Golden Boy

At last Dynamic pulls out of its top hat one of the series I had been waiting for most of all: when I learned from a trailer on the fourth City Hunter videotape that these OVAs were about to come out in Italy, I could hardly contain myself. “A very hot summer, from Dynamic Italia,” said Vittorio Guerrieri with conviction from the other side of the screen… as usual Dynamic hadn’t specified which year… Jokes aside (long live Casalegno. – Goku’s note), even if late (we’re used to it by now), at last I can enjoy Tatsuya Egawa’s masterpiece. One fine day Kintaro Oe, director of Tiph… er, law student (me too! – Char’s note) at the University of Tokyo, realises he has nothing left to learn, since at university they forget to teach the most difficult subject of all: women (officially that’s not the case, but I think I’m interpreting Egawa’s real thought)!

So Kintaro, on his faithful mountain bike “Half Moon” and with a little notebook in which he jots down everything he thinks worth noting, becomes a “freeter”, that is, a young man who changes job every day, which gives the author fresh ideas for his stories all the time.

In the first OVA, Kintaro, on his way to his new job, is run over by a Ferrari that sends him crashing into the rubbish with his bicycle and all. The car stops and out of the door steps a woman who looks like an extremely successful mix of all the hottest models in the universe plus one (a little aside: if any of Tiphares’ female readers recognise themselves in this description, please send a letter to the editorial office). The girl, after performing a number that only a girl with a size-E bra can carry out to perfection (boing, boing. – Goku’s note), gives a million yen (A MILLION!) to Kintaro who, meanwhile, was too busy rolling up his tongue, which had spread itself over the ground (I made this one up myself, but I must say that faced with something like this I regret not having been born a cartoon). Kintaro notes everything down in his notebook and at last goes to his new workplace: a computer company. What shocks the boy (and me too!) is that all the programmers are women! And not one ugly one among them (I want to be hired there too!!!!)! The bad surprise comes when he presents himself in front of the boss: she is the woman who had run him over a moment earlier!

Not very convinced by Kintaro, the woman sends the poor guy off to clean the toilets, where our hero is so happy to be cleaning the place where all these girls park their bottoms that he performs one of the biggest blunders in the universe (another was made by Tribal when we went to see the Kappa Boys, one day I’ll tell you about it…). Not at all discouraged, Kintaro asks the president to give him a chance, but it all ends in yet another embarrassment: the boy only knows Basic, and the girls promptly take him for a ride because to work in an office like that you need at least C. Disappointed and dejected, Kintaro goes back, crestfallen, to cleaning the toilets. One day, because of one of the usual messes, Kintaro stays in the office after closing time and, spotting a computer that is on, switches it off, irreparably deleting everything it contained (it was a server). Naturally the president fires him on the spot and Kintaro performs yet another of his blunders. But it doesn’t end there! Kintaro shuts himself up at home and, having learned C in a week (INSULT!!!! – Ryo’s note, Goku’s, WDIM’s and Mouflon’s, computer science students)(and I who took ages just to learn Pascal, sigh…), reprograms the deleted software even better than before and then leaves, amid the desperate tears of all the programmers and of the dream-director.

In the second OVA Kintaro works on the election campaign of a Japanese mayor mixed up in shady dealings with the Yakuza (the Japanese mafia). The young man falls in love with Naoko, the man’s daughter (indeed quite a piece of a daughter), who immediately shows an attraction to him. Kintaro realises, however, that the girl only wants to seduce him in order to make him her puppet, and notes everything down in his trusty notebook, which, needless to say, arouses Naoko’s curiosity. After stealing it from him, the girl reads it and discovers what Kintaro actually thinks of her: namely that she is a girl who plays the goose, that she is under her father’s thumb and, above all, that he is in love with her. At their next meeting, Naoko stages an attempted rape by Kintaro, making her father rush into her room with the Yakuza. Kintaro, not at all frightened, kisses the girl and declares all his love for her, only to be inexorably inflated like a bagpipe (beaten up). This gesture serves, however, to open Naoko’s eyes, who stops the massacre and falls in love with Kintaro too, apologising to him with a very special note (the kind that would make any writing paper currently in circulation blush).

In the third OVA, Kintaro works in an udon shop (Japanese hand-made noodles. Follow the upcoming instalments of “Everybody to the table with Ryo Saeba”), helping the owner, who can’t work because of a broken arm. The young man will find himself, against his will, helping the owner’s daughter, who has lost her head over a man, apparently a good person, who turns out instead to be a Yakuza who has set his sights on the little restaurant to build a nightclub there. In the fourth, finally, Kintaro loses his head over a girl who is the director of a swimming pool and an Olympic swimming champion (she too hot as fresh bread)(I’m very fond of baguettes. – Char’s note), and is hired by her as an instructor, only our hero can’t swim. Needless to say the boy learns fast, especially if a challenge is involved… better not say any more…

I realise I may seem terribly biased, but I consider Golden Boy one of the best OVA series ever: technically it looks good, with well-coloured backgrounds and excellent character animation, but all of that will fade into the background after the first minute: you’ll be swept away by an explosive charge of humour and you won’t stop laughing until you switch off the VCR. It is impossible to remain unmoved in front of Kintaro’s countless embarrassments, all the more so since I too (and I think you too) have found myself in similar situations. Not to mention the constant presence of attractive girls throughout the whole OVA (one above all, the president), who on their own would be worth buying the tape. A nice coup for Dynamic, then, with one last consideration: why has Egawa been almost completely ignored in our country? Apart from a horrible pirate version of “Be Free!” and the story “Be Free Returns” published in Erotikappa, nothing has been seen… If any readers would be interested in reading “Golden Boy” in Italian, let us know, it’s not impossible that…

Two last notes: in the first OVA, Talulutokun makes a cameo and in the second, Yuka, protagonists of other Egawa manga; the protagonist’s backpack is identical to that of our Goku, which is to say: Tiphares sets trends even in anime.