Golden Boy

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Back in the 90's after watching the anime "Golden Boy" I could never understand why they never made more episodes? After all it was one of the best animated, and unique stories I had ever seen.

Well fast forward 20yrs, and thanks to the scary power of the internet I was finally able to read the manga...And now I know.

After chapter 5, things get really lewd really fast!

Part of the charm of the first 5 chapters and the Anime. Is that Kintaro never quite gets the girl, or so to say he gets the girl but leaves before he gets to score.
Unfortunately after chapter ... 5 there's an abrupt change in writing style. Kintaro not only gets the girl, and multiple girls, but he's also sometimes the girl with scenes of cross dressing, and being a BDSM slave.

I can't help wonder if the writer after chapter 5 was pressured by his editor to add more smut? Or if he was in collage taking a psychology 101 class? Either way, you'll either love the change or dislike it.

So,did you watch the OVA's and want to keep on reading the manga? Well,you probably won't regret it! :) Oe Kintaro is as cool as ever,even here!
First I'd like to say that I only read the first 65 chapters,because I couldn't find any more in the time of writing this review.

Oe Kintaro - The Super Awesome Part-Timer! :)

There are 2 Golden Boy series : Lesson and Study series.The Lesson series have only 9 or 10 chapters (each one around 30 pages),and they are partially adapted to the OVA (one Lesson chapter = one episode).

Later on,in the Study series,there are more chapters (with an 18 ... page average length and their stories mostly last around 10-15 chapters).

Let's talk about Lesson series first :

Story - 10 - It's just magnificent!Oe is really funny,and hilariously perverted (not in a bad way of course).You will find him falling in love with,and helping many women to get back on the good track of life.

Art - 10 - Well,honestly here,it's just great.It's a old manga,but the character images are the same in every chapter/page,that you'll never find it troubling to recognize a character.The background are also well made,and there are some boobs. :)

Character - 10 - In the beginning you might think of him as a dumb pervert,but you are wrong.The way his character comically progresses trough the lessons,where you can see what he really is like,and what he values the most are the really important things in life.He will make some mistakes,but he will redeem ten times more.With the jobs he gets,he progresses in each way.

Enjoyment - 10 - The Lessons are really fun,specially not being really connected (just a few times the other chapters are mentioned),and you just can't stop reading.His reactions,the reactions of the environment,it's just overwhelming.
As the lessons progress you'll enjoy even more! :)

Overall - 10 - Simply awesome! :)

Now,let's talk about the Study part!

Story - 8 - Although it's still Oe,we'll find some loss of ideas here.He still does things the way he used to,it's just that there are some really unpleasant and freaky moments,and you'll find some of the characters really evil.A few times I found myself looking away because there were some things going on that I didn't want to see/read about.A big minus is also that Oe appears less here,as the new background characters get more pages/chapters for themselves.Still,it's the Golden Boy (although a Golden Girl will appear later,she ain't golden at all.)
Eight might be a bit high of a grade,but it deserves no more or no less than that - still you'll judge for yourself (sometimes you get really annoyed,but mostly you'll just want to keep reading).

Art - 10 - The art here is pretty much the same like in the Lessons,but,you can find a LOT more of boobs,penises and vaginas (censored in a weird way).That's all about art.

Character - 9 - It is still Oe,but,you'll find that his perverted manners have gone out of control here.Even though he's still Golden at the end of each story (around 10 chapters),in between he'll do some really weird things,some of which I approve,and some of which I don't. (SPOILER - He'll even pretend to be a 17 year old girl).He keeps writing things in his notebook,but,he feels a bit different (a bit off.)

Enjoyment - 8 - as mentioned before he'll do some really weird things,and some really perverted characters will appear,and literally do everything their dirty minds can think of.So,it really feels sad/disgusting at some points/chapters/pages.And the extra sex thing - there's really a lot of it in the Study series.

Overall - 9 - 'Nuff said in the previous sections.


