Fish out of water stories are fairly easy to construct. You take a person and drop them into an unfamiliar situation and then each episode going forward features this character exploring the world they previously knew nothing about. It automatically accomplishes two tasks: giving the audience a compelling world to explore and a character to grow while exploring them. Silver Spoon follows this formula to the letter, and that might be its greatest strength.

The story follows Yugo Hachiken an overachiever at academics but a dispute with his parents convinced him to move to a boarding school as far away as possible. He is accepted to Oezo Agricultural High School where he is surrounded by the children of farmers who already are adept at most of the lessons. At Oezo, normal academics take a backseat to learning how to tend livestock, harvest crops, and all manner of the menial labor of farm life. Hachiken is forced to adopt to his new lifestyle and learn the skills of working on a farm in order to pass High School.

Hachiken’s adjustment to the life on the farm is where most of the drama is focused. The show goes over the standard facets of farm life and how Hachiken is completely unprepared, while his classmates handle most of the tasks with ease and precision. The audience watches as Hachiken becomes accustomed to everything from waking up early to learning how to clean and care for the animals.

The heart of the show lies in Hachiken becoming estranged from his parents, which is only talked about briefly during the show. Hachiken ran away from his previous life where he shut out everything except for academic advancement and in the process completely lost sight of himself. Arriving at Oezo he learns quickly that his classmates all have clear paths in their life and he feels like he doesn’t know where he is going. What his parents demanded of him was pure academic achievement but he had no goal in mind, no idea why he was striving for academic perfection other than to please his parents. While most of his classmates goals are that they will take over the family farm he envies them for having some direction while he floats around aimless.

However, the show is clear that this aimlessness isn’t fruitless. Hachiken accomplishes some amazing advancements in his own personal skills and in bringing people together at Oezo. Hackiken’s classmates, whom Hachiken is jealous of, become envious of his ability to unite people and succeed at his short-term goals. While they know where their lives are going to take them after High School that actually limits them from trying new things. Hachiken has no limitations and so he makes an effort to go around just trying as many of the skills Oezo has to teach. In doing so Hachiken’s aimlessness forms him into a well rounded person. 

 The chef among those skills Hachiken tries is raising a pig. Early in the show he falls in love with a small piglet and takes care of it throughout. The way Hachiken comes face to face with the slaughter and preparation of animals also works to change him. His first few days on the farm he is disgusted at where an egg comes from but as the show goes on and he learns more about the process of preparing meat and the farmers relationship with animals, he gains a respect for the entire process. If Hachiken had never come to the country he would have continued to enjoy meat in blissful ignorance for the rest of his life, but now he carries with him a new respect for where his food comes from, and that completely changes the way he approaches food.

Silver Spoon ended abruptly and with a lot of questions unanswered. The final scenes of the anime were bittersweet because they hinted at things that were to come such as Hachiken’s budding romance and him finally confronting his parents, among a lot more stories still untold. Luckily, a second season has already been announced so Silver Spoon is ultimately an unfinished piece, there is more coming and hope that these loose ends will be tied up with the expertise that they were opened.

Grade: B