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REVIEW: Silver Spoon Sub.DVD


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YumeHunter



Joined: 02 Aug 2013
Posts: 123
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 4:55 pm Reply with quote
Aaahh Silver Spoon. For me it's easily one of the best slice of life anime that I've ever watched. It was heartwarming and the comedy was good. But I think Silver Spoon's charm was in it's loveable characters. Hachiken's character development was great and realistic throughout both seasons. Though I have to say that I prefer season 2 over the first season. I would love to get a third season.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 6:38 pm Reply with quote
I'd think that it would make more sense if Funi licensed this series comes from the creator of FMA.
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Durga



Joined: 21 Jun 2010
Posts: 103
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 6:46 pm Reply with quote
Good review! This is definitely one of those shows where at first I thought it was just going to be nice and pleasant slice of life, but with a gimmick focusing on farming, but I pleasantly surprised at how much mature and rewarding the first season was towards the end. The Pork Bowl stuff in particular is what made the season for me, and though this review only covers season 1, I like that the show takes these characters and keeps developing them, not content to fall back on just gags and lessons in farming. It's got a good blend of humor and personal reflection and maturity. Hope you're reviewing season 2 whenever that gets a physical release.
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 7:46 pm Reply with quote
YumeHunter wrote:
Hachiken's character development was great and realistic throughout both seasons. Though I have to say that I prefer season 2 over the first season. I would love to get a third season.

This. Hachiken's character development was the sticking point for me.

Season 1 has some great build up of his character, but season 2 is where some of the pay off is seen.

Quote:
the intimate fondness and familiarity with farm life the story exudes seems geared to speak more to those with some experience on a farm and may mildly alienate those who don't have an innate affection for grimy livestock and the hard work needed to keep them happy...before sending them off to be made into food.

Going in, I thought that this aspect might get to me while watching Silver Spoon. I've never done any sort of farm work...hell, I don't think I've actually been on a farm since I was a kid.

I enjoyed the depiction of farm life in this series, so I guess I fall into line with this:
Quote:
Hachi falls in love with it fairly quickly, and the audience is clearly expected to follow


Really hope that a 3rd season comes around. While I love the first 2 seasons (and look forward to a review of s2), I would like a 3rd that gives a little bit more closure than the 2nd season's ending. What we're left with a Hachiken that still spoiler[has no dream and is unsure on what he wants out of life once his days at Yezo Ag are over].

Though, I have no idea when the manga will be ending or if a 3rd season would come around...so even if one does come about, may not see the kind of end I'd like. Laughing
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DangerMouse



Joined: 25 Mar 2009
Posts: 3980
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:09 pm Reply with quote
Kadmos1 wrote:
I'd think that it would make more sense if Funi licensed this series comes from the creator of FMA.


Yeah. Would have bought with blu-ray and a dub to go with the sub.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:32 pm Reply with quote
Ali07 wrote:
. What we're left with a Hachiken that still spoiler[has no dream and is unsure on what he wants out of life once his days at Yezo Ag are over].


And this is why I hate Silver Spoon; If it was the reviewer's Hachiken, the one who went to Agricultural school in order to escape modern life {where did that view come from?} that would be one thing but he was made to be an empty audience avatar and he only went to the country because there wouldn't be a series otherwise.

Right up with Bamboo Blade's "We play kendo .. because it's fun!" premise. The two guys wanted to join the Ping Pong club and I'm sure that would have been ... funner. Anyways, digression.

Since he is smart but empty we get exposition after exposition after exposition while he tries every the school has to offer about farm life. Which he ultimately masters {second to each person whose life will be that field, damn I hate this series...} because ... smart. I guess. If he was just interested in one thing and focused on that, other than that girl I mean, then we wouldn't have had an audience proxy but, I don't believe this to be possible in this series though, an actual character whose motivations we could follow.

Like her other series.

Why do I believe real characters would be impossible in this series? You all have noticed they're all stolen from FMA, right? It's very hard or rather, just plain dumb for any of the other characters to change their lives at this point; horse girl will be horse woman, chicken girl will become chicken woman. They're there to affect the main character... while he's there to rub his free will combined with zero ambition or motivation in their face.

I was happier with No-Rin, whose main character joined her agri-school ... in order to escape modern life and learn to grow those delicious veggies herself. Huh, imagine that.
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leatherhead333



Joined: 15 Aug 2013
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:33 pm Reply with quote
One my favorite shows of last year and might be the best slice of life series I've ever watched.

I found myself loving Hachiken the most out of the cast because as the review stated his development is so refreshingly real. Even in the second season he hasn't completely gotten over all his problems but seeing the progress his character makes compared to when he first started is truly remarkable.

