Gin no Saji

Ever wanted a taste of parenting? Try Usagi Drop. Curious about farming? Silver Spoon's got you covered. This latest noitaminA feature contains yet another interesting and unique perspective that actually provides meaningful lessons beyond how to immediately get dumped by girls. As with Usagi Drop, the show manages to take a potentially dull and boring topic and turn it into something intriguing and entertaining. While this isn't as emotionally touching as Usagi Drop, it is still a fun watch for anyone even a bit curious about farming or how a city boy will deal with the culture shock of agricultural life.

Animation:
The animation studio took a ... more conventional approach than that in Usagi Drop. For the most part, it looks like any other rural-based anime. The only major differences are the agriculture-specific tools and facilities and a bunch of farm animals. The show uses a fairly saturated palette that gives the series a bit of a lighter mood. Color shading and background details are average overall and character styling is also a bit on the simplistic side. You also have an instructor who humorously resembles Buddha.

Don't expect much here in terms of either action or fan service. There is a tiny amount of blood once and a while but nothing really significant by action standards.

Sound:
The show has a fitting guitar-based OP and ED. I'm not a fan of slow, country-ish songs of this sort though so I skipped out on them for the most part. The BGM is minimal and for the most part not really worth mentioning.

This is in part a documentary and in part a comedy so it is dialogue driven in many parts, but it wasn't very demanding character emotion-wise and no one ended up really standing out for me.

Story:
Hachiken has lived his life in his brother's shadows, so much so that his entire dreamless life consists of studying. Having no real drive or future plans, his teacher sends him to a live-in agrarian high school. To his amazement, Hachiken finds himself surrounded by people with strong goals and dreams. Will Hachiken be able to cope with his new, culturally-different classmates and five AM practicums?

This is an eye-opener of a series in many regards. In telling Hachiken's tale of learning about agriculture, the show is able to expose and confront a lot of misnomers about agriculture and even address some philosophical questions regarding livestock's transformation from respected living creature to meat. Between these conception-shattering moments, you get a bit of character development and a good deal of comic moments; a lot of these revolve around Hachiken's ignorance of the field that he's studying.

This isn't the most intense of series plot wise. Don't expect much in the way of cliffhangers or rising action, in fact the series doesn't even really end on much of a conclusion. I guess this fact is slightly mitigated by the fact that a second season has already been announced.

Character:
There are a lot of characters in this show, and while a lot of them contribute to the central plot in one way or another no one is really well developed. The focus of the show is clearly more on showing farming procedures and practices than on giving the, admittedly, bland history of farm hands. While the protagonist clearly becomes much more adept at manual labor, he still maintains a significantly different world view than that of his classmates at the end of the show. The show does occasionally tease at possible character relationships but this is used as more of a comedy gimmick than for plot progression. Overall, the show features a balanced cast that really is presented to highlight the core farming theme rather than the other way around.

Value:
My strongest takeaway from this show (at least to confirm) is that farm-fresh foods appear to be highly superior to what I, as a cheapskate consumer, can get from the local grocery store. Expect to see the protagonist literally prostrate as a reaction to tasting food. Overall, despite being an average show plot wise, the show managed to stick to its unique theme; this alone earns it a lot of kudos. Unfortunately, I don't see it becoming a hit like Usagi Drop, it just lacks the emotional and character depth. Regardless, it still stands on its own as a reasonably entertaining look at how life is as a farmer. While I have new found respect for those in agribusiness, I'll stick to my white-collar line of work thank you very much. If you're willing to ditch established anime norms (required beach scene, unreasonably cute girls everywhere, etc.) and watch something that can teach you a thing or two, give Silver Spoon a go.

Silver Spoon
Rating 5(average-low)
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS BEWARE)

Silver spoon was not that good and In my opinion I didn't find the first season as interesting. In fact I almost don't find it as memorable at all i don't even know all of the characters names for starters (But I guess that is just me). It is just another anime to me.

The main character is a typical anime type boy cliche, unrealistically happy like he has never experience mental pain before, the constant over exaggeration of simple gestures and as always to complete the trend he gets into "sticky situations" (uh-oh).
Yeah and I should mention that ... he is pretty much the focal point for most of the humor. At the end of the show it never really answers the question, which was what he did want to become when he was older? (he is in a farm school after all). Instead we got a lack luster response of him accomplishing something which is sort of irrelevant because I still got no answer in terms of the ending. But fear not there is a season 2.
Also The character development didn't click with me either, I kind of feel like the creators attempted to make us feel sorry for the main character and his "tough decision" at the end, I didn't really get it due to the sped up timeline and I didn't get the point of it (it was kind of silly if you ask me)

One of the worst parts was the humor, there was too much in the scenes where characters are having a deep 1 on 1 conversation on what they want to do with their lives, how their personality and morals are indicated through their work ethics and in the character development and then something "funny" happens.
Saying that there was "too much humor" is an exaggeration, but I guess all I wanted was a solid moment with 2 characters.

