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.
