Silver Spoon 2 Episode 11 (Finale)
Buckeye: This season picks up right where the last season left off, and it does an excellent job in continuing to develop Hachiken as a character, all while taking the next step in really developing Mikage and Komaba. Not to mention, it does an excellent job in telling everybody that there is a business side to farming and that everybody can experience tough times. Just about the only problem with this season is the first episode that throws things off track before picking up the swagger again. Although not as strong as season 1, this season is definitely top-notch material. Silver Spoon has been an awesome show and certainly Hiromu Arakawa has put her life growing up in an agricultural environment to great use.
Hitsugi Amachi: Interesting note to end the second season on, before the end credits and closing action. Hachiken has changed, thanks to his friends. It’s nice that he’s found the place for him in high school which he didn’t have back home in junior high.
A good second season overall. A little less of the agricultural side, a little more of the personal side, but it was entertaining and interesting nonetheless.
GingaDaiuchuu: I love the exploration of Hachiken’s character as it’s developed throughout this story and formed connections with others. Arakawa packed this story with so many important life lessons to examine and the analogies that work with the unusual themes presented are brilliant. I really want more of this. Great stuff.
EmperorBrandon: Yeah, really loved some of the ways they showed how much Hachiken’s character has changed over the course of the series, from his meeting with old friends to his mom’s very sweet surprise visit to school. Definitely a nice way to wrap it up.
Sabure: Echoing what others have posted, this was defintiely one of the better written series in recent seasons. I felt that Hachiken was one of the best characters in 2013 and he certainly continued to stake that claim early in 2014. The character development – not just with Hachiken, but for the entire cast as well – was perfectly executed without sacrificing too much of plot developing. It was also interesting to learn the business side of the agricultural industry, and how difficult it really is for these people to earn a decent living despite the hard work and effort they pour out every day.
The one sad part that I saw in this particular episode is that I feel that there is no way Hachiken will ever make peace with his father. The two are just complete opposites and had too much pride in themselves for either one to concede. At least Hachiken’s mother understood the work and sacrifice that Hachiken gives out during his tenure at the school when she made that surprise visit.
Gildor: Maybe their reconciliation can be a part of third cour. Well, I can hope anyway…
A third cour would also be an opportunity for Hachiken and Aki to further develop their relationship, which I would have liked to see a little bit farther developed than they took it in this cour.
Still, an excellent series overall.
Sensuifu: Pretty good ending to an excellent show. A small bit of everything that made the show great in general- the humor, drama/melodrama, agricultural lessons, character development…all present in this finale. Wouldn’t mind a continuation of Hachiken’s story, so here’s hoping for a third season.
bctaris: Despite the break between them, I can’t think of this as a conveniently split two-cour series, one side better or worse than the other. It’s all one coherent, 22-episode, story, especially as you remember it all takes place within this first year of school. It’s not so much that I wouldn’t love a third cour (I would), but not as simple continuation of this. We see how much change there is in this barely 9-month span, and how much change may be coming very soon–some upcoming second-years moving out of the dorms, some, like Yoshino, contemplating beyond even that–so that what’s ideal would be more aptly, “Silver Spoon: Year 2”.
But if this is all there is, that’s fine. Repeating myself and others again, this was, for a two-cour series, one of the very best written shows of the past several years. It managed to hit all the same themes of growing up, responsibility, friendship, love, et al, with respect for its characters and their lives that I don’t often see, using plot points–Komaba’s farm, for instance–as things inherent to and organic of characterization, not thrust in the way to create drama just to fill out a story arc. (Nodame Cantabile especially, but maybe even parts of the surprising Pet Girl of Sakurasou, are a couple of the very few series that do this well.) And the good nature and respect it had for its characters and their world allowed the humor some space to work. That’s where the balance comes from–comedy or drama was never for its own sake.
Wonderful, wonderful show. Fare thee well, Silver Spoon.
