There has to be an ulterior motive here…
- In last week’s Silver Spoon, we watched Hachiken find himself in the middle of a plan to escape from the dormitory and confirm the identity of a mysterious machine reported to be seen on campus.
- Summary of Silver Spoon Ep 6: The dorm is closed for summer break and as almost all the students head home, Hachiken doesn’t want to and finds himself in a bit of a pinch. Thankfully Mikage comes to his rescue and lets him stay with her family in exchange of becoming a part-time worker. Things, however, don’t go as smoothly as expected. There is no cell signal reception but there is an openly hostile dad, and Hachiken manages to get lost right on his first day. He runs into Komaba and meets his family, helping them out with their work around the farm. Finally the Mikage’s come to pick him up and take him back to their place. While riding on the back of the pick-up track, we see a fleeting romantic moment between Hachiken and Mikage.
The magic sentence that instantly turns any boy’s brain into mush.
- My impressions: Well it seems we are back in the character development business after the last two episodes. Seeing that Hachiken blatantly ignored his mother’s text message in episode 3, it is no surprise that he doesn’t want his family to know that he is not heading home for summer break. Mikage’s mother, however, insists on calling his parents to let them know he is staying at their place, and Hachiken can only avoid it by spurting out the lie that he had already taken care of this. We see a short flashback where he is busy writing a letter, and from the shame on his face, most likely it is addressed to his parents. Later, when he is alone in his room, we see that he composed a message saying briefly he won’t go home, and he finally gathers the resolve to send it…only to be surprised by the sudden response that turns out to be a notification that there is no reception in this area. The next day he is assigned various tasks and we can see him take out sometimes his phone and wave it around in hopes of finding a spot with reception. It seems that he changed his mind and he is not that adamant on keeping his family out of his life any more.
- Hachiken goes off to find reception and is saved by Komaba from getting lost in the forest. Seeing that every single member of the Komaba family works (even the little twin sisters), he tells off Komaba saying that he works practically for nothing – even if he works all 365 days of the year the farm won’t make any profit at all. He is then forced to accompany an angry Komaba to practice baseball and gets upset when Komaba explains his dream – making enough money from professional baseball so he can support his aging mother and the family business. In contrast to this, Hachiken still doesn’t have a single dream.
- Finally the Mikage’s arrive to pick him up. They bring a present as well – a deer that got hit by their truck on their way here. Mikage’s grandfather tells Hachiken to gut the deer, and seeing that Komaba has no qualms about gutting an animal that was alive half an hour ago so that he can give the family something to eat, Hachiken finally thinks of this as not running anymore and gathers the will to actually do the gutting. In prior episodes he was always torn between the attachment to the animals he takes care of, for example, the piglet in episode three, and his desire to eat delicious meat. Now he comes to understand that animals don’t magically turn themselves into delicious food and someone has to do the bloody work (literally). Or to put it this way, you can’t have your cake and eat it. I considered this as the second aspect in which we have seen him change in this particular episode.
Mikage’s grandpa has a point here. Schools rarely teach stuff useful in life anyway, right?
- Another interesting scene was when a buyer came to the Mikages’ farm and mistook Hachiken for Mikage’s husband. Mikage’s father then responded that they don’t need a husband as her daughter is more than capable of managing the farm alone. Hachiken looks at his classmate and sees a fleeting display of… shame? Embarrassment? on her face. It seems that there are some skeletons even in this family’s closet that haven’t come out in the sunlight yet, and Mikage isn’t that perfect girl we have been led to believe until now.
- To balance out all the seriousness in this episode, there were some funny moments and quirky characters as well. Meet Mikage’s overprotective father who instantly assumes – quite correctly, if I may say – that Hachiken is interested in her daughter.
His first thing to say is “I won’t accept it!”
Poor Hachiken has no idea what he’s in for…
- The mother and grandmother are quite the opposite of the father though. Upon hearing that Hachiken is a son of a white-collar dad, they instantly want him in the family.
A boy with white-collar parents is a rare find indeed.
- Poor Hachiken is not accustomed to the distances in this area… “first house you find” may be tens of kilometers away.
Well let’s hope it’s not the Komabas’ eyes glowing there…
- Finally the moment we’ve been waiting for… as Mikage’s family heads home, the two youngsters have a bit of talk on the back of the pick-up truck. Hachiken finds it surprising that it was his safety the family was concerned about and not the amount of work he got done that day. As they sight the starry night sky, and Hachiken sees her smiling face, he slowly realizes he might be having feelings about her. The ride back home is very enjoyable after all..
Don’t forget the dead bear behind you.
- All in all, a refreshing episode that expands just a little bit more upon the characters’ personalities and backgrounds while moving the story just a little bit further.