It's hard to know what to say about an anime. They're always peculiar, in that anime way. I didn't rant about this one to any of my friends, when I first watched it. But maybe that's because it's just quietly brilliant.
The high-level stuff - Golden Time is about a group of university students doing various slice-of-life things. It's about the romantic relationships between them, sort of. It's about acting like an adult, making mistakes, growing up.
I've been watching like six episodes a night for the last few nights, which is a little jarring. It felt less like everyone was in a mad rush when I had to wait a week between each episode. :p There does seem to be a time jump between most of them too.
This show fascinates me just because it's about university students rather than high school students. The characters drive cars places, they go out drinking, they get in over their heads in strange situations with strange people. There are hardly any parents hovering over their shoulders so they have to handle everything on their own. Some things go well, and some things really don't and they're wiser for it. It's just, really nice to watch an anime that's not set in a high school, you know? They even wear normal clothes all the time!
A "romantic comedy" is definitely what they were going for. There's almost always a light-hearted tone even when things get serious. Plenty of silly jokes and slapstick. The romance, though, it's kind of... maybe there's a cultural barrier here I don't understand, or maybe it's one of those Anime things. Even though it's such a big part of the story, it doesn't feel impactful? We see the main characters meet, and get along, and realise they like each other... There are things that happen to them and things they each learn about themselves that impact how they feel about each other. A lot of realising boundaries. A lot of things that (I felt) are only very briefly talked about in the text. It feels like there's space for a lot to be elaborated on? Then again, maybe that's unnecessary, maybe everything's communicated to the audience just fine how it is.
There's a subplot about a ghost who's haunting the main character which I think the show could do without. I don't think it adds much, though it does help to move the story along I guess.
Ummm, I think that's all I've got for this one, for now. Golden Time. :)
P.S. As of writing I've just rewatched episode 18. That's as many as I had, did I forget to finish watching back in 2014? I'm about to find out!