I guess you may find all of my other arguments nit-picking type reasons to dislike it but this is the one that annoyed me the most. THE FOCAL POINT FOR ALL POSITIVE EXPERIENCES REVOLVES AROUND FOOD!! (excluding humor to an extent).
It is annoying that basically everything links up to food. I mean sure they are in a farm school but why is it that hard for you to base the plot around something else, it is a farm school you don't have to show each and every character eating delicious food in every episode. They even have ongoing jokes about it with this fat girl who almost faints after not eating for a short period of time.
I wanna see something else happen like someone's dreams being accomplished or a taste of something like that (haha "taste", see what I did there).

Anyway there is a season 2 coming out so I am guess all that stuff about aspirations will be addressed later on!!
Anyway thanks for reading and of course it is my opinion but you may like all of this stuff

As a vegan, this anime was a difficult watch, but I decided to put my personal beliefs aside and try and give it a shot.

The story as stated, is about a city boy who enters an agricultural school and develops culture shock as he discovers a totally different view of life. Everyone is connected to their buisness, their families, and their farms. Over time, Hachiken develops bonds with the other students and learns new skills, often struggling and complaining about the chores and work load in a comedic fashion. Hachiken also struggles with his own morality as he is faced with the cruel reality of ... agriculture - the death of the farmed animals.

A few things I appreciate about this anime..

The music is memorable and fits the mood. The opening and ending songs are catchy songs with farm-like feels. The soundtrack is beautiful and it often fits the different themes, there were times I got emotional during the sad moments of the story due to the aura of the music. It is very good.

The art style is also unique; all the characters are uniquely drawn with different features. It can sometimes feel like anime characters are drawn too generically, and they all have to be thin and attractive. Silver Spoon helps express people in a variety of different shapes, sizes and personalities. I really enjoyed that aspect of the anime and it allows it to keep it memorable.The animals are also drawn super cute!

I found the story to be quite straight forward and realistic to how agricultural families view their livelihood. Silver spoon definitely sums up the farm life and the farm student life super well. Sneaking out, playing with friends, falling off horses, dealing with animal slaughter, they were all things presented quite realistically to a sense. Although I appreciate that the anime presents factory farming as an existing reality in today's age, it is a very sanitized version. Realistically, the conditions are a lot worse and you can easily find real undercover videos that illustrate the corruption in these industries. But I suppose they had to show it in the most refreshing, wholesome farm feel where no animals are sick, dying or clearly shown to be incredibly distressed. There was no slaughterhouse footage either of 'Pork Bowl' and the other 'retired' animals such as the race horses or dairy cows, not suprisingly.

Fun fact: Tamako Inada is also like an anime version of Gina Rinehart. No doubt.

What I didn't like about the anime was Hachiken's quick change of heart simply through eating food. When he is faced with the dilemma of meat and where animal products come from; he quickly dismisses his pesky sense of morality and has an almost orgasm when he consumes the animal flesh, I know anime likes to exagerrates people's reactions but c'mon...he was so disgusted and sad and had such as sudden change of mind through eating! It was probably very troublesome for him to give up Pork Bowl, and fighting for Pork Bowl in such a strong farming community would probably give him a lot more trouble then he wanted; seeing as he had little family support anyway. It's a comforting notion that he wants to 'respect' the animals 'sacrifice' but also incredibly hypocritical - the animal is just going to be shitted out by you anyway so where is the respect there? He was so empathetic to Pork Bowl that he would hug him teary eyed but the next minute it was time for Pork Bowl to be cooked and eaten. Cognitive dissonance exists even in anime, it seems.

Needless to say, I think this anime is important to get a simple sense of farm life - especially the sense of community and family that comes along with the lifestyle and that aspect is very enjoyable. However, it does seem a bit sanitized for the sake of being a wholesome slice of life anime. I hope Silver Spoon broadens your eyes a bit wider and allows you to make your own decisions on what is important and what is not.

Gin no Saji's strength is that it's a 'high school' anime that's almost wholly original. By taking place in an agricultural school, it abandons most of the run-of-the-mill high school storylines. The main character flees his home to this farflung school for reasons that are only vaguely outlined during the show. The secondary characters are amusing, but have limited depth to them, and his love interest is almost one-dimensional. As such, this show is not really character-driven. It's about the novel new burdens of life that the protagonist has to accept at this school. If anything, the protagonist's increased understanding and respect for the food ... chain becomes the main focus of the show; his own personal development doesn't seem to go anywhere.
Gin no Saji is different enough from other high-school series to warrant a viewing, but it doesn't excel in any specific respect. It is mildly amusing and just interesting enough to keep you going from one episode to the next.