Overall for both series :

Story - 9 -
Art - 10 -
Character - 10 -
Enjoyment - 9 -


Overall - 10 -

Because of the great story of the Lessons,I can forgive the LQ story of the Study series.The art is kinda the same.Kintaro has questionable qualities in the Study series,but I forgive him,for in the end (every end,of each chapter,both Lesson and Study) is GOLDEN. :D The enjoyment is a bit spoiled buy the Study series,but it still offers some fresh material and a lot of fun material (though not as much in the Lesson series).

Sorry if it seems illogical while reading,I was kinda tired,and I tried being objective and not revealing too much.

I only wrote this since there were no reviews.

Hope you read it all. If you did - rate it Helpful? ^_^

Kanpai!

Ja ne.

Oh boy what a let down.. here we go, throughout the manga you'll see different sorts of fetishes which can lead to hilarious moments, Since this is a sex filled world, ntr is bound to happen, at first it didn't bother me, I was curious to see how Kintaro handled these situations most of them, to my disappointment he handles it like a cuck. Philosophy is a topic that becomes more and more prominent throughout the manga, this is where the ntr gets out of hand. The author is literally saying, if you care about your woman having sex with another man, you are weak ... and don't truly love her. ?

Now I don't know about you but i came here for comedy, plot and fap material. What I didn't expect was an argument on how being a cuck is good.

The author is the main problem of this comic book.
Reading the comic you notice - or at least to me it seemed so - that the author has filled every page of the comic with sex scenes and references to sex because it is fixed,
The whole comic book seems to be a self-justification for one's childhood ideas about society and sex. Pitiful.
At a certain point it becomes unnerving to read those childhood dialogues on sex and society, it is hoped only that the author decides not to talk about sex - even if only for a chapter-.
a work that wants to be mature, but that ... seems to be made by a teenager who wants to make himself cool by adding petty ideas and petty philosophy.

sorry for the grammatical errors, I'm not very good in English.

It's hard not to write a review about Golden Boy without spoilers, since all the flaws are plot related, but I'll do my best. I'm almost near the end but with the snails pace I can kind of see where it's going.

Like many I was made aware of this manga by the OVA. I had assumed, like the OVA, that this would be a ecchi comedy with some character analysis thrown in. Fun, short, but heartfelt.

The early chapters were very much like this, even at it's most bizarre. Kintaro drives somewhere new, finds a new job, a woman he works with or encounters in some ... other way intrigues him and helps solve their issues. It's a simple formula that's not very deep, but it must have worked seeing as how popular the OVA is.
I think they only selected these earlier chapters for good reason as they had consistently good stories.
The artwork, at least to me, is very unique. I love how you can tell a different assistant worked on specific chapters, each assistants style pops yet matches at the same time. Details like teeth and hair are very nice (weirdo lolol) and Kintaros expressions are a delight with how grotesque they can get. Even the weird anatomy at times have charm. Backgrounds and things like cars or bikes are also disturbingly accurate and beautifully drawn.

By the first long arc though, the premise falls apart very fast. They go against the original premise; it is no longer about Kintaro and the women he meets, but random people at random times who are vaguely but conveniently connected to him in some sort of manner and have these convoluted dramatic arcs, and not dramatic in a good way.
Characters create political and ideological conflict, and the dialog becomes very long winded and the points they make are outright conflicting with their actions.
They talk less like people and more like college essays.
They'll say things that boil down to "society bad" or "people evil" and yet they do outright nefarious actions. But because they're open about the "evils of the world" it's OK!
And in ecchi fashion, the only punishment they receive for it is unsavory sexual acts.

We're shown over and over with some characters disagree with establishment-type figures.
They hate being led around by people who think they can take over the world, and they want to decide things on their own.
But then they also want that same power and use malicious methods to fulfill their goals for...some reason? It's not really explained why? They'll claim they want power and status, but they don't even have end goals.
Let's use Kintaro as an example. He's shown early on that he has a very freedom-loving sense of mind; he wants to learn about the world as much as he can, who doesn't enjoy government and other establishment figures using their status for wrongdoings. He wishes for society to empower others, to learn freely as he even in school, and to stop holding others back.
In flashbacks this part of him had always been the same. But there is a part in the very later arc where he's shown as someone who's actually just pro-"work and get a wife and get excited for the next thing". That kind of mentality. Despite saying otherwise earlier as it was his reason for doing something specific in the beginning of that arc.
Characters can change as people, but to twist his character just for the sake of relationship drama that's shown later on, it's poor writing imo.

