Golden Time

Tada Banri is split between two personas. An accident after high school graduation left him with retrograde amnesia. He cannot remember anything about his relations from up to 18 yrs of age (before the accident), not his parents, classmates, or love interests. The life he is living, as he knows it, is just starting as he enters college. His struggle to search for who he really is and to how he should live his life from that time onward leads him to be divided into two Banri's; the Old Banri (represented by the phantom memories that follow him around), and the New Banri (the one starting a new life and love as a law college student). One is not willing to let go of his past love, while the other wants to move on and reinvent himself. In any case, the loser of this internal conflict will cease to exist. Which life will take over the person that is Tada Banri.

This is the conflict premise as presented in the anime series "Golden Time".

As a series, I commend the optimum usage of its 24-episode run to build up on the characters, develop them, and make the viewer get absorbed into the conflict that is happening, giving you that fulfilling gasp of air as the finale unfurled. It did seemed dragging in some episodes, where the plot is spread too thin to fill the time before bringing the cliffhanger at the end, but its all the same satisfying. 

One more highly recommended series to fill your love-comedy-drama fix.

Domestic na Kanojo

ドメスティックな彼女
(Domesutikku na Kanojo)
aka "Dome x Kano"

author: Sasuga Kei

Natsuno is an aspiring novelist who lives alone with his father. In order to forget the crush he has towards his English teacher, he goes ahead and agrees to have a "no-strings attached" sexual encounter with a girl he met at a mixer. When he got home, his father then announces the he is remarrying and finds out that his new stepmother has two daughters, his English teacher and the girl who he had sex with.

Although the series offers a lot of funny and enjoyable elements about their everyday life, I was moved with the way the relationship of the three develops. The way that they feel about each other, instead of going through the usual love triangle route, is given an incestuous turn because of them being united into the same family.

The story is filled with the idealist view of following your dreams, with layers upon layers of romance being complicated by suppressing their emotions in order to do what is right and to appear as acceptable to the norms of society. A pure form of love that is filled with pain and melancholy. Being able to grasp happiness for a short period of time only to fall into despair, as if to serve as reparation for being immature and giving in to what their heart yearns for.

A very addictive series to follow (as I read the available volumes three times already).

Umibe no Onna no Ko

うみべの女の子
(Umibe no Onna no Ko)
"Girl on the Shore"

story/ art: Inio Asano


Its a story of two individuals living an ordinary life in a dull seaside town. They try to fill in the void in each other's life and became "friends with benefits", but the farther they take things, the more complicated their relationship gets. And its starting to affect their lives and those around them.

It is a psychological take on what defines as a real romantic relationship, given that the characters became distrusting because of their past, but what I find interesting are the elements used to further escalate the situation. It may be classified as an erotic work, with the graphic sex scenes, but it was tastefully done, making it the device that intensifies the tension and emotion that is present in the scene.

I love it that this series deviates from the cutesy character design and focuses on the "ordinary girl/ ordinary boy". Their facial features adds the depth of emotion needed to further show the internal struggle these kids are going through. The artist also did an amazing job in combining the almost realistic background with the design of the characters, making nothing seem out of place.