Notes of Silver Spoon Episode 10

I think y’all know what it means when a girl tells Hachiken to take responsibility…

• In last week’s Silver Spoon, we watched Hachiken fatten up his favorite pig in preparation for the eventual sending it off.

• Summary of Silver Spoon episode ten: The time has finally come to send off the pigs. But before that, Hachiken and Yoshino are suddenly called to the counselor’s office, as a rumor is spreading around about them having an improper relationship… anyway, seeing his favorite pig on the last day before shipping them off, Hachiken suddenly decides to buy it – well, buy the meat that will be processed. On the big day, he sneaks into the pig pen for one last time, and the memories of the days he spent with it come back. Life doesn’t stop though, and Hachiken is visibly in low spirits during the next few days. It doesn’t help that one of their teachers shows them a video about what actually happens in a slaughterhouse. Finally, when the processed meat is delivered, he decides to make bacon of it. Tamako snatches up the best parts of the meat, however, and the episode ends with them having a banquet while waiting for the smoking process to complete.

• My impressions: This episode was quite serious in more than one sense. It seems Hachiken has finally accepted the fate of animals raised for meat, but nonetheless, I was a bit surprised when he decided to buy Pork Bowl – I mean where does he want to keep it? What does he want to do with it, keep it as a pet? His decision to buy the meat was somehow fitting though. Equally surprising was how fast the military instructor lady agreed to selling it off to one of her students, I thought all the animals were already sold.

  Wow was that fast or what…

  On a side note now I know she’s called Fuji.

• There were many instances when we could observe that Silver Spoon doesn’t shy away from showing blood, but man, this episode with that slaughterhouse video was the most brutal (yet) thing on screen. No wonder poor Aikawa took it quite badly, as expected of someone who can’t stand even the sight of blood.

  Just look at how strongly he wants not to faint during the video…

  The video, however short, was still informative. There were quite a few occurrences in Silver Spoon when the things shown in the anime prompted me to look up stuff on the net, and this was one of those occasions. I knew that they no longer shoot animals in the head in the slaughterhouse but kill them with an electric shock, but I didn’t know that carbon dioxide could be used as a stunning method.

• The scene where Hachiken is still shaken after having seen the animals taken off were done nicely. Up until now I didn’t really notice that Silver Spoon had music, it just blended into the background during the twenty-and-some minutes of each episode. This was the first instance that the soundtrack really complemented the still shots where Hachiken ignores pretty much everything, and eventually his classmates just let him be.

  He’s reclusive now, not even your shouting can reach him.

• But this episode wasn’t all gloomy, thanks to Tokiwa. He managed to catch part of the conversation between Hachiken and Yoshino (where Hachiken said he was serious about something), and completely misunderstood it. No wonder everyone started to give them weird looks. The counselor’s wording was equally hilarious, he’s so used to being around animals that he used the term “to be in heat” for the two teenagers as well.

  …and that’s how rumours start.

  Having translated Japanese into my native language before, I know how hard it can be to translate jokes or misconstrued sentences, so that the translated text accurately carries the joke on, or can also be misconstrued by the audience one is translating for. Word plays are especially hard and often have to be replaced with similar ones in the target language.

• All is well that ends well, and this episode ends with Hachiken and his classmates having a feast. Or maybe we could call it a wake, one held in memory of the departed Pork Bowl. Tamako being sneaky, managed to save the best parts of the meat before Hachiken could turn everything into bacon. From the looks on their face, I think it was worth it.

  In memoriam Pork Bowl, we eat pork bowl.