The political takes that show up in later arcs seem like very personal views (war bad, environmentalism good, industrialization bad, capitalism bad). I'm not here to judge the author for them, they're his own views, and I am but the humble reader just trying to read a story with anime boobies.
Like I said earlier, character dialog becomes extremely long. There's less panels and more gigantic speech bubbles you'd find in bad internet webcomics, you know the ones.
I had to read through someone getting lectured on WW2 and the consequences of Japanese warcrimes and their bubble economy at a fancy dining table and it took about 8 pages.
If anything the author predicted "fictional characters used as some sort of political mouthpiece" trend of the current year. Big brained.
And like the morals, they'll be outright conflicting with the characters actions.

As for the sexual acts, I was personally fine with the ecchi. I don't mind a bit of weird porn lmao.
But, as the series progresses, fetishes become more and more blatant.
Without too many spoilers, there's an entire arc dedicated to crossdressing and another with VR hypnosis. Lots of NTR. And piss. An obscene amount of urine. There is so much piss drinking.
Sometimes the sex scenes take up so much time half of an entire volume will be just that, and you bet they'll be ranting about how "people are like, just sheep, maaan, open yer mind to the woooorld" while cumming.
It just goes from 0 to 100 very fast to the point where you're turned off completely.
I felt like I had caught syphilis with some of the events occurring lololol.
But this part is probably personal preference, maybe you'll enjoy or do enjoy some of these fetishes. Godspeed brother.

All these things I criticize, they're fine on their own.
A character with flaws is not a bad character, they're only human after all.
For characters to constantly go against their own values that they'd outright said in dialog, and for the authors views to overpower the entire storyline, it's just shitty.
In writing, you should show consequences for ones actions good or bad, yet there is nothing.
Besides getting forcibly starved to death, pissed on, raped, or cheated on, which, I guess works but it's still dumb.

Once you learn about the authors past as a porn director, as well as his teaching career however, it begins to make sense.
Golden Boy is not the story of a young and free-spirted man looking to learn about the world around him, but the author using it as a dumping ground for his takes he's acquired in college and his fetishes.
Authors putting themselves in their works isn't wrong, I love authors who basically create memoirs of themselves, putting down their thoughts and what they enjoy in comic form.
If the work is pulling itself in so many directions it can't keep it's head straight, and it doesn't even mesh well, then I have to question the authors sanity.
It's a shame, since there were some storylines or exchanges that I did like, at least theoretically. They would have been awesome if written by someone who understands what makes good and consistent writing.

TL;DR: It's just a counter-culture of the 90s version of long political tumblr comics with weird fetishes so if that's your thing go nuts

So I'm a big fan of the OVA series that this Manga was based on and after watching it all over again one day when I was going through my favorite manga scan site this came up and I figured I'd give it a read and man was this something.

Before I get too into things I'd like to make note that every thing I look up on this seems to give the impression that after the first volume all this story does is devolve into porn and while yes there's a lot of sex and yes things get graphic beyond comprehension (Seriously if there was ... an ecchi scale from 1 to 10 this would be a 14 this book both literally and metaphorically get's the fuck in there) I feel the need to inform you that the at times overwhelming amount of sex that happens in this story has a purpose it's just something I'll have to explain but like I've done before here's the TL;DR for those just scanning reviews:

TL;DR

This is an interesting look in the psychi of a free spirit as he explores a wide variety of topics from the worshiping of false idols, the meaning of life as he knows it, and the after effects of the people who's eyes he's opened to the wonderful mystery that is the world.


Story:

What we have here is the tale of a guy that wonders town to town doing odd jobs and getting into a series of perverted scenarios and while at the first volume is more a woman of the week affair similar to the 6 episode OVA at points just outright feeling like panels of the show it quickly devolves from that as it then turns into an overarching tale of large proportions.

