Jan 3, 2019
January Challenge
Task 1: Watch an anime from Gourmet Challenge
Possible spoilers, proceed with caution.
Slice of life has always been a tough genre for me to really get into. I’ve probably started five or six shows and dropped them all episode three, just because I’ve found them boring. Nozaki-kun I think was the first slice of life show I had finished and enjoyed. This is the one I wish I had started with.
I’ve grown to appreciate the “characters doing stuff” genre thanks to this. It starts off as just seeing the life of this kid going to a high school he isn’t quite sure about.
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He meets new people and ends up enjoying his school. It’s a simple enough plot, but it’s feels like more than that. The characters feel more fleshed out and it had a lot of heart.
As I said before, the story is simple, and something we’ve seen before multiple times. It’s the story of Yuugo Hachiken, a kid from the city trying to escape from his parents by going to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. He notices that everyone around him already has a Dream for what they want in life after high school, whether it be taking over the family farming business, becoming a veterinarian, or becoming a national baseