Notes of Silver Spoon Episode 2

Although boobs are bound to pop up sooner or later in a shounen series, it’s really not what it seems at first glance.

• Last week, we were introduced to Ooezo Agricultural High and our protagonist, Hachiken, who is kinda new to this whole agricultural life and feels out of place most of the time.

• Summary of episode two: Hachiken joins the equestrian club and gets used to being around horses.

• Impressions: it’s all about club activities in this episode. We get a glimpse of Hachiken’s past as he turns down the invitation of one of his former classmates, saying he has to study hard in order to get into a renowned university. One does wonder how this relates to him ending up in an agricultural high school that doesn’t exactly help him with his future plans.

• As usual, the team has to get up early. Hachiken’s alarm clock that goes off at five in the morning earns him some angry stares from his roommates. We get to see more of the daily life of the students – more egg collecting in the chicken coop (this time Hachiken isn’t grossed out by the eggs), field plowing (it is hard work indeed), physical education class in the afternoon, and finally more chicks in the evening.

  Chick attack!

• It is nice to see that he is getting along with his classmates. In the previous episode Tokiwa asked him to teach math and it seems Hachiken followed through and prepared him for the test. The only thing he didn’t count on was…

  “Don’t underestimate how bad my brain is” indeed.

• Remember the decapitated chicken from last episode? Well it comes back to haunt our pitiable protagonist, this time in the form of a smoked chicken leg. Inada, a third-year student pops in and delivers it personally to the team.

  Fresh stuff is good stuff… unless you have some fresh yet unpleasant memories attached to it.

  The food turns out not to be unpleasant (though a bit lacking in taste), and we also find out that this particular third-year student is the brother of Tomoko (the chubby girl on the team). They don’t look alike the least bit…

• The pressure is mounting on Hachiken to just pick a club and be done with it. As he is wandering around the campus, he happens to find a bunch of third-year students with a seemingly adult-oriented magazine. The tits featured in the magazine, however, turn out to be those of Holstein cows. He is almost forced to join this weird club, but gets rescued – just in time – by a member of the equestrian club, who evokes the image of a prince on a white horse… a prince with a rather scary face.

  This proclamation could’ve come from the robotics club if they had one.

  When they arrive at the training ground of the equestrian club, Hachiken sights Mikage riding on a horse, and decides that this club might just do. It does have pretty women after all — unlike the cow-breeding club whose members he crossed paths with. Mikage shows him around, and incites him to try and feed her horse a carrot. Contrary to his premonition, where the horse bites off his hand and he bleeds out, the horse gently accepts the carrot and starts chewing on it. I thought this particular scene was executed pretty well and it could’ve come from the Final Destination movies even.

  

  …no matter how gentle he may be, this horse still looks evil.

  Convinced by Mikage, he opts to join the equestrian club along with four other first-year students, and he is shocked as the sempai explains that they have to get up at four in the morning to take care of the horses properly. Just when Hachiken was thinking the livestock practices ended and he no longer had to get up at five in the morning… His other suprise comes in the form of heaps of horse manure that they have to clear away. This is clearly not what he expected by joining this club.

• On one afternoon as classes have ended and Hachiken is heading to the horses, he runs into Aikawa and finds out he joined the Holstein club. Aikawa explains that his dream is to become a veterinarian and being around livestock or being able to participate in various research. This encounter leads Hachiken to think about just what his own dreams may be. He hurriedly cleans the stalls as he can’t stand the smell, and as fate would have it, runs into a weird-looking fellow who questions him about his motives for joining the equestrian club.

Whatever shameful answer you might give me, I’ll just respond with ‹that’s fine›

• Hachiken is shocked by the eventual revelation that this short baldie is the principal of the school… so are we!

• All in all, Silver Spoon continues with just the right balance of funny scenes and character building. It was nice to see how smooth one scene led to another during this episode as well – none felt forced or out-of-place.
  

• However if Hachiken has to get up one hour earlier in each episode, I fear this show will be ending very, very soon…