Silver Spoon 2 Episode 1 | TFP Review
Buckeye: And so, this show returns as great as it was during the summer. Komaba sure isn’t feeling right, but keeping Hachiken out of the loop like that just means bring on self-inflicted pain. I wonder just what the big deal is, and if there is anyone who can help sort through this problem, it’s Hachiken. Anyway, the second season is off to a great start in bringing everything to the table that made this one of last year’s best.
GingaDaiuchuu: And we’re back. With as quickly as that last season seemed to pass by, it hardly feels like the break was any longer than the two weeks many other series took off.
The first episode back definitely doesn’t get as good as the first season was at its best, but it’s clearly a pretty seamless continuation, so there’s no reason to think it won’t get back to that point. I’m sure Arakawa has some more great stories to be brought out in this next cour. This episode even touches back on the Pork Bowl saga briefly, providing the final payoff to all of that as it affects Hachiken’s family troubles as well as serving as another piece of evidence showing how important Hachiken has become in the community, which also means people know he’ll not only do what’s asked of him, but go above and beyond what’s expected. And of course I’m curious to see what the deal with Mikage and Komaba is.
stardf29: Ah yes, Silver Spoon is back! Today is a good day for anime.
Anyway, it looks like the thing here is Mikage’s not letting others get too close to her by keeping them from getting involved with stuff they are not directly involved with. And by “they”, I mean Hachiken. For what it’s worth, though, she does seem to appreciate how he’s concerned about her, once again by telling him about how horses will limp over to a fallen rider and implying that Hachiken is like that, too.
On that note, given what she said, I have a feeling that what happened involves a traffic accident; there’s just something about how she mentioned that last and the way she said it. Maybe I’m just imagining things, though.
On another note, I rather liked the moment where Hachiken got the text message from his mom about the bacon.
Hitsugi Amachi: Did this show just become a soap opera? So far, I don’t feel the same kind of charm that the first series provided. It’s just the first episode so perhaps this is just a “come sit and get comfortable with the characters again” kind of intro to the new season, but I kind of hope they go back to the elements that made the first series so enjoyable (Hachiken’s uneasiness with getting used to the very different world that the ag school is for him). Though in the past, this show has liked to mislead and misdirect us a lot (the “UFO” 
bctaris: I think you’ve just been negatively affected in the interim by stuff like Golden Time. 
Hitausgi Amachi: About the only larger thing I’m slightly worried about is the OP’s introduction of a ringlet-wearing ojou. I’m not sure such a trite anime stereotype will fit in so well with this show, though it all depends on what she actually turns out to be. If she’s as weird and quirky as the rest of the characters and not just a cookie-cutter ojou, then that should be fine. Another part of the charm of this show is that it often avoided quite a few of the same old boring anime cliches, if only because the setting was so radically different (even though this is, technically, a high school comedy).
Sensuifu: That surprised me as well. It’ll be funny to see if she isn’t the stereotypical ojousama. Maybe she was the one instructing Mikage on the cow birth. I mean, she doesn’t appear to be a student since she isn’t wearing the school uniform in the intro… I bet she’s gung-ho to get down and dirty when needed.
Btw, I still love the comedy. Silver Spoon always delivers on that front at least.
bctaris: This [ringlet ojou], however, is a good point. In trying to figure out, again, after this episode, why Silver Spoon is so good, I realized, too, that it’s its universality, nurtured by not cowing (so to speak) to those cookie-cutter and over-fictionalized anime character stereotypes. These characters, even when still fulfilling certain tropes, all feel real. So I’m just as curious to see how she’s handled. I think the writing’s still as solid as it was on an average basis last season, so I’m not worried. We’ve had a classic ojou all series long as it is, and I can’t so easily get nervous about another (potential) one just because she has ringlets, nor ignore Tamako’s stereotype just because she’s not rail thin and six feet tall (refreshingly, perhaps, for anime).
Also, those two or three exceptional episodes tend to dominate our memory of the first season, I think, and give us the impression that the writing was always that high. Obscuring that the other episodes were still well, well above average for school-based anime. As I think this episode was. So much middling new series this season, doing much the same thing, it was so nice returning to this.
In the mean time, and still speaking of characters, one of the things that impresses me about this story continues to be how minor and incidental characters are real, continual presences around our main cast. But it’s balanced right–not just some effort, like sillier or more overwrought shows, to properly introduce (with on-screen titles) a huge tangled web of characters to give the artificial impression of a large world. These characters are just there, it’s just that the camera is not focused on them at the moment, and they’re as real as the main characters. Instructors, the cow porn club guys, the teammate or two of Komaba’s that hang out with Hachiken and crew; the graduating senior pair in the equestrian club, and the other first-year (brown highlight girl) with Hachiken and Mikage.
