Golden Time - Episode 6

This week's Golden Time begins by allowing us to dig a little deeper into Banri's pre-accident memories, giving us a view into the life of a far weaker boy than the one we now see before us, and also one besotted with Linda, only to find his confession to her put on hold until the following day.  A day which effectively never came.

Of course, moving back to the present day Linda is continuing to act as though she's never known Banri, even though she just so happens to own a pair of trainers in exactly his size as he learns during his time at the festival club.  As if this isn't headache enough for the poor fellow, a party thrown by Chinami only puts Koko and Mitsuo at loggerheads once again, with the latter confessing to Chinami right in front of Kaka pretty much ruining the whole party for everyone.

Understandably, this whole chain of events has taken Banri to breaking point, and to put it bluntly he's sick of it all - thus, he tells a drunken Koko that he doesn't want to be friends with her any more before walking away and leaving her, and come the next day he blows up at Linda while finally revealing that he remembers enough to at least know that she's been lying to him about their past all along.  For Linda's part, she has some pretty valid reasons for acting the way she has been, but all of this falls on deaf ears as Banri seriously contemplates whether another blow to the head will let him forget bit all and start over from scratch yet again.  Koko, however, is having none of this, as she's perhaps finally realised what Banri means to her...

For all of its silly, cliched and convoluted moments so far, this finally felt like the episode where all of Golden Time's stilted attempts to set up a strong cast and story have paid off - seeing Banri's self-destructive warpath was gripping stuff helped along by a character that it's easy to empathise with given the situations confronting him, while both Linda and Koko also feel like reasonably well-rounded individuals at this point even if the latter tends a little too far towards being tough to like.  It's the kind of romantic drama that I came to this series for, and it's almost a relief to see it finally delivering - hopefully now it's built up a head of steam we can find more of the same over the coming weeks.