Silver Spoon vol. 14

“Silver Spoon” is a lot of things, including a romantic comedy.  Only in the sense that Hachiken and Mikage’s romance has been played for nothing but laughs since the start of the series.  However, as the series heads into its final stretch, mangaka Hiromu Arakawa finally has to get around to making them an official couple.  How does she do in regards to that?  I thought that the scene where they make it official in the snowy fields was cute.  It probably would’ve been more satisfying had the happy couple actually received some support from those around them.  I know that Arakawa loves to torment her protagonist, but having him on the receiving end of (violently slapsticky) verbal and physical beatdowns from his classmates, friends, and Mikage’s Dad just got wearying after a while.

The mangaka fared better in her attempts to wring drama from Mikage’s attempts to pass her college entrance exam.  Those scenes wound up being an affecting mix of drama, awkwardness, and test-taking-terror.  In fact, they may be the highlight of this penultimate volume as the pace feels like the story is rushing to get somewhere it’s not quite sure about.  There are plenty of scenes of Hachiken and his classmates eating and making food, bits where our protagonist is frustrated by Ookawa’s craven nature or his brother’s fickleness, and a few scenes where he ponders his future.  These are all things that have driven “Silver Spoon” up to this point.

Yet here we are with vol. 14 and if I didn’t already know that the series would be ending with vol. 15, then I’d be hard pressed to have guessed that after reading this volume.  While it’s been entertaining, there’s no feeling here that “Silver Spoon” has been building to a genuine climax.  Mind you, I’m saying this after I stopped reading the scanlations once it became clear that vol. 15 would be arriving in a timely fashion.  So I’ll be going into it without any prior knowledge as to whether or not Arakawa will stick the landing.  Based on what she’s given us here, my expectations are set firmly on this finale being “fine.”