Title: Silver Spoon Vol. 6
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Slice of Life
Publication Date: December 11, 2018
The Story
Volume six of Silver Spoon focused on the horse riding competition that both Mikage and Hachiken were taking part in prior to Ezo AG’s cultural festival. Hachiken was enlisted into the beginner’s events while MIkage was doing the Low Jumps Class B events. This is where we were also introduced to a new character, Ayame Minamikujou, a girl who sees Mikage as a rival despite the fact that she’s enlisted in the beginner’s courses, too. This makes her latch onto Hachiken as a rival instead!
The competition takes up the bulk of the volume with continuing preparation for the cultural festival following shortly after. During this period, Hachiken makes a bold move and invites Mikage out to celebrate her placement in the riding event… just the two of them to which Mikage accepts! Everything seems to be going well for Hachiken when, suddenly, he collapses and ends up in the infirmary. Hachiken’s inability to not say no landed him taking on too much work and it all caught up with him, causing him to collapse. Our volume ends with Hachiken getting a rather shocking visitor!
For a slice-of-life agricultural manga, this volume had a ton of action in it. With the cultural festival looming on the horizon, we sort of took a bit of a detour here from the main story in order to focus on this event. It really showed just how far Hachiken has come with riding Chestnut but at the same time, it also exposed just how far he has to go, still!
Now that the competition is out of the way, the main story seems to be moving forward once again but now Hachiken will have to deal with his imposing visitor before he can join the rest of the school for the festival, which is now underway.
Characters
The big focus here is placed on Minamikujou, being a brand-new character. She acts high and mighty like she comes from a well-off family; however, it’s quite the opposite. Her parents are just simple country folk who happened to sell off their land for a lot of money. Ayame is the only one who acts like she’s the most privileged girl in the world. She has a long history with MIkage as the two of them were childhood friends. Ayame saw herself as the leader of their little group back then despite the fact that she ended up embarrassing herself in everything that they did. Her character is simply there for comic relief but her personality comes across as a bit grating. She’s so full of herself but not in a way where you love to hate her, but in a way where you just don’t want to see her character… like… at all. Maybe she’ll have a bit of a redemption arc in the future but for now, I can’t stomach her as a character.
Hachiken and MIkage took another step in their relationship. Still can’t believe that Hachiken finally found the gall to ask Mikage out one-on-one… even if it’s for an innocent celebration. Still, it’s the small steps that add up to the bigger ones so good for Hachiken! Of course, when he passed out, it’s just a classic scenario for him because as soon as he gets ahead in one area, something happens that sets him back even further.
Final Thoughts
A bit of a surprise with the detour into the horse competition but, then again, it was mentioned in the previous volume but it had completely slipped my mind. I was totally expecting it to jump right into the festival but shows you how much my brain was paying attention! (In all fairness, I do review quite a lot of manga! You’re lucky I didn’t refer to Hachiken as Edward Elric!)
My memory blunder aside, NOW we can look forward to the festival and see the fruits of Hachiken’s efforts. It’s a shame that he’s nursing himself back to health and can’t see it all first-hand… for now. I’m sure he’ll get to experience some of it, though so I wouldn’t count him out just yet. This wasn’t the best volume of Silver Spoon but if you ever wanted to know how horse competitions are scored and judged, then this volume will serve as an instruction manual for you. If you’re confused as to what an instruction manual is, they’re these little books that used to come with games before they told you to go to a website and/or gave every game a tutorial level! Sadly, there are some people in this day and age that actually need that explained to them!
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to Volume 7 of Silver Spoon to see where the story goes and unless they stretch out the festival arc, this should bring this arc to a conclusion which makes you wonder what lies in store beyond that!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
