Silver Spoon (manga)

Silver Spoon (銀の匙) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. It was serialized in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from April 2011 to November 2019. The story is set in the fictional Ooezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido, and depicts the daily life of Yuugo Hachiken, a high school student from Sapporo who enrolled at the agricultural high school to escape the demands of his strict father. However, he soon learns that life on an agricultural school is not as easy as he initially believed. Unlike his new classmates, he has no intention of following an agricultural career after graduating, although he envies them for already having set goals for their lives and the pursuit of their dreams.

An anime television series adaptation produced by A-1 Pictures aired for two seasons between July and September 2013 and January and March 2014 on Fuji TV's Noitamina block. A live-action film based on the manga produced by Toho was released in March 2014.

By February 2020, the manga had over 17 million copies in circulation. It won the fifth Manga Taishō in 2012, the 58th Shogakukan Manga Award in the category and the Japan Food Culture Contents Award, both in 2013.

Plot

Characters

Yuugo Hachiken (八軒勇吾)

A city boy from Sapporo. After failing to pass the entrance exams for the high school he plans to attend, Yuugo decided to enroll at Ezo, expecting an easier academic workload. However, he is proven wrong. Due to his strict upbringing by his father, he is unable to refuse when someone needs his help. Despite complaining when he feels that people abuse his generosity, Yuugo quickly earns the friendship and respect of his peers. Yuugo joins the Equestrian Club alongside his classmate Aki and rises to the position of Vice President of the club. Yuugo is usually anxious about his future as, unlike his classmates who already have their goals in life, he is still wondering about what career he should choose. Much of Yuugo's animosity towards his family is a result of being compared to his more successful older brother, Shingo, and the seemingly uncaring hostility of his father. He has a crush on Aki, and they officially start dating after Aki got accepted into university.

Aki Mikage (御影アキ)

Aki is a first-year student who is also a member of the Equestrian Club. As the only child of her family, she entered Ezo to study so that she would inherit her family business—a cow and horse farm specializing in raising Ban'ei race horses. She is wary of Yuugo at first. At first, is friendly and seems easygoing. However, she keeps her desires bottled up and pushes people away from her problems. She has poor grades, though, according to Yuugo, better than Keiji's. Later, her family experiences financial difficulties and is forced to sell all their horses. After this event, Aki confesses her true desires for the future, and—encouraged by Yuugo—expresses her will to work with horses professionally instead of inheriting the farm. She then starts studying (partly because of her poor grades) to enter college with Yuugo as her personal tutor. She slowly develops feelings for Yuugo, and they officially start dating after she gets accepted into university.

Mayumi Yoshino (吉野まゆみ)

A classmate of Yuugo and a member of the Dairy Farming program. Her dream is to open her own cheese factory.

Ichiro Komaba (駒場一郎)

One of Yuugo's close friends at Ezo and a skilled baseball player. Ichiro is Aki's childhood friend and neighbor which is initially a source of jealousy for Yuugo. Ichiro dreams of becoming a professional baseball player to earn money to improve his family's small dairy farm. However, his family goes bankrupt and their farm is sold to pay their debt. As a result, he is forced to quit Ezo and look for a job to make ends meet and support his mother and sisters.

Shinnosuke Aikawa (相川進之介)

Another close friend of Yuugo, Shinnosuke aims to become a veterinarian after graduation. His goal, however, is complicated by his tendency to faint at the sight of blood. He is a member of the Holstein Club.

Tamako Inada (稲田多摩子)

A wealthy classmate of Yuugo whose family runs a huge industrial farm. She is usually an obese girl, but she hides under the extra fat a quite beautiful figure that reveals itself occasionally when she works too hard or goes on a quick diet. However, she has to regain her weight because she feels weak when she is thinner. Obsessed with money, Tamako's goal is to take over her family's farm (humorously depicted as a "hostile takeover" by her parents), and expand it and make it more profitable.

