should all aspire to be, but more importantly it’s about life and about the importance of study as well as taking on new and exciting challenges while seeing it through the eyes of a man that while he’s quite perverted, he’s a force of nature and meets a challenge with the utmost enthusiasm and does not fail to be a good person and keep moving forward no matter what challenge. But apart from that Golden Boy is a funny and heart-warming adventure that does everything it can to make you laugh, it’s over the top and it’s stupid as hell and while there are a handful of questionable moments that you do have to scratch your head over this is an anime that has managed to hold up well through the years and with how much this series throws at you and expects you to catch, whatever it throws at you is worth catching. Because Life is Study. Highly Recommended. |  |
Sami Sadek is a lifelong Transformers and Anime fan, and can often be found propping up bars or appearing in the background of Auto Assembly vids. He has also talks on Youtube, Tweets on Twitter, doodles on Deviantart and is a regular co-host on this very site's Cyberritz. He has never had a swordfight atop a church whilst a crow watches. Honest.
