Hachiken is back, and he’s as cheerful as ever
- In the last installment of Silver Spoon, Hachiken finally decided what he wants to do in the future, also he sent some of the smoked bacon to his parents.
Summary of Silver Spoon Episode 12:
- The older students are leaving the Equestrian club to prepare for their graduation, and Hachiken gets promoted to vice president of the club, though everyone expected Mikage to get the position. Hachiken bumps into her and Komaba afterwards and the two are talking about something hush-hush. Poor Hachiken misunderstoods it as the sign of their going out together and during the episode, he tries to get positive or negative proof of this. He also helps her locate a bra – for cows, that is. The episode ends with Komaba taking part in a baseball game where Ooezo Agricultural High defeats the opposing high school by a large margin thanks to his stellar performance.
- My impressions: Silver Spoon is back and the story continues where we said goodbye – temporarily – to Hachiken and his companions. Actually there were quite a few flashbacks so I felt this post should be titled Episode 12 instead of, say, Silver Spoon 2nd season 1st episode. However…
- …there were too many flashbacks for my taste. The show made a point of inserting a flashback whenever Hachiken was pondering on something. Come on, Silver Spoon, there is no need to spoon-feed the audience what should be obvious (see what I did there with the spoons?). I felt the flashbacks were sometimes unnecessary – why need to reiterate whatever we saw five seconds earlier?
- Also, when I was watching the episode for the very first time, the pacing felt somehow off; but I couldn’t put my finger to it and when I watched it again the next day it seemed alright. Maybe the effects of Coppelion still linger on…
- But there were quite a few things I liked as well. For example, the whole bra-hunting was hilarious, especially seeing how flustered Hachiken became (as any male anime protagonist) when he hears a word denoting lingerie as if it was something incomprehensible. The deeper relationship between Komaba an Mikage prompted Hachiken to adapt a stalker-like attitude, getting lost in his delusions.
On a side note, the cow gnawing on his hand is cute.
We all know there’s nothing of that sort between them, and that’s why it was so amusing to see Hachiken dig himself deeper and deeper. I do wonder what all that hush-hush was about; maybe we’ll find out in the coming episodes. The scene where Mikage was silently praying not to become the vice president of the Equestrian club was also funny; especially how pretty much everyone else assumed the seniors would choose her.
I can relate to your way of thinking, Mikage dear.
- Relations between Hachiken and his parents seem to be improving, at least judging from his smile when he reads his mother’s text message. I wonder how it will turn out in the end; whether they will accept his choice of high school or not.
- I still don’t care about baseball…I wish it was football (soccer for you outside of Europe) which is also big in Japan, but alas it has to be baseball. On a second thought I never really liked sports anime so as long as the show’s focus remains on agriculture and sports matches are few and far inbetween, anything is fine with me. They could go do tennis (insert name of sport you find extremely boring) for all I care. At least the manager knows how to motivate his team.
I pity your opponents; they have a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning this match.
Plus we get to know that Komaba isn’t really after any of the girls; I could almost imagine a sigh of relief escaping from Hachiken’s mouth there.
- The show has a new opening and closing sequence, and the latter stood out to me because it’s use of pastel colours and minimalistic animation. I can’t say whether I prefer the new sequences or the previous ones…
- All in all, a refreshing episode to see and I’m eager to see next week how the thing with Mikage turns out.
