Kintaro Oe. Age 25. Tokyo University Dropout. However, he independently withdrew from law school because he had mastered the entire curriculum.

Since then, he has been changing jobs numerous times, learning about life. Riding his favorite bike, Crescent Moon, he keeps on moving.

And perhaps someday, he may save the anime industry...

...oh, no. I mean, 'even the world.'
--from the ending of Ep 6

Gentle Readers, I bring you the ecchi-est show I've ever seen...

It's hardly a stretch to say that the plot of GoldenBoy is well-used. Young man hits the road, meets people, learns things, and then moves on, leaving those he's interacted with changed for the better.

The hook in this case is that Kintaro Oe, our hero, only seems to end up interacting with smoulderingly hot women. We'll get to them in a moment... first, lets meet Kintaro:

As you can see, the animators weren't afraid to go all over the map when drawing our lad. The upper-left pic, of Kintaro on Crescent Moon, is the usual way he's presented, but the others are not uncommon (save the lower-left, which only is seen in Ep 6... thankfully). As they say, 'SD happens.'

Kintaro is a genius, and I'm not just saying that for his choices in co-stars. The GoldenBoy really IS a 'golden boy.' For example, in Ep 1, he learns how to program computers... using only a "keyboard" that he scribbled on a sheet of paper. Ep 3, he winds up working in a family-owned noodle shop... where he quickly catches onto the art of noodle-making (which is an art... one that's a cast-iron b*tch to get right). Ep 4, he goes from not being able to swim... to being able to keep pace (barely) with an Olympic champion. And Ep 6, he (almost) single-handedly saves an animation company from certain doom. In every case, he's doing things he had NEVER done before... always with a smile, and always with his mantra "study, study, study, study, study...." He's also VERY humble, and most of the people he works with don't realize how brilliant he is until he's gone.

The humor is mostly of the 'cable network' type, blue instead of raunchy, and in a few cases, completely over-the-top (Kintaro has a thing for toilets, for example). There's a lot of humor, but it depends on the viewer if it works for them. In my case, most of it worked pretty well.

I picked up the Essential Anime version of GoldenBoy back when MediaPlay went under (for $9.99! Woo!), and truly didn't expect much more than eye-candy. Instead, I got an engaging story and an interesting character. The first five episodes are all stand-alone, and could be watched in any order without losing anything in the process.

Ep 6, however, ties them all together by bringing all of the people Kintaro helped in one place to help HIM. It doesn't hurt that they all have a soft spot for him... and in a couple of cases, a serious case of the yeehaws for him, too.

Now, lets move onto the fun stuff... need I say that everything from now on is decidedly NSFW? Click below!

THAT's how we meet the first person Kintaro interacts with. She's the President of a small software company on the verge of a big splash... after she runs Kintaro over with her Ferrari. He ends up in a pile of garbage, she gives him one million yen for his injuries and bike repairs, and then...

...backhands him for daring to touch her person (with the line "get your filthy hands off me."). Later, she's in THIS outfit:

...and he winds up fantasizing about her, of course: Too Hot For The Pond.

Ep 2 introduces us to the daughter of a town mayor (Kintaro is on his campaign staff, and she decides to tease the poor lad). Here she is:

She thinks she's got him wrapped around her little finger. But, being The Hero, he knows exactly what she's doing, and plays along... but not without some difficulty: "Teach me, Kintaro... please teach me... how to do algebra."

Ep 3 is the noodle episode, and his co-star is a nice young girl. Really. She's actually the least ecchi character in the show.

Ep 4 has my favorite co-star, the Olympic Swimmer:

At one point, Kintaro challenges her to a race... of course, THIS is the view he has.

Which brings us to Ep 5. The Shrine Maiden...

...who, um, loves her motorcycle.

A lot.

Did I mention that she loves her motorcycle?

...and doesn't like men? But she does love her motorcycle.

Ep 6 is the Animation Episode, and I fully expect that the staff of the company in the show is the staff of the real animation company. But who cares about them? Here's the person he teaches about how great the world of anime is:

So, that's GoldenBoy in a nutshell. I enjoyed the series, all six episodes of it. It's 10 years old, but the animation has held up well, and the story is better'n most. Couldn't show it to the Duck U. Anime Club, but it's worth a look, particularly if you've got a hankerin' for some fanservice.

(note: these screencaps are fairly decent representations of what's in the show. The catch is, of course, that it's incessant during the course of an episode, and everything MOVES nicely. Maybe not realistically, but nicely. Episodes 1 and 2 fall into the high-end of jiggle per minute shows, in particular. ADV has the show listed as "17+", and that's pretty much the case. It wouldn't've taken much to get it to 18, though, that's for sure.)

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:55 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 953 words, total size 8 kb.

1 And it gave us Chihuahua!, one of the greatest AMVs evar!!!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 30, 2006 01:10 PM (A9tur)

2 Which is where the "Many Faces of Oe" screencaps came from, by the way!

I've said in the past that Chihuahua! is certainly the greatest FIRST amv ever; it'd be in my top 10 or 20 AMVs ever.

I was thinking about mentioning it in the post, but I decided to concentrate on the actual show first. Thanks for bringing it up, Pixy!

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 30, 2006 01:13 PM (0Co69)

3 The way you teased us about it, I was expecting a negative review...

I like the subtitle, Sasurai no obenkyou yarou, or "the wandering studious bastard". Doesn't seem like my kind of show, though; fanservice vehicles demand well-designed female characters, and these look average at best, though I guess the anime studio girl is kinda cute.

Posted by: Andrew F. at December 30, 2006 01:31 PM (aGfYh)

4 Andrew, I was quite surprised by the fact that I liked the show. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's no CardCaptor Sakura. It wouldn't be in my collection except 1) it was deep sale at MediaCircus, and 2) the aforementioned Chihuahua!. I liked the AMV so much, I got the (cheap) series.

I actually DID find the female characters 'well-designed,' (hmmm... must try and use that as a pickup line), particularly the swimmer and the tease. But that's just me.

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 30, 2006 06:40 PM (YadGF)

5 Andrew - seriously, watch Chihuahua! It gives you a good idea of what the show is like - and it's great fun.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 31, 2006 01:05 AM (A9tur)

6 Watched!

Enjoyed!

May pick up show sometime in future!

Thanks!

Posted by: Andrew F. at December 31, 2006 08:16 AM (SARav)

7 yep, looks like hentai, but not. haha~. But damn funny.

Posted by: Clazirus at January 01, 2007 02:16 AM (T5pq+)

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