Silver Spoon (manga)

Plot

After failing to pass the entrance examination for the high school he plans to attend, mild-mannered student Yuugo Hachiken moves away from his suburban lifestyle and enrolls at Ooezo Agricultural High School (大蝦夷農業高等学校, Ōezo Nōgyō Kōtō Gakkō) – often abbreviated as Ezonō (エゾノー, lit. "Ezo Agricultural") – in the countryside. His relationship with his family is strained at the start of the story, which influences his decision to attend a school far from home. He continues to worry about his future career over the course of the series. He soon finds himself slowly getting used to his new environment despite some initial struggles, and grows into an empathetic and compassionate individual as he struggles to understand the world of agriculture and how it affects the lives of his new friends.

Characters

Yuugo Hachiken (八軒 勇吾, Hachiken Yūgo)

Voiced by: Ryōhei KimuraThe main protagonist, Yuugo is a city boy from Sapporo. After failing to pass the entrance exams for the high school he plans to attend, Yuugo decided to enroll at Ezo instead, believing that an easier academic workload would leave him with more time to prepare for college exams. However, the agricultural courses' demand for hard labor proved his assumptions wrong. Due to his strict upbringing by his father, he is unable to refuse when someone needs his help. Despite complaining a lot when he feels that people abuse his generosity, Yuugo quickly earns the friendship and respect of his peers for his intellect and hardworking nature. Shortly after enrolling, Yuugo joins the Equestrian Club alongside his classmate Aki, soon rising to the position of Vice President of the club due to his reliable nature. Yuugo is usually anxious about his future as, unlike his classmates who already have set their goals in life, he is still wondering about what career he should choose. Much of Yuugo's animosity towards his family is a result of being compared to his more successful older brother, Shingo, and the seemingly uncaring hostility of his father. He has a crush on Aki.

Aki Mikage (御影 アキ, Mikage Aki)

Voiced by: Marie MiyakeAki is a first-year student who is also a member of the Equestrian Club. As the only child of her family, she entered Ezo to study so that she would inherit her family business, a cow and horse farm specializing in raising Ban'ei race horses. Her father is very protective and is wary of her relationship with Yuugo at first; however, after some time, he starts seeing him as a man worthy of becoming her husband. She keeps her desires bottled up and is friendly and seems easygoing, but in reality pushes people away from her problems. She has poor grades nearly comparable to Tokiwa. Later, her family experiences financial difficulties and is forced to sell all their horses to make ends meet. After this event, Aki confesses her true desires for the future, and – encouraged by Yuugo – expresses her will to work with horses professionally instead of inheriting the farm. She then starts studying to enter college with Yuugo as her personal tutor. She slowly develops feelings for Yuugo.

Mayumi Yoshino (吉野 まゆみ, Yoshino Mayumi)

Voiced by: Shiori IzawaA classmate of Yuugo. She is a member of the Dairy Farming program. Her dream is to open her own cheese factory.

Ichiro Komaba (駒場 一郎, Komaba Ichirō)

Voiced by: Tooru SakuraiOne of Yuugo's close friends at Ezo and a skilled baseball player, Ichiro is Aki's childhood friend and neighbor; their closeness was initially a constant source of jealousy for Yuugo. Ichiro's family owns a small dairy farm, which he manages with his mother and younger twin sisters. Ichiro dreams of becoming a professional baseball player so he can use the money he earns in the league to improve his family's farm. However, his family goes bankrupt and their farm is sold to pay their debt. As a result, he is forced to quit Ezo and look for a job to make ends meet and support his mother and sisters.

Shinnosuke Aikawa (相川 進之介, Aikawa Shinnosuke)

Voiced by: Nobunaga ShimazakiAnother close friend of Yuugo, Shinnosuke aims to become a veterinarian after graduation. His goal, however, is complicated by his tendency to faint at the sight of blood. He is a member of the Holstein Club.

Tamako Inada (稲田 多摩子, Inada Tamako)

Voiced by: Ayahi TakagakiA wealthy classmate of Yuugo whose family runs a huge industrial farm. She is usually an obese girl, but under the extra fat she hides a quite beautiful figure that reveals itself occasionally when she works too hard or goes on a quick diet. However, she feels too weak when she is thinner, and usually quickly regains the weight. Obsessed with money, Tamako's goal is to take over her family's farm (humorously depicted as a "hostile takeover" by her parents), and expand it and make it more profitable.

Keiji Tokiwa (常盤 恵次, Tokiwa Keiji)

Voiced by: Masayuki ShojiA close friend of Yuugo who has a talent of getting himself in trouble due to his difficulty studying and his habit of jumping to conclusions, much to his friends' chagrin. His family owns a chicken farm.

Nishikawa Hajime (西川 一, Hajime Nishikawa)

Voiced by: Kengo TakanashiA close friend of Yuugo who is a huge otaku with a complete collection of figurines, manga and posters and is good at otaku art. He is sensible and mature for his age and often gives Yuugo good advice. He cares for his friends and is very intelligent, knowing and explaining a lot about the crops and their economic value. He is also very knowledgeable about technology. He hopes to attend a college of university in Tokyo, mainly because, as he claims, Tokyo is the land of otaku.

