Friday, July 19, 2013

Dawnleaf Watches Silver Spoon: Episode 1 – Best Out-Of-Context Line Ever



I mean, come on, how could that not be the main picture?  I’m such a child.
Now, as you may infer from my previous posts, I’m a bit of a fan of the person who wrote the manga for this anime.  Why?  She wrote the manga for Fullmetal Alchemist.  I’ll let that sink in.


Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is my favorite anime.  In terms of sheer fangirl love, it definitely tops my list.  But why did I love it?  Epic animation, great soundtrack, wonderful characters, and a MASSIVE story.
So, after writing a huge story about conspiracy, murder, and alchemy, Arakawa moved on to writing a story that seems to be decidedly much smaller in scale.  A slice-of-life comedy about some people in an agricultural school.


So, don’t expect this to be the next FMA.  But, once I made the adjustments to my expectations, this is still perfectly fine. 


This doesn’t have the talented folks at Studio Bones (well, they haven’t been making great shows lately, but they still have high budgets) behind it, and instead has A-1 Pictures.  A-1 Pictures are okay in my book, they’ve made some crap, but, for the most part, it was very nice-looking crap and the problem lay with the source material.  I would say that, overall, they’re very slightly above average in terms of appearance, with the very pretty Sword Art Online, very interesting artistically Shin Sekai Yori and Tsuritama, and average Servant x Service and Working!!


I would say that this is probably at the level of their ‘average’ level shows.  This isn’t exactly damning, however, as even their average shows still usually look pretty nice for slice-of-lifers.


THIS ENDURANCE HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN THE ARMSTRONG FAMILY LINE FOR GENERATIONS!  …sorry about the capslock, that just had to be said.  This show has an Armstrong.  Please tell me he rips his shirt off and tackle-hugs people.


I respect Arakawa for not just making the same thing over and over again, as I can say that you can tell that she wrote the manga (characters drawn in the same style, similar sense of humor), but it’s actually very different in terms of actual plot and characters.


I probably would’ve been annoyed if all of the characters were expys of various characters from her most famous work.  But they’re not, thank goodness.


Our main, Hachiken, is fairly entertaining to watch.  Most of this episode was typical city-boy-in-the-country stuff, but his reactions were pretty funny.  But he’s not too over-the-top, either.  He sort of hits the sweet spot of not being too bland but not too ridiculous, either.  The show seems to be hinting about something in his past that led to him enrolling in this school (even though he apparently has no interest in farming), and I’m curious to see what it is.


I want this to get a dub so badly.  I could crank the volume on my laptop really loud and play it in public, because Hachiken must yell ‘anus’ at least ten times over the course of this episode.  Don’t worry, though, there’s a perfectly innocent explanation behind that: he’s just traumatized because chicken eggs come out of their anus.  Yes, I know that I’m really mature, you don’t have to tell me.


The other characters haven’t gotten a huge amount of development yet (it’s mostly just been focusing on him), but, if there’s anything I can trust the writer to do, it’s to write and develop good characters.  
So, overall, color me somewhat excited for the next episode.  This is fun and pleasant to watch, and it will probably get even better in the future.   And the cow is really cute.


Hachiken…
Ha-chiken…
Ha-chicken…
Ha-CHICKEN…

Oh, I get it.

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