Krystallina: In a volume filled with the return of one of the manga’s key characters, food processing, marketing, and a Russian sister-in-law, there’s one main takeaway from Silver Spoon volume 10:
Never, ever ruin Nishikawa’s games while he’s playing. Or, as Ookawa finds out, he will make your life miserable.
Hachiken skips taking a trip home to stay at school, and after partying with the teachers, who should he bump into but Komaba. Throughout the volume, we see him trying to draw a line between him and Ezo Ag. In Komaba’s head, he’s no longer a student but a working man, so he shouldn’t have anything to do with the students there anymore. It’s a feeling that is unreciprocated, as everyone else just wants him to have fun every now and then. Seeing Komaba’s family go bankrupt has seemed to affect everyone as they discuss their future plans, but who should give Komaba a lecture but Ayame of all people! While she’s still the same lovable idiot as before, she also nails the fact that Komaba is going to drive everyone away with his attitude. While most of her interactions have been with Mikage and Hachiken, I hope we see her reaction as Komaba regains that spark he lost.
Otherwise, Silver Spoon continues to explore the winter months. Hachiken and the others learn how to make sausage, hitting the edutainment quota for the volume. But deciding how to cook the meat is the small battle compared to their next decisions: how to price and market it. Ezo Ag has yet another party for taste testing, and between this and the New Year’s celebration earlier, there’s a lot of swooning over food. Even more than usual.
To me, it was the non-food gags that were the funniest. Ookawa takes the brunt of the verbal beatdowns since he hasn’t found a job yet, but he tries to get his revenge on the lucky (e.g. Hachiken) and keeps finding new random skills. Unfortunately for Ookawa, one of his pranks comes back to haunt him in the form of Nishikawa, who steals the show in the second half of volume 10. Do not get in the way of a gamer and his waifu.
But volume 10 shows us a real waifu wife: Hachiken’s new sister-in-law. Hachiken’s brother and wife were an unexpected addition to this volume. She turns out to be a nice person with her own quirks, but seeing his elder brother start to settle down gives the younger brother more to think about. It ties in really well with the marketing debate from earlier and the later discussion about bankruptcies like Komaba’s. What can Hachiken do in the future? What does he want to do?
I’m sure Hachiken will continue pondering this for quite a while, and I can’t wait to follow along as he decides.
Krystallina’s rating: 4 out of 5
Justin: In Silver Spoon volume 10, despite a few breakthroughs with his family (well, specifically his mom), Hachiken chooses to stay over at Ezo Ag for the New Year. This leads to him discovering the teachers have a secret they’ve been hiding from the students. This also leads to him seeing Ookawa show up because he can’t find any job he can do (and also kicks off the beginning of his indelible journey through campus life). And this leads to him seeing a familiar face in the area.
Yep, that Komaba guy is certainly a familiar face.
In a bit of a twist, Arakawa certainly had to have something in mind when making most of Silver Spoon volume 10 revolve around Ookawa and Komaba. Both of these characters couldn’t be any more different personality-wise, but their differences do impact this volume. For Ookawa, life looking for jobs with his skill set is difficult, but the one thing that’s been keeping him going is his time at Ezo Ag, and he’s been able to carve out a niche due to the relationships he’s been able to built. Meanwhile, Komaba has been working every day to pay off his debt, which is certainly helping him make the money, but not only does his future become more and more clouded, the relationships he loses as he tries to cut everyone else out from his life becomes more apparent as he turns down invites to events. There’s not necessarily a wrong or a right way because it depends on the situation — but in this case, one character has found a way to stay afloat due to the relationships he’s built. The way things are progressing, Komaba might just be losing it.
Aside from that though, most of this volume was more (you guessed it) food making — Sausages from the ground up was a big thing in this one — and actually making money from it. This volume also introduced Shingo’s Russian wife, who immediately made an impact in the first panel she showed up in, and in a subsequent one when her tone came across as saying the size of the farm fields is nothing compared to Russia. Another thing was lampooning Ookawa’s state at almost every opportunity, though it came to a head when one of his creations caused an outage at the school. Let’s just say this made one character literally change Ookawa’s lifestyle for a good while.
In some ways this volume of Silver Spoon was fairly light on advancing the story, outside of a few small ways. There’s still Mikage’s future to worry about and if Hachiken actually knows what he wants to do. But there’s still a ton of fun to be had in this one, because Arakawa’s far too good at setting up the jokes, and continuing to be educated is also a big plus as well.
And well, Ayame, your wallet went to a good cause.
Justin’s rating: 4 out of 5