Golden Time – 03

The “club” that invited Tada and Kaga to a retreat turns out to be a religious cult. Tada pretends to be interested in order to get Kaga and those who want to leave out of there. However, Kaga stays, and they escape together into the woods. Once they’ve lost their pursuers, they sit down for a rest, both claiming responsibility for getting them into that mess. They end up learning a lot more about each other. They see strange lights ahead of them, and then a flashlight is shone on them, belonging to none other than Linda.

The series continues the practice of placing Tada and Kaga into scenarios common to young adults at college, only with the intensity stepped up. As soon as we saw the “club” members roll up wearing creepy identical tracksuits and snowflake pendants (The Cult of White Album?), we knew Tada and Kaga were in for a long three days and two nights in a remote area with no cell service (There were no cell phones in the original White Album. Hmmm…). We liked how Tada shrewdly used the true story of his post-accident identity loss to stay on the cult’s good side just long enough. Even better, Kaga picked up on his plan and foiled it, not wanting to leave him behind.

The cult adventure doesn’t start out all that pleasant, but ends up being an able vehicle for further cultivating Tada and Kaga’s increasingly intriguing friendship. Tada likes Kaga, but Kaga remains very much devoted to Mitsuo (fittingly absent this week). Kaga’s happiness is more important to Tada than winning her from Mitsuo (at the moment), so he tells her what she wants to hear, while suggesting she modify her approach with Mitsuo. The more interesting part was when Tada tells Kaga the very frightening story of how his past self is basically gone. But Kaga’s reactions made us wonder: did she already know that past Tada? If so, that opens a whole new can of worms.

Rating: 8 (Great)