Ayame Minamikujō (南九条 あやめ, Minamikujō Ayame)

Voiced by: Sayuri YahagiAn aristocratic girl to a vast agriculture fortune and childhood rival to Aki Mikage. She often gets Hachiken's name wrong by replacing the Hachi (8) part of his name with different numbers, calling him "Shichiken" (7) and "Jūhachiken" (18).

Tarō Beppu (別府 太郎, Beppu Tarō)

Voiced by: Nobuyuki KobushiA first year student and Yuugo's roommate. He will often help out Yuugo, such as the doing the chores he forgot about. He's in the Food Sciences program.

Shingo Hachiken (八軒 慎吾, Hachiken Shingo)

Voiced by: Katsuyuki KonishiYuugo's older brother who managed to get accepted to the University of Tokyo, the most prestigious university in Japan. However, Shingo later quit once he realized his father's dream was to have one of his sons accepted there. He decides to pursue his own dream of becoming a great cook, and travels the country to perfect his cooking skills, often with humorously questionable results. He often drops by Ezo unannounced to check on Yuugo, since Yuugo usually refuses to talk with his family. Shingo is carefree and outgoing which is often a source of animosity from Yuugo, but he becomes a little more responsible after marrying Alexandra, a young Russian girl he meets during his travels.

Production

After the completion of her successful fantasy series Fullmetal Alchemist, author Hiromu Arakawa and her publisher Shogakukan agreed that she should begin the more realistic Silver Spoon as a way to challenge herself as a manga artist and recruit new readers. Having grown up in a rural setting, many elements of the manga are drawn from Arakawa's experiences in her youth. For instance, characters such as the piggery teacher Ichiko Fuji and members of the Holstein fanclub are based on individuals she knew in her high school. Though the story contains matters like the protagonist Yuugo Hachiken's ethical dilemma over animal slaughter, Arakawa insists Silver Spoon is not a "green" manga. She states that she simply wants to tell the story of a high schooler's maturation, similar to how Fullmetal Alchemist focuses on the development of the main character Edward Elric rather than promoting alchemy.

Silver Spoon began its publication in Weekly Shōnen Sunday in the spring of 2011. It was serialized regularly until August of 2014 when Arakawa announced she would slow the pace of producing new chapters of the manga so that she could care for a family member in declining health. After an eight month hiatus, the manga briefly resumed in April of 2014 until another short hiatus was announced the following month. After the release of the manga's 13th volume, the author announced its "imminent" conclusion. She later explained that she had originally planned to depict Yuugo's first year at Ooezo in detail, followed by rushed second year and shortened third year, and his eventual life after graduation.

Manga

Influenced by Arakawa's own life experience as she was raised in a dairy farm in Hokkaido, the manga was launched on the 19th issue of Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine on April 6, featured on the cover. It became one of the magazine's main features not long after. The manga is licensed in English in Singapore by Shogakukan Asia and in North America by Yen Press.

Anime

An anime series produced by A-1 Pictures aired from July 11, 2013 to September 19, 2013. Tomohiko Ito directed the series with assistant director Kotomi Deai. Taku Kishimoto wrote the scripts, while Jun Nakai served as character designer and chief animation director, and Shusei Murai scored the music. A second season aired from January 9, 2014 to March 27, 2014. For the first season, the opening theme is "Kiss you" by miwa, while the ending theme is "Hello Especially" by Sukima Switch. For the second season, the opening theme is "Life" by Fujifabric and the ending theme is "Oto no Naru Hō e" by Goose House. The anime has been licensed by Aniplex of America for streaming and home video in North America. Aniplex of America released the first season on DVD on July 15, 2014.

Episode list

Season 1

Season 2

Live-action film

A live-action film based on the manga of the same name was officially announced in the Nikkan Sports and Sports Nippon newspapers on August 7, 2013. Kento Nakajima played Yuugo Hachiken, with Alice Hirose as Aki Mikage and Tomohiro Ichikawa as Ichiro Komaba. The film was directed by Keisuke Yoshida, with the production companies TBS and Wilco and the distributor Toho. Gin no Saji premiered in Tokyo on March 7, 2014, and was also shown at the Japan Film Festival of San Francisco on July 22, 2014. The film's theme song was "Hidamari", performed by Yuzu. Iwasawa Koji wrote and composed the song just for the movie.

Sales

Since its first volume, Silver Spoon had been well received by readers. It became the fastest Shogakukan title to reach the mark of one million first printing copies, a year and three months after the manga was launched. According to Oricon, it was also the 7th best-selling manga in Japan in 2012, and the top selling title from Shogakukan, as well as the top selling title of 2012 not yet to have an anime adaption. By October 2013 it has sold 12 million copies in Japan. As of 2014 the series has sold over 15 million copies in Japan.

Awards

In 2012, Silver Spoon won both the 5th Manga Taishō Award's Grand Prize and the 58th Shogakukan Manga Award (Shōnen category).

In 2013 Silver Spoon won the first Japan Food Culture Contents Award.

In February 2015, Asahi Shimbun announced that Silver Spoon was one of nine nominees for the nineteenth annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.