Sorry for the delay in posting this but I did actually see the first episode not only the day it came out but the minute it was uploaded, only had a bit a hiccup when the video player failed and I had to reload it.
Well I'm familiar with another one of Hiromu Arakawa's work, FullMetal Alchemist, and I had a somewhat similar story idea (except my idea involves a teenage girl from the suburbs helping her aunt living in the country raise sheep) let's see how this turns out...
OMG! That calf is soooo cute! Even if it is confused in thinking that our protagonist, Yugo Hachiken's, clothing is food; I also found it amusing when he had his foot in a cow pie and absentmindedly walked into an electric fence during the opening sequence.
There are other funny moments during this episode as well, the calf pulling a classic nut shot (ouch!); and OH-NO! Yugo just had to mention a bear and then one shows up...or not, it's actually a horse (with either a reference to one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse or Raou from "Hokuto no Ken" I'm not sure). And after class introductions, everyone drew from a lottery to determine which teams everyone would be in; Yugo ended up in Team A.
The next morning Team A gets roped into helping some upperclassmen with catching some escaped chickens...who are scheduled to be slaughtered. While they don't directly show the actual beheading, they did show the upperclassman holding up the resulting headless chicken; severed neck censored, of course, but not the (literally) bloody knife. I mean the chicken's still squirming around even without its head and said severed neck is on-and-off spouting blood like a geyser! It's no wonder that Yugo is shocked stiff while his buddy turns blue in the face and faints.
"Wow! It's like an egg factory!" That's because it 'is' an egg factory, Yugo! [sarcasm] Thanks for the update Captain Obvious [/sarcasm].
"But these kinds of efficiency-first that aren't kind to the chickens are criticized in the West." And with good reason, how would you like to be trapped in a cage that's only big enough for you to not get squished but not enough to stretch out your limbs or even walk around? ...for most of you, that's what I thought.
And then Yugo finds out where eggs really come from...THE ANUS!!! OK, Yugo's egg gathering partner (not the same guy who fainted earlier) explains that it's technically called the "Cloaca" and starts to get more into detail but all Yugo can think about can pretty much be summed up as "Eggs equals poop". Great, eggs are to Yugo Hachiken; what milk is to Edward Elric (the protagonist of the series "FullMetal Alchemist")! At least it's not as brain-breaking-ly bad as this one time a relative of mine meet someone who thought that meat was made from an artificial paste plus water.
And all that before it's even breakfast time!?
"In Europe, they give a newborn child a silver spoon. It's to ensure that they never go hungry." Says some random female student. Huh...are you sure it doesn't have anything to do with the idiom "Born with a silver spoon in ones mouth", which refers to a kid born into luxury? (Looking at you, Yugo!) And...apparently Tamako's 'safety' doesn't really matter to Yugo 'cause she's not skinny/pretty, [sarcasm] nice one [/sarcasm] (I'm more worried about potential salmonella poisoning from the raw egg itself than were it came from).
Also, Yugo's classmates...well...kind of suck at the typical high school subjects; but those same classmates soon after launch into a college-level discussion about cloning for agricultural purposes, they even mention epigenetics (which I've only recently heard about from this YouTube video from the channel "SciShow" and a recent enough concept that Spell Check thinks it's a misspelled word. Go check it out), not to mention that the subtitles from the entire discussion goes by so fast that reading them all is practically a freeze frame bonus. Even one of Yugo's teammates (this time it is the dude who fainted when the chickens head was cut off) acknowledged that, "...our knowledge is really skewed, so it's nothing to be proud of." Then again most people are like that; really knowledgeable in some areas, really ignorant in others.
And for gym, it's a marathon around the school...that's pretty much 20km! (Holy ****! That's a lot of running!) First a cow eating Yugos clothing, now it's a horse eating his hair? Boy, this kid can't catch a break! And speaking of stuff to not be proud of, sleeping in class is one of those things as well.
And then a new crisis is at hand, one of the greenhouses got damaged by a windstorm and has to get a new covering put on or else the crops inside could get killed by the cold! I mean the wind's strong enough to blow TAMAKO off her feet (and, to tell the truth, she's gonk-level not pretty).
By the time they're done, they missed dinner time (OH-NO!) but the teachers/instructors/whatever bring back what they could find so that Team A could have their dinner in the greenhouse they just fixed (HURRAY!), which consists of rice, pickles...and eggs (oh dear...) but Yugo is so starved by now that (with some encouragement from a teacher/instructor/whatever) he actually breaks an egg open and mixes it with his rice (after pouring soy sauce on the whole mess, OK, not exactly how I eat rice and eggs)...AND HE EATS IT!!! And then, after a pregnant silence, he declares it's...
"SUPER TASTY!"
...but Yugo still insists on referring to a chickens cloaca as an "anus"...*sigh* one step at a time, Yugo, one step at a time. And speaking of time, a bit latter it gets to be bath time! Oh, by the way, they only have fifteen minutes (including changing into and out of their clothing); it seems the time allotment is like that because there's a lot of students at this agricultural school and everyone needs to take a bath, so it can't really be helped.
And after that whole, crazy, mind-blowing first day...Yugo's exhausted.
And that's the first episode of Silver Spoon...
"This story is a work of fiction." No duh!
"The people and groups are fictitious, but the themes relating to food and life are based firmly in reality. Visiting the places and facilities used as models can be dangerous and may result IN contracting diseases from the animals." ...like contracting salmonella from eating raw chicken eggs... "Please enjoy this story as a work of fiction." Again, no duh!
So, what did I think about the series so far? Bravo, Arakawa-sensei! Bravo! Although the controversy over factory farms (especially with chickens) was downplayed here but, as implied by how it was mentioned, I think it might be that most Japanese people just don't care. *sigh* Still, can't wait to see exactly how Yugos mind is going to be blown/treated like a butt monkey in the next episode...
TL;DR: It may have left a controversial topic without much discussion, but it's still funny and (of course) a lot of fun. Even if the characters themselves are working their kerples off.
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