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「八軒、脱走する (Hachiken, Dassō suru/i>)
“Hachiken Runs Away
I’ll say it again: "Slice of Life" is misapplied to more series than I can count, but Gin no Saji is living up to the billing so far.
Apologies for a bit of a short post this week: I’m in the midst of traveling and to be honest, while this episode of Silver Spoon was great fun, I think it pretty much speaks for itself. This series has gotten great traction out of the cultural divide between Hachi-kun and his Ooezo classmates, but in truth it’s actually spent more time showing what unites them than what divides them. It’s not exactly a revolutionary message, but it’s an honest and positive one, and seems likely to power a lot of what we see over the rest of the series.
Basically, the plot this week was pretty simple – no matter their interests and no matter where they live, teenagers (especially boys) get into trouble for stupid reasons that are totally worth it. If the udders in the gravure mags belong to bovines and the vehicular pinups are self-driving harvesters instead of Bugati Veyrons, so what? The feelings are the same, and at least theoretically Hachiken can understand when his classmates get excited about stuff even if he doesn’t quite feel the thrill himself. But the sense so far is that Hachiken is a bit of a repressed kid, and whether it be idols or Holsteins, it doesn’t seem he’s allowed himself to participate much in the fellowship of teenage obsessions.
Fortunately Hachiken’s thinking is outside-the-box at Ooezo, and he’s a very bright kid to begin with. So when his pals take an idea and run with it he proves himself very useful, and this is doing wonders for his self-esteem. Last time it was pizza, this time it’s the great escape – fleeing the dormitory compound during evening study time in order to see… Well, to see just what Hachi-kun doesn’t know, but given that it involves crop circles and "Area 51" he’s convinced It might be cool. The escape itself is full of silly but funny moments, like Nishikawa’s miming of "taking a crap" to Tamako giving him her snacks to take on the mission and hanging onto her camcorder. It’s your basic schoolboy caper, seen a thousand times before, but executed unusually well.
That seems to be a repeating pattern with Silver Spoon so far – it’s showing a great ability to execute familiar material in a fresh and entertaining way. I’m still a little baffled at how staggeringly popular the manga is even with Arakawa writing it, given how few commercial buttons it seems to push, but gratified just the same. I haven’t seen anything revolutionary in five episodes but I have seen emotional accuracy, thoughtfulness and and a deft touch with character comedy, and all those things bode exceptionally well for the series’ future.
Most of the slice-of-life anime this season is rather good. =)
Gin no Saji gives me perspective into the not-so-publicized farming life.
Servant x Service gives perspective into civil service life.
Watamote, well, about the introvert lifestyle? (not sure if I should laugh or pity at times)
Yet to catch up on Kirino Mosaic though, its level of moe is just too high. =p
One of the things that this and the last episode have shown is that while Hachiken started off as a typical ‘fish out of water’ character, he has actually started fitting in really well.
Did anyone else laugh at the dungeon crawler background music during the trek front he two windows. It was rather subtle but I was like “Wait don’t I know this BGM?!?”
Close Encounters meets Field of Dreams. lol
At first I didn’t realize that Silver Spoons was the English title of this show, since I only associated either title with separate websites. So I initially thought of THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk91ymiO3iA O _ O
I loved how nobody bothered to mention to Hachiken the fact that they actually knew what had made the “crop circle” all along. Wonder if they simply assumed that he knew too or if they did it just to troll him. Must be pretty funny watching a naive city boy go off on crazy rants about aliens after all…XP
It’s great to see this story animated and a good way to start the summer for Hachiken
Farm food-snatchers get no quarter! Even gentle-faced blood-fainter Aikawa manages to get a flying kick in while proclaiming the woebegone thief to be diced up into fertilizer!
Haha!! Can’t believe I was fooled… They wanted to see that huge and beautiful machinary.
The best scene was Tamako: My family is going to buy one of those and I wanted a preview.
BTW, the full PV for the OP song “Kiss you” was broadcast in Japan and I should say miwa is cute and her song is awesome!!
Hachiken be like: Yo guys, I gave you all a pizza party and now you repay me by trolling me?
And yes, ALIENS.jpg
Ah, Silver Spoon is such a relaxing series to watch.
I like how they expanded on the strawberry thief scene, it’s nice to see Arakawa’s art style used in combat again.
Good episode, but they show the mystery in the beginning… They shoudn’t have done that.
That dorm has pretty strict rules… Feels like prison to me.