Around the second volume is when we get a small glimpse into Kintaro's past and we start to learn that it's within his nature as a person to help others out and do what's best for them while still making sure to shove his dick into anyone that moves and of course making their lives better possibly because of that but this volume is where one of the first things this Manga's advantage over it's OVA counterpart really starts and that's it's overarching plot of characters with the introduction of Masamue Kongoji who for lack of a better way to word it is a metaphorical god that is the embodiment of the theme of manipulation through false hope and the desire for sheer comfort that we all have and that Kintaro is the polar opposite of and this arch continues on and off through the rest of the series only concluding at the very end which without spoiling too much leaves you at a loss for words.

There's an overarching theme of the same story getting told just taking longer and longer to get there throughout the 10 volumes and in between the most graphic of sex scenes you get a lot of moments where characters are giving really long monologues about a multitude of really series topics like the corrupt nature of government, how people are numbed to the harsh realities of their very futile existence of life through false idol worship, the fucked up nature of the educational system and how it doesn't actually teach but rather force us to follow someone else order and to put our own free thought on the back burner, and it even covers just how sex is both a true means of expression and a really easy way to manipulate an individual.

This manga is surprisingly deep and there's quite a bit of quality sections here and there with the biggest sting against this being the arch involving golden showers.

Kintaro as a character is a fascinating case study and when he was the focus this story was just the absolute best but I'd hate to say I can't really rate the story too high just because of the, "Golden Water," arch around Vol. 5 and a lot of the parts involving Naoko Katsuda who was already my least favorite character in the anime.

7/10

Art:

It's 90's manga and with that you have really solid environments, characters that are a lot closer to reality in terms of overall looks, the expression work on the characters faces are pretty funny, and the ladies....they aight you get more than enough *Cough* STUDYING material if you uh know what I'm saying.

I happen to like old anime visuals but if you don't knock my score down about half.

8/10

Charactrer:

Best noble pervert ever, his first true love we meet near the end of the book is excellent, and everyone else does their job well with only a couple of people I wish would be thrown down a well.

Yes there was a good amount of awful people but the good one's make this story worth it.

9/10

Enjoyment:

I'm a be blunt this story dragged to high hell at a lot of points but when it hit ya it fucking hit ya and for me this was a just one more chapter kind of read where I found myself up late really wanting to go further and just keep reading and it's ending while a bit what the fuck felt just right for one of the most surprisingly deep things I've read in a while this story is a roller coaster of crazy that I can only really recommend to folks just wacky enough to read it but for everyone else I'd say be weary.

This story isn't just porn it gets the fuck in there trust me but it's actually a real story.

9/10

Golden Boy is the worst manga I've ever read. While I wouldn't really want to recommend it in general, I think that reading at least some part of this could still be entertaining because of just how weird it is.

And this manga is very, very weird. I personally did not love the anime, so I started reading the manga with no prior information hoping that it would get better. Instead, the manga only gets worse the more you read it. It reached a point where I was physically cringing during almost every chapter, and I had to take multiple breaks from reading because it was ... just too much.

I think Golden Boy works best if you just show out of context screenshots to people. Some insane (and I mean insane as in I seriously think the author has some kind of mental illness) things happen in the manga, and those things are pretty funny if you just take them out of context. Over the course of the series, however, I found that the antics of the manga just got tiring.

At some point in the manga, the author seems to stop caring about writing a coherent story, or even writing a coherent anything. Instead, he just has the characters have sex and start ranting about society and life, usually all at the same time. I got tired of those real fast, but the author seriously has some pretty delusional (and a bit hypocritical) takes sometimes. Some of those rants honestly sound like the stuff you'd hear from a crackhead out on the street at 2 am.

The sex is also just really weird. Some things that happen in the manga include, but are not limited to: mind control, statutory rape, rape in general, NTR, crossdressing, and urophagia. If you're into that, go ahead, but I think you would be better off reading a doujin.

