In the event you have not yet taken the opportunity to watch the anime for Silver Spoon [Gin no Saji] on Netflix, I cannot stress enough the recommendation that you do so when you have the chance.
Fans familiar with Hiromu Arakawa from her blockbuster giant "FullMetal Alchemist" ought to have some knowledge already that Arakawa was raised on a dairy farm, and as such, the life of a farming family is very important to her. She puts all of her knowledge and personal experience to stellar use in this series, which disguises itself as a humorous slice-of-life story.
Going into "Silver Spoon", I had no idea initially that there is an entire genre of anime and manga out there that focus on the concept of an idyllic country life and how much better it is than living in the big city or suburbs. The genre exists however, and Arakawa is here with "Silver Spoon" to challenge all of the cliches and tropes for the genre by keeping it real and showing just how the life of a dairy farmer is in Japan, with both the ups and the downs. Add to that a sobering look at the expectations thrust upon young people and their struggles to make it through but stay true to themselves, and what you have is a very heartfelt contemporary series that is here to pick you up and give you hope even as it stays honest to the hard reality it portrays.
Our protagonist is a first-year high school student named Yuugo Hachiken (often just referred to as Hachiken-kun) who has enrolled in Ooezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido. Unlike his classmates, Hachiken doesn't come from a farming family; he's the youngest son of a salary man in the big city. But after a hard previous school year in which he put his all into trying to meet his parent's expectations for school, he's burned out and has a lot of things to heal from, expressing to a school counselor that he has no plans for the future or any desire to do anything for himself. Enrolling in Ooezo due to the requirement for first-years to live in the dorms means Hachiken has to live away from home and has time to detox from being around his family, but he's in for a huge culture shock and quite the different experience he had in mind for a high school!
In this first volume, we see Hachiken doing his best to adapt to life in his new environment where he's almost totally out of his element, but is surrounded by helpful and enthusiastic classmates who offer him friendship and support he's not used to. The type of hands-on hard labor is vastly different, and towards the end of this first volume, we're already starting to see a change take place in Hachiken as he strives to figure out who he is and what he wants to do with his life, overcoming his depressive state little by little.
While I feel the events in this first volume feel a little jumbled in comparison to the first handful of episodes of the anime, I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to read this at last. Hiromu Arakawa is a wonderful storyteller, and "Silver Spoon" is no exception to her skills. This is a first volume that I definitely recommend to those who have watched the anime, or to anyone looking for a manga that can act as a fairly decent pick-me-up. It's worth a shot, and Hachiken is a protagonist everyone can grow to love and appreciate.
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Ghoul Rul
Good manga, bad translation. Buen manga, mala traduccion
Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on July 22, 2019
