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Golden Time is certainly different. It brings with it beautiful story and character arcs, an amazing OST and is generally amazing. Of course, it has its flaws, but Golden Time is generally what I would consider good anime.
How should I put this... Golden Time was... Different... I'll go on with my general consensus first, the story and character arcs were a-fucking-mazing, no I'm serious, if you ever get bored of rom-com animes then you come *here*. Like, I seriously cannot emphasize the FEELS that ooze from this anime, and be warned, this anime is hazardous if you can't watch it in a short amount of ... time because the suspense will literally emotionally paralyze you, no matter which episode you're on until the last. Like, to emphasize how much of just PLOT there is in Golden Time, like, you'd have to create an entire new language. Ploot. That's what I've resorted to calling it. Ploot. (I'll get on to why I gave Story and Character 9s only later)
Moving on, the art is nothing special, I mean like take any average 2013-14-ish anime and bam, you've got yourself Golden Time art, but the sound, omg the sound. I'll go in order of ascension. Any and all sound effects or background noises were clearly taken into consideration no matter how trivial. They really nailed the VAs on this one. I think that the voices used for each and every character clearly and well represents their personalities and current emotions at any given dialogue.
Now the Audial Masterpiece of Golden Time (yes, so much so that it deserves it's own paragraph). Let me get one thing straight. I hate end songs and opening songs. In general. Openings waste my time and effort to speedscrub and estimate to where the song ends and Endings make it hard for me to concentrate on finding the next ep. But Golden Time's Ending song certainly makes itself an exception. The beautiful Piano solo prelude accompanied by the ensuing contemporary percussion is quick to captivate anyone with anyone who can hear. I won't go much into this one song but I'll say this, it certainly arouses suspense and emotion in the audience (part of the reason why I recommend you finish this anime quickly). The reason Sound only gets a 9 is because the opening song is nothing special. Honestly, if animes can't come up up with good openings and endings they may as well just cut'em out.
Now, the flaws. In general, Golden Time's greatest flaw lies in episode 24. The ending. This won't really make sense to those who have yet to watch the anime, but the producers really went easy on us. In episode 24, the producers could've very easily made Golden Time a straight up 10, masterpiece (in the process of doing so emotionally obliterating anyone that watched it). But no, they gave mercy. Think of the ending of "Stranger Than Fiction"... something like that.
One thing special about Golden Time is its episode management. I'm pretty sure the producers had a few long sit-down about this. Watching the anime , I realized that the episodes were meticulously scheduled in order. Each episode inadvertently contributed to the ploot somehow. There were no "filler" episodes, and less ploot-significant episodes only served to build suspense for oncoming mass-ploot events. I divide Golden Time into three segments, the Intro, the Progression, and the Drop (sure I guess you can say climax, but its less dramatic). The transitions between each segment are beautifully done, however, so subtle that its unnoticeable except in hindsight.
All in all, Golden Time is a flawed, beautiful piece of art anime that really gets you to start thinking about what to do with your time. Especially since it teaches you that time, is golden.