I can agree that the comedy is laid on a little thick sometimes. But I still think it's balanced fairly well with the serious stuff. Speaking of the serious stuff it's very nice that the anime portrays the more crappy situations of farming that you can't do anything about. There are no deus ex solutions to the major problems that show up in the show which is how it should be. I felt like the suffering the characters go through was truly relatable as they have to come to terms with how they just had to accept such unfavorable fates. Really made me feel for them.
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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:53 pm Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:


And this is why I hate Silver Spoon; If it was the reviewer's Hachiken, the one who went to Agricultural school in order to escape modern life {where did that view come from?} that would be one thing but he was made to be an empty audience avatar and he only went to the country because there wouldn't be a series otherwise.



Part of me really wishes Aniplex had just released the whole series, rather than just the first season, because while you do get hints in S1 about Hachiken's motivation, it's not really explored til the second season. But an "empty audience avatar"? I'd argue there's too much characterization to Hachiken for him to be written off as some audience self-insert.

One of my favorite scenes from this season was actually the one about the roadkill deer. I spent a lot of my teen years in Texas where hunting is the norm, even for us suburb kids. I've never hunted, but the scene about how affected Hachiken is really stayed with me. Silver Spoon is chock-full of little scenes like that, plucking at your heartstrings while also getting you to think, just a little, about where your food comes from.

And I may be imaging things, but I swear I remember hearing or reading that Hope was raised in the countryside. I'm probably wrong, but in any case, I wonder how someone with actual farm/ranch/homestead experience would view this show.
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JacobC
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:02 pm Reply with quote
whiskeyii wrote:

And I may be imaging things, but I swear I remember hearing or reading that Hope was raised in the countryside. I'm probably wrong, but in any case, I wonder how someone with actual farm/ranch/homestead experience would view this show.


Yeah, I didn't want to get all personal about it in the review, so I mostly just noted that Silver Spoon probably works better for people who had farm upbringings, and people who haven't basically need to have a similar reaction to Hachiken's to being introduced to farm life for the show to work very well, but...

I did grow up on a farm, it was all grain products in my family, no livestock, but I was surrounded by livestock farms, poultry farms, etc. so I was intimately familiar with that "culture." (And it really is its own culture in many ways.) I know Hokkaido =/= southern Kentucky or anything, but apart from maybe a huge religious (southern baptist) aspect added into the western part of the equation, the philosophies that form both cultures are extremely similar, in how they talk about raising animals, caring for animals, killing and eating them with this sort of zen acceptance, and how much emphasis is placed on family and work ethic and the animals are your family sort of and you love them but you also eat them and...

Anyway. It was all very familiar, honest territory, and I appreciated Silver Spoon a lot for its uniqueness in that way. And I'm sure it's very educational for people who don't know stuff about farming/tractors/ranching. For me, it was sorta like going home, except without all the redneck-y parts.

Although I was totally waiting the entire season's run for them to be taught about the process of inseminating a heifer, because how could they not talk about that, it's so very weird. Turns out they were saving that for season 2.

spoiler[Farmers have to ram their entire arm up the cow's anus while holding a very tiny container of bull semen. It's really weird to watch. The cow seems completely oblivious to this. They're not very bright.]


Last edited by JacobC on Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:07 pm; edited 2 times in total
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:02 pm Reply with quote
Oh, this is the show where main character speaks in a way like no-one in real life would actually talk. God he pissed me off.

Hope wrote:
Even if the kids are required to get up at 4 AM, work all day, and then collapse into a bath for only fifteen minutes before curfew, Uezo Ag seems like a place you'd like to attend.


Uh, not it doesn't. Teenagers need nine (or even ten) hours of sleep a night, but the school's schedule means they never get more than seven (Hachiken's usual sleep period is 10pm to 5am). And you're right, sometimes he has to wake up at 4am or even earlier. Almost all of those teens would be suffering from chronic sleep deprivation, and while their bodies would adapt somewhat it wouldn't be enough; school life would not be pleasant. Worse than that, it is dangerous on their developing minds.

Sleep deprivation is something you'd expect from a boot camp for juvenile offenders, not for kids paying to attend a presumably respectable high school.
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meepsheeps



Joined: 16 Jun 2014
Posts: 399
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:07 pm Reply with quote
I guess I'm the limited audience? I've never even been on the rural side actually.

Unpopular opinion: I liked this show over FMA (Brotherhood, because I haven't seen all of the original yet)
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:12 pm Reply with quote
whiskeyii wrote:

And I may be imaging things, but I swear I remember hearing or reading that Hope was raised in the countryside. I'm probably wrong, but in any case, I wonder how someone with actual farm/ranch/homestead experience would view this show.


