The more episodes I watch of Golden Time, the faster it becomes my favorite anime this season. I always find it more impressive if an anime manages to become entertaining with everything in it being pretty much everyday life which no supernatural elements. And after a wonderful episode of getting involved with a cult disguised as a club, what else could happen to our main characters Banri and Kouko? Well, this episode was far more pushing the story and character relationships forward.
For the most part, Kouko was presented as this confident and unstoppable force, when it came to her love for Mitsuo; however, with Mitsuo finally getting the courage to confront Kouko and sincerely talk to her, we see Kouko's queen act slowly begin to crumble. A lot of what Kouko said about her always being there for Mitsuo and yet he never return her love, kind of speaks to how shallow some anime romances are with childhood friends. Just because you have been with someone for a long time, doesn't mean those feelings for them randomly become mutual -- as least anything past friendship -- like it was osmosis. Even still, this is the center focus of a good amount of romances, especially those set in high school.
With all that, we get over the first obstacle of Kouko's lingering feeling for her self proclaimed boyfriend, Mitsuo -- after a good amount of sulking, public mishaps, and crying. And this is probably where more of the fun is about to began because Banri ends up dropping a confession quite casually toward Kouko. Most people might see that as everything is on the up and up, once Kouko recovers, however there is one more surprise that crops up some questions for the future.
Now, since we found out that Banri is suffering from amnesia in the third episode, we have this weird problem of the two different Banri -- one with and without his memories. On top of that, there was also a big reveal of Linda being an old friend to Banri, but before he found about this information, he was already under the assumption that he didn't know her when they met. This is the complicated part of an amnesia story that I find fascinating, because we know -- based on the opening theme song at least -- that Kouko and Banri will eventually get together. Assuming that Banri ever gets his memory back, would the "new" Banri love Kouko as the amnesia stricken Banri did? Or would his feeling change with new information.
There are more question revolving around Banri's amnesia, but the second and as important question is what kind of relationships Linda and Banri had before the amnesia? If they were slowly becoming more than friends, this could be some pretty hairy situations coming up, and I'm excited.
To wrap this up, I would say the set in the fourth episode alone shows so much potential to have a good story focused around the many characters introduced previously. I can't wait for what's to come, and hope for a romantic amnesia story that doesn't suck.