Tasked with baking pizza, Hachiken pools all the Ezonoo resources.
What They Say
“Hachiken Bakes Pizza”
A brick oven has been found in a pile of garbage during a campus cleanup session. This discovery leads to Hachiken being tasked with a pizza making project by his classmates. Learning that many of them have no access to pizza delivery, Hachiken is unable to turn down their request, even though he has no experience. He reluctantly agrees…
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
We start out on a funny note this time, as Hachiken, probably the kid with the most book smarts in the whole school, is sure he’ll get the top grade on the dairy science test — and while he gets a 98, he’s blown back by the perfect scores of the supposedly “dumb” kids in his practicum group. So even though he gets the top overall score. There are plenty of more fun moments through the episode, as Hachiken is impressed by his roommates tractor knowledge (“Are you speaking in code?”) and when he finds what is obviously the KFC Colonel when he and the other students are picking up a pile of trash. But amongst all the humor, there’s another serious note, as Hachiken realizes that even though he’s the top student at the school, the achievement doesn’t make him happy.
Still, despite the overall light tone we go into with this episode, things take an apparent goofier turn when Hachiken stumbles upon a brick oven. Looking up what it can be used for, he discovers he can make pizza, which sends the surrounding students into a frenzy — living out in the country, they’ve always been outside the delivery radius and some have never even had pizza. Everyone then basically volunteers Hachiken to make them all pizza, and Hachiken begins his quest to gather up the ingredients and figure out how to do the whole thing. This is where we start to see through the premise, and it becomes steadily more clear that the pizza-making is becoming Hachiken’s way of seeing just what the school can offer him. Not just in resources — with students allowed access to most things as they experiment, he finds flower, vegetables, bacon, and a secret stash of cheese for the pizza — but with the other students, as they offer their help gathering materials and creating or fixing the tools needed.
At the end of the episode Hachiken’s old teacher, who had helped him to choose Ezonoo after his old plans fell through, arrives at the end to check in on Hachiken, but finds that he can’t hold his old student’s attention because he’s so caught up in the event and spending time with his new friends. Having been the one to notice that Hachiken was paralyzed by not knowing what to do with himself, he’s hoping that now, Hachiken is beginning to figure out where he’s going. And the episode does end with some hope for Hachiken, that even if he hasn’t discover a new path, he’s at least starting to figure out how to have fun.
In Summary
This is mainly a lighthearted episode, falling a little more on situational comedy than gags as Hachiken struggles to make pizza for everyone. Shock jokes about farming seem to be on hold for now, as Hachiken seems to understand how things work — though he’s still distraught over how good the piglet, Pork Bowl, will taste when he becomes bacon. Underneath the humor is a seriousness that makes the show just a little more engrossing, and keeps it from being a funny distraction that you can let go of entirely when the episode is over. I’m still anxious for a little more clarity on the issues that led him to this school in the first place, but so far each episode has shown just a little more growth in Hachiken, so that I’m plenty invested in seeing how he turns out by the end of the series.
Grade: A-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