I lived and worked on a farm till I was 14. I really did appreciate when they showed that farm life wasn't glamorous and could be pretty gross, but to be honest it barely even touched the surface. I enjoyed this show though. It was lighthearted and fun and some of the characters were entertaining. It was also nice that they took a pretty neutral stance on most things such as factory farming vs. small and local, showing both positives and negatives to each.
Waking up so damn early and working till dark was probably what resonated the most for me. The whole thing with Pork Bowl was good too. My parents had me name a sheep and then butcher, clean and cook it when it matured(had to shave off the wool too). I wasn't a fan. Oh, the part where they made fresh pizza was pretty amazing too. Eating food fresh from the farm(raw milk is AMAZING) made 18 hour days and everything else worth it for me. Anyway, I could actually go on and on for quite a while about this show and my childhood.
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JacobC
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Joined: 15 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:30 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
whiskeyii wrote:

And I may be imaging things, but I swear I remember hearing or reading that Hope was raised in the countryside. I'm probably wrong, but in any case, I wonder how someone with actual farm/ranch/homestead experience would view this show.

My parents had me name a sheep and then butcher, clean and cook it when it matured(had to shave off the wool too). I wasn't a fan. Oh, the part where they made fresh pizza was pretty amazing too. Eating food fresh from the farm(raw milk is AMAZING) made 18 hour days and everything else worth it for me. Anyway, I could actually go on and on for quite a while about this show and my childhood.


Yeah, exactly. For me it wasn't a sheep or a pig, but rabbits and a catfish, on separate occasions. I wasn't traumatized by it or anything, much like Hachiken it just opened up my understanding of the world a little bit. We anthropomorphize and baby some animals (our pets) while treating others with no compassion or consideration at all (rats, opossums, etc.), but it's all human bias often based on appearances. There's weirdly no human/animal relationship more equal-feeling to me than the ones you see on a lot of farms and ranches. The animals are all raised for a purpose, whether that's load-bearing, egg harvesting, meat production, what have you, and you can raise those animals humanely and care for them, even to personal connection, while still making peace with preparing and eating them after that. Sometimes the lines get tripped, like I knew farmers that had a pet turkey or a pet pigs that came from their own farms where the rest of the animals...well, didn't become pets. But just because those other animals have to get sent away for food doesn't mean the farmers don't love and care for them and realize that they have emotions and needs.

You certainly couldn't name and connect with every animal like that, especially not if you run a real farm, but it helps re-contextualize where your food comes from, and having a kind of respect for it while not forgetting that animals have lives of their own that we should make as comfortable as we can for them (factory-style or small farm) before well, using them for their intended purpose. Silver Spoon did a really good job of communicating that. It helped that the animals acted like animals and not cute cartoon critters. Pork Bowl's cute and all, but he acts just like a pig. And yes, horses really are that smart and persnickety.
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
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Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:47 pm Reply with quote
JesuOtaku wrote:
There's weirdly no human/animal relationship more equal-feeling to me than the ones you see on a lot of farms and ranches. The animals are all raised for a purpose, whether that's load-bearing, egg harvesting, meat production, what have you, and you can raise those animals humanely and care for them, even to personal connection, while still making peace with preparing and eating them after that. Sometimes the lines get tripped, like I knew farmers that had a pet turkey or a pet pigs that came from their own farms where the rest of the animals...well, didn't become pets. But just because those other animals have to get sent away for food doesn't mean the farmers don't love and care for them and realize that they have emotions and needs.


This is definitely on point. The entire area I grew up in was very much like that. There were definitely more rural family farms and the relationships between farmers and their animals were very personal and actually pretty heartwarming, but even some of the larger farms in the area were like that. The owners might not be directly involved but everyone on the farm spent a lot of time with the animals that they were responsible for. And going back to my last comment, when you spend 18 hours a day with animals you develop a relationship with them pretty quick. Laughing
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Doodleboy



Joined: 23 Dec 2013
Posts: 296
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 10:56 pm Reply with quote
Hmm... Good review, most of the complex themes and questions was only in the background for me during the early parts. The moment Silver Spoon did connect with me and pushed that was during the scene where they explained why Silver Spoon is called Silver Spoon spoiler[and then Komaba's farm subsequent bankruptcy]. It's when the show became "That comedy that teaches you about farm life that I'm following because it's Hiromu Arakawa and she made FMA and it was awesome.", to something more real.

It's those aspects that make the series more universal.

I do like how it treats the farm aspects though. There's a kind of "warts and all aspect" of it. Doesn't hide things or sensationalize things. Even factory-farming... which honestly I think is... not good.
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