Silver Spoon is a sports manga.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Hiromu Arakawa
Translation: Amanda Haley
Lettering: Abigail Blackman
What They Say:
As Silver Spoon prepares for its official launch, Hachiken has decided to pay homage to the event that first sparked his passion for bringing people together and showcasing their individual efforts—by throwing a massive pizza party! Unlike that memorable first-year food fest, however, the tasters’ reactions will be crucial to creating the most delectable German-style pizza—and setting Silver Spoon on the path to success.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Of all the things I didn’t quite expect out of Silver Spoon, despite its humble beginnings as a baseball manga and tangentially related to sports, I didn’t expect an entire horse racing arc. But it makes sense in the larger context of them part of the Equestrian Club. It just never occurred to me that they actually compete; it just hasn’t happened for forever, and the main push of the plot has been on Hachiken’s company.
But this was a nice ending to their Equestrian Club arc! They were always good, or at least Mikage was always good, and the addition of Ishiyama made it all the more believable that they got here out of talent and effort rather than the usual convoluted sports newbie stories of “training.”Even Hachiken, through these three years, has done well for himself, even if he did, uh, not do well in his nationals appearance. But he makes the mistakes typical of someone of his skill level, and doesn’t bring the team down too much, until nationals.
Even the proverbial photo-finish ending, wherein Mikage beats their opponents’ score by a total of 0.07 seconds was a great sports manga moment. There’s even a funny moment in the afterward of the manga where Arakawa labors to try and make the times and points work out to be dramatic, but still a second-place finish for Ezo, and finally does until she learns that there are regional rules that she was not using, and all her math was for naught.
The real reason for Hachiken’s trip to nationals, since he failed so hard, is the trip to Gotemba for their famous Jinhua pork. And even that wasn’t fruitful, but there was another pizza party. Really, Silver Spoon is a pizza manga.
In Summary:
The final stretch starts here for Mikage and Aikawa, as they both try to get into Ezo U. Their final exams are on November 30, the exact day that Hachiken and Ookawa are opening their pizza stand at Ban’ei. This was a welcome distraction from all of that, and reminded me how good of a writer Arakawa and also what Silver Spoon is truly about. These characters have grown a lot since the beginning of the manga, and they won’t be settling for just any old pizza anymore.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: February 18, 2020
MSRP: $15.00
