This manga is about a boy named Hachiken who due to having a mental breakdown due to the pressure of trying to keep up academically, abruptly decides to attend Ooezo Agricultural High School. The thing is, having lived in a city all his life, it’s an entirely new world to him. Thus, he very much feels like a fish out of water, finding everything that comes across his path as surprising and having to get used to everything. However, he’s also “the man that can’t say no” so despite how hesitant he is, even fearful at times, he still ends up being pulled into various things and due to his serious personality, he gives everything he does his all. He forms a lot of bonds, casual acquaintances, deep friendships, and even a romantic relationship.
In doing all this he goes through tremendous character growth. He starts off the series with a very narrow view of the world, unsure of what he wants to do with his life, and unsure of what he could even do. And furthermore, he has a complex about being so unsure about things and just directionlessly doing whatever he gets pulled into, which compounds on itself for an even stronger feeling of pressure. But over the course of the series, he overcomes that, coming to view his lack of a dream as the presence of endless opportunity. He comes to view his inability to refuse getting involved with things as a major asset and proactively tries to broaden his horizons. And eventually that leads to him finding what he too wants to do with his life and pursuing it at full throttle.
Furthermore, while this is a story of major character growth, even at the start of the series Hachiken is far from a lame protagonist. He’s pretty unique in his class due to the fact that he’s attending despite not having a background in farming, that results in him having skills that others don’t and bringing a fresh perspective. He has moments where he does things that no one else is capable of doing and where he definitely shines. And just as much as others bring about character growth in him, he’s a key part in the stories of those around him as well. There’s an assortment of very unique characters that surround Hachiken. Most don’t really get much in terms of character development, though are still pretty likable and feel worth getting invested in due to the general group dynamics. But a couple, Mikage and Komaba, have very strong development during stories of their own.
The agriculture aspect was also very interesting. It’s not a topic that I have a lot of knowledge about, with the anime adaptation of this being my first introduction to pretty much all the subject matter. It’s also not a topic I’m particularly fond of as, to be frank, I kind of hate nature in general and am a city slicker through and through. Despite that the writing in this was very appealing, written in a way that avoided getting too textbooky while also providing a lot of information. Hachiken being a newcomer to everything but immensely curious and very expressive about everything he learned helped tremendously with that. It was also well paced going through things fast enough that they didn’t get boring but slow enough they were easy to understand. And of course, the constant comedy sprinkled throughout was also definitely a plus. The manga also tackled various controversial farming related topics, such as factory farming or international trade, through a pretty realistic lens, wherein it presented a reasonable take on the different sides of the issue without getting preachy about anything but still allowing Hachiken to have his own opinions.
My main problem with the series is that all of this applies to the first two thirds of the manga, the first year of high school. The last third, which went through the next two years with an epilogue carrying beyond that, was nowhere near as good to the point I’d say it was bad even. The first issue is that it essentially felt like everything was pretty much decided by the end of Hachiken’s first year. Character arcs were still going to a degree, but they had already passed through all the core parts so the trajectory was clear for the rest and in the last third it pretty much just follows through with what was already established in the first two thirds. As such, it’s not able to hit emotional highs anywhere near as strong the first two thirds. It kind of felt like it was just going through the motions of showing the characters as they continued to live their lives without actually trying to tell much of a story with them.
The second issue is that Hachiken isn’t really much of an outsider past his first year, so there just isn’t anywhere near as strong a sense of curiosity or discovery, and it starts getting somewhat repetitive. The agricultural subject matter it delves into I also found to be far less interesting, being less general and more focused on narrow business uses without really tying all that well into character arcs. It also spends a lot of time focusing on things completely unrelated to agriculture, like college exams, which are pretty generic and weren’t written particularly well here so they were pretty dull.
The third issue is the pacing, which was all over the place. It goes through time skips to go through the following two years within half the time it went through the first so it feels rushed in a broader sense, but in doing so it also feels like it often lacks a sense of direction or focus and thus at times it felt like it was moving too slowly. Because of the final stretch not being very good, the ending and epilogue, while really solid in and of itself, just don’t carry much impact and thus it kind of feels like the manga just fizzled out really slowly. Personally, I think it would have been better to have crammed a bit more into the final stretch of Hachiken’s first year and then gone straight from there into the time skip epilogue.
The art I wasn’t much of a fan of. I suppose how it tackled the more technical aspects was somewhat impressive. But the character designs and art style in general were too simplistic and not all that high quality, and with the premise also being one where what’s being portrayed doesn’t stand out visually and is very grounded it very rarely had art that stood out.