I see that other reviewers online have hated the art. Personally, I thought it was decent enough, as the quality of the art fit everything else pretty well. It's not the best, but I think the art is just a product of it's time.

There's a lot of things that happen in the manga that I could talk on and on about, but I don't know if I can even remember them all, so I don't want to list them all out. Other reviewers on MAL do a pretty good job of doing that already. I will say, however, that the ending is pretty atrocious, as the series just abruptly ends without concluding anything in the middle of a story arc.

For most of the series, I was feeling a pretty strong 2/10. I only give 1s out to series that completely piss me off, and the first half of the manga is just plain bad, but not bad enough for me to actually get annoyed. That started to change more towards the end of the manga when literally every page became a struggle to read.

Final Rating: 1/10

tl;dr: probably not worth reading unless you want something that is so bad its entertaining, except it's not that entertaining most the time

The manga gets super shitty about halfway through. Basically, up until that point there are no real arcs, just one off adventures that may be a couple of chapters long. But the first real arc is pretty good, but then it gets super weird. Oe ends up pretending to be a schoolgirl for a long ass time and then moves to a new place which involves a girl constantly pissing on people and goes into a whole spiral about human behavior and how every human in society is shit. Basically the point of the manga i guess is to abandon and reject society. It doesn't ... even put up a good argument, "Humans only act kind out of a secret desire to gain something" ?? its a dumb manga that tries to take the moral high ground

I remember watching the 6 episode OVA's a while back when I was just starting to watch anime. I had quite enjoyed the 6 episodes it had, and always wanted for more. After a while I decided to read the manga hoping for more of the material that I once remembered it to be. But sadly, after just 5 chapters or so into the story, the whole manga took a whole new approach.

Story: 6
The original premise of the story is very enjoyable and easy to get into. But after a while the story becomes so clusterfucked that you wont even know what you're reading anymore. ... Every arc just ends up with kintarou getting ntr'd. This may just be a personal opinion, but after the change in writing style, reading this was making me lose brain cells more than I ever have reading any other manga.

Art: 8
Can't really say much for this. I thought the art was decently drawn coming from a manga that's already older than me. The older style shouldn't be the reason not to check this out.

Character: 5
I dont know if its just me or I disliked almost every single character in this story. Kintarou was the only person that you can really like. Basically every other character is a douche and only wants to have sex.

Enjoyment: 6
The very beginning of the story was really nice to read, but as I said previously, the writing changed and the author made the story filled with sex. And thats not a bad thing tho, the worst part is that its all overwritten with ntr, and if you're not into that, you definitely wont enjoy this.

Overall: 6
If you like ntr read it
If you dislike ntr read the first 5 chapters or so and then stop

After watching the OVA, I was surprised that this manga had many chapters not yet animated and was keen on reading it. Unfortunately, my expectations were shattered when I read past the first chapters.
This manga starts off strong and surprisingly inspirational, Kintaro is a hard working man who studies life itself, at least in the first chapters, it does have its charm. But then came the rest of the manga and it took a complete turn for the worse, instead of Kintaro learning about life while hopping from different part time jobs, it becomes a storm of fetishes and the authors weird projections and insecurities. ... This manga had so much potential but in the end, it settled for being mundane and disgusting.
If you want to read it, go ahead. I had to stop many times while reading it because things either made no sense at all or the story at the time was focused entirely around weird sex practices. I'd recommend watching the OVA instead though.

Golden Boy has a really solid beginning, with girl-of-the-week ecchi comedy approach. Unfortunetly, after literaly 9 chapters it embraces arc structure and becomes hentai expolring "harder" fetishes (NTR, BDSM, mind control) with our main protagonist rarely proactive. Setting becomes convoluted mess with typical porn excuses to show sex scenes, most character development is waisted and it all ends without any conclusion, as an axed series. Manga goes on tracks back again around volume 7, but pulls no puches and turns promising and inportant character into naive psycho. It is also full of social commentary. Surfice level, and inconsistent social commentary, that presents two possibilities of ... improving modern world - mind control cult of personality dictatorship or post-secular buddism with libertine sex etics. Big dissapointment and simply a waste of time.