Title: Silver Spoon Vol. 15
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Slice of Life
Publication Date: September 22, 2020
The Story
The final volume of Silver Spoon is here and everything ends up coming to an end for better or for worse.
The majority of the volume is spent focusing on Hachiken trying to get into college as well as studying for his entrance exams. Once things settle down there, the manga shifts focus to Haichiken and his Silver Spoon business. He’s still dealing with the hurdles of trying to get his father to invest in it as well as trying to find a market for raising pigs.
An opportunity does come along; however, from an old friend. Hachiken takes a trip to Russia in order to visit said old friend and talks things over about moving part of his pig-raising business to Russia. After Hachiken accepts the offer, the manga abruptly cuts back to Ezo Ag where they talk about the mark that Hachiken left on the school to close out the series.
Final Thoughts
Honestly, I am actually quite disappointed in the ending of the series as it spent WAY too much time ironing out the details of getting into college and preparing the business. It left things to implications rather than definitive resolutions. I might be a bit spoilerish here but it never really showed the end results of Hachiken’s relationship with Mikage. It only implied that he, eventually, intended to marry her… it never showed the end result of Hachiken’s business… it only implied that he was taking a chance and that it may have worked out. It never showed the end results of Hachiken and Mikage going to college and what ended up happening during their tenure there. It’s not even clear if there was a time skip to where they had even graduated or anything.
For a series that pressed the gas pedal to the floor and did time skip after time skip for the past several volumes, switching gears and slamming on the brakes for the final volume and then not decisively concluding any of the stories that the previous 14 volume established feels like a complete and total letdown. To have the series end on a recap of what Hachiken did at Ezo Ag was also a bit of a cheap move, too. It didn’t really give the readers any sort of true closure to the series and just kind of made the ending feel really, really flat.
I was looking forward to this volume in so many ways. I was hoping that everything would have ended in a way where you could be proud of all of the hard work Hachiken put in. Instead, I’m left wondering if any of it even paid off? Sure, there are hints that he was successful… the silver spoon on the final page kind of symbolized that… but it was never flat out stated if Hachiken’s business took off!
Just a quick “and now Hachkien’s business is one of the premier supplies of pork in both Russia and Japan” would have been nice but instead, they simply stated that he started a business. Even adding something in like “and now Hachiken and his wife Mikage’s business…” would have given us confirmation on whether or not he got married.
I was really expecting the story to wrap up in a better way. There have been much worse endings out there and while this one wasn’t bad, per se… it just felt really flat and unsatisfying.
Overall, the series was fantastic. When you create, arguably, one of the greatest stories in the history of anime and manga in Fullmetal Alchemist, switching genres to something like Silver Spoon could sew seeds of doubt into a reader’s mind. Hiromu Arakawa proved that something like attending an agricultural high school could be interesting, entertaining, and engaging. She took her character development strengths and applied them to new characters and made you feel invested in them. You actually grew to care about these characters and none of them felt wasted. The story in and of itself was very simple but it was something you could feel attached to.
The story of personal growth in both successes and setbacks is something that we can all relate to. The majority of readers probably never set foot on a farm in their lives but everything here in this series could be transferrable to some aspect of your life. The moral of this entire series is that hard work pays off. You can fail time and time again but a failure doesn’t mean it is the end. It just means you did something the wrong way and it’s a chance for you to do it the right way. Each success after overcoming failure leads to the next challenge where you may fail again… but it is up to you to persevere and press forward until you reach your ultimate goal. Even if you do, you could still fail. Remember to keep the lessons you learned in mind and continue on past your next failure.
It is a valuable life lesson for all of us to learn and Silver Spoon does a fantastic job getting that across. Hachiken’s journey was incredible from beginning to end. I just wish we could have seen the true ends of that journey in a more definitive way.
I was prepared to give this series a 4 / 5 but with the way it ended, I’m going to have to drop this down to a 3.5 / 5 or about a 7 / 10.
Still, if you’ve been on the fence with Silver Spoon because of its premise. Don’t let that deter you. Pick this series up and give it a read. It is still well worth your time!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
