Last time was “horses are cute”, this time it’s “piglets are cute”.
- In last week’s Silver Spoon, we watched Hachiken get more and more used to his new surroundings and enter the Equestrian Club after careful consideration.
- Summary of episode three: It’s Golden Week and almost all the students leave the campus to reunite with their families and to help out with their respective family businesses. Mikage invites Hachiken to an event, which turns out to be a horse race, not a date as he hoped.
- My impressions: Although there were quite a few cute and funny scenes this week, this episode was more informative and tackled more serious subjects than the previous two.
Military instructor lady is cute.
Seeing the small piglet which lost the competition for access to milk, Hachiken feels it’s his task to intervene and help it out. The instructor lady gives permission, but Hachiken is baffled when the piglet refuses his help and returns to its original place.
- Although I don’t think Silver Spoon is intended as an educational show, it does raise the question: Should humans interfere with animal instincts and survival strategies? This is not an easy question to answer – humans are more inclined to help the weak (in this case, the last and underdeveloped piglet), but who is to say that by helping they don’t inadvertently aid spreading damaged or underperforming genes that ultimately hurt the species way more than help by allowing one more offspring to live? What if this particular piglet possessed a genome that caused it to lose in the competition for nutrition? This is the stance taken by the instructors – let Nature do its job and only intervene in critical cases.
- Another informative scene was the Ban’ei horse racing event. All parts of the race, including the origins of it, the track, the categories, etc. are nicely explained and match reality – the creators apparently did their homework. Or learned how to use the web search engine named after goggles.
His face clearly tells how exciting this race is.
The horse race was interesting because of two things. First it was surprising to see a way of racing that put emphasis on load-bearing ability than agility and speed. The second point was, however, even more informative as it highlighted the relationship between the beasts and their masters, so to speak. We are explained that horses that perform badly are retired, that is, depending on their owners, they get to be carriage horses to pull carriages on events, but less fortunate ones end up as horse meat. If its master values the beast, he sometimes arranges a funeral for the horse, as we see later on in the episode. On the other hand its master may not value the beast, killing it mercilessly if he no longer finds it useful. Our protagonist finds it shocking that in the world of agriculture – and maybe in the world of humans as well – effort sometimes is meaningless, only results count. Komaba points out the inconsistency in Hachiken’s way of thinking – he seems obsessed about results, he also values effort, but is surprised when effort itself is not enough.
- A third interesting scene was when Hachiken, Komaba and Mikage got invited to the horse doctor. Besides getting an explanation of what the different tools are used for (prying open the mouth of a horse, and so on) we also learned that sometimes neither efforts nor results do count – only circumstances. Earlier on Hachiken accused Komaba of taking it easy and continuing the family business after he graduates. Little did he know that Komaba’s father had passed away when he was a child, his mother is getting too old to keep up the family business and even though Komaba appears to have talent to go to university with, they simply cannot afford the sky-high tuition fee. It is the same with Aikawa, as the previous episode already hinted at it – he may want to become a veterinarian but if he can’t stand the sight of blood or can’t bear the thought of having to put down an animal, he is simply not suited for this kind of occupation. Again, things that are mostly beyond his control. I think the anime has shown this in a very grown-up manner – sometimes there are circumstances we just have to deal with and accept that due these we can’t put down the effort or show up any results.
Knowing what the tools are used for, the clinic quickly turns into a torture chamber indeed.
It was nice to see Komaba and Hachiken apologize to each other at the end of the episode, admitting that they judged the other not knowing all the circumstances.
- We are given one more piece to the puzzle of Hachiken’s reasons for enrolling into Ooezo Agricultural High School. It was hinted previously that he wanted to get away from home, but only now do we learn that he has no future aspirations as well. When the rest of the students return to the dormitory and have to turn in their cell phones, we see Hachiken reading a text message from his mother and ignoring it completely. One can assume that there is some family feud in the backgrounds that we are yet to see. The phone call from his teacher who recommended Ooezo at the end of the episode may also be a sign of this.
- All in all, an informative yet funny Silver Spoon this week. I wonder what animal will be featured in the coming episode though…
