“Hachiken Butchers a Deer” would have been a better title for this episode.
What They Say:
“Hachiken Goes to Stay with the Mikages”
Hachiken learns that he cannot stay at the dorm over summer break due to renovations. As he dreads returning to his family, Mikage invites him to stay with her family if he has nowhere to go. Hachiken decides to work part-time on Mikage’s family farm.
Content: (please note that the content portion of the review may contain spoilers)
After a pair of episodes that swung more to the goofy side, Silver Spoon takes a slightly more serious tint this time as summer break begins. Hachiken becomes even more attached to Pork Bowl, the piglet he unfortunately named, and the fact that he’s going to have to see him killed and possibly even eat him is weighing down on Hachiken. Still determined not to go home, Hachiken’s disappointed to find that the dorms are closed — until Aki offers to let him stay at her place. His elation is quickly deflated when he realizes that she pretty much just needs him to work, since here dad will be in the hospital, but it’s yet another moment of growth for Hachiken as he realizes that he has never held an actual job before.
Though he doesn’t deliberately avoid telling his family about his absense for the summer break, the lack of cell signal way out in the boonies sends him on a nighttime adventure to find Ichiro’s house which winds up with him lost. Ichiro does find him, though, and there’s another moment of light humor as the text is finally sent since Ichiro’s higher reach goes into the cell zone. At Ichiro’s house, he calls Aki’s family, and here we get another teeny tiny peak into Hachiken’s home life. Expecting them to be mad, he’s surprised when their number one feeling during his absense was worry that he’d gotten himself hurt. He does get a little bit of punishment from the family, though: having hit a deer on the way to Ichiro’s, Aki’s grandfather convinces Hachiken to butcher the animal despite his obvious revulsion. At first it seems like a metaphor for overcoming your fears and doing what needs to be done, but then the grandfather admits he’s bullying Hachiken for missing work.
Hachiken does get a better glance into the lives of his classmates with this episode as well. With Aki, there’s a moment where it seems she’s not completely happy about being the one to inherit her family farm. And Ichiro explains his own plans for life, becoming a baseball star to earn enough money to higher more people for the farm so his mother doesn’t work herself to death. His friends’ “shining dreams” gets him a little annoyed, especially since he can’t get over the idea of potentially eating the pig he’s named, but again this knowledge makes him try harder.
In Summary
Though in general I wouldn’t recommend this show to people who don’t like to think about where their food comes from, this episode in particular will war with some people’s sensibilities. This isn’t Charlotte’s Web, so the option of Pork Bowl surviving and not being eaten isn’t even discussed as a possibility. And even though most of it happens off screen, we still see part of the butchering process, and also just because you dont’ see it doesn’t mean you don’t hear the characters talking about it. But if you can get over that, this episode is pretty strong, giving a better sense of how far Hachiken has come, but also makes it clear how many personal problems he still has, since he won’t even talk to his family over the phone, let alone spend summer vacation at home with them. Whatever happened with Hachiken besides failing to get into his dream high school, is not really clear yet, and sometimes it does feel like the show is teasing us without offering much up in return. But the show is still funny, and I’m liking the characters more each time we see them, so I can hold out waiting for the answers for a bit longer.
Grade: A-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