Keiji Tokiwa (常盤恵次)

A close friend of Yuugo who has a talent of getting himself in trouble due to his difficulty studying (which has humorously become Yuugo's means of gauging Aki's and even his dog Vice President's learning abilities) and his habit of jumping to conclusions, much to his friends' chagrin—even putting Yuugo and Mayumi in the hot seat once. His family owns a chicken farm.

Hajime Nishikawa (西川一)

A close friend of Yuugo who is a huge otaku. He is sensible and mature and often gives Yuugo good advice. He cares for his friends and is very intelligent, knowing a lot about the crops and their economic value, and technology. He hopes to attend a college or university in Tokyo, mainly because, as he claims, Tokyo is the land of otaku.

Ayame Minamikujō (南九条あやめ)

An aristocratic girl to a vast agriculture fortune and childhood rival to Aki Mikage. She often gets Hachiken's name wrong by replacing the Hachi (8) part of his name with different numbers, calling him "Shichiken" (7) and "Jūhachiken" (18). In the anime, she came to Ezo late in the second season (to fill up the slot vacated by Ichiro), but she is in Ezo from the beginning in the movie.

Tarō Beppu (別府太郎)

A first year student and Yuugo's roommate. He will often help out Yuugo, such as the doing the chores he forgot about. He is in the Food Sciences program.

Shingo Hachiken (八軒慎吾)

Yuugo's older brother who managed to get accepted to the University of Tokyo, the most prestigious university in Japan. However, Shingo later quit once he realized his father's dream was to have one of his sons accepted there. He decides to pursue his own dream of becoming a great cook, and travels the country in his underbone bike to perfect his cooking skills, often with humorously questionable results. He often drops by Ezo unannounced to check on Yuugo, since Yuugo usually refuses to talk with his family. Shingo is carefree and outgoing which is often a source of animosity from Yuugo, but he becomes a little more responsible after marrying Alexandra, a young Russian girl he meets during his travels.

Reception

Manga

Sales

Since its first volume, Silver Spoon had been well received by readers. It became the fastest Shogakukan title at the time to reach the mark of one million first printing copies, a year and three months after the manga was launched.[74] According to Oricon, it was also the seventh best-selling manga in Japan in 2012.[75] By October 2013, it has sold 12 million copies in Japan.[76] By 2014, the series has sold over 15 million copies in Japan.[77] By July, 2017, the manga had over 16 million copies in print.[78] By February 2020, the manga had over 17 million copies in print.[79]

Awards

Silver Spoon ranked second on the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics" by the Honya Club website in 2012.[80] Silver Spoon won the fifth Manga Taishō Award's Grand Prize in 2012,[81] and the 58th Shogakukan Manga Award ( category) in 2013.[82] In 2013, Silver Spoon won the first Japan Food Culture Contents Award.[83] It was one of nine nominees for the 19th annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2015.[84]

Reviews

Publishers Weekly concluded that the work is "a side of Japanese high school life seldom seen in manga, making for an irresistible series."[85] Barnes & Noble listed Silver Spoon on their list of "Our Favorite Manga of 2018".[86]

Sales

Awards

Reviews

Anime

In November 2019, Crunchyroll listed Silver Spoon in their "Top 100 best anime of the 2010s".[87]

type	tv series
director	Tomohiko Itō (S1) Kotomi Deai (S2)
producer	Shunsuke Saitō Akitoshi Mori
writer	Taku Kishimoto
music	Shūsei Murai
studio	A-1 Pictures
network	Fuji TV (Noitamina)
first	July 12, 2013
last	March 28, 2014
episodes	22

Silver Spoon (manga)

Plot

Characters

Production

Media

Manga

Volumes

Volumes

Anime

Episodes

Season 1

Season 2

Season 1

Season 2

Live-action film

Reception

Manga

Sales

Awards

Reviews

Sales

Awards

Reviews

Anime

See also

External links

References

Episodes

Season 1

Season 2

Season 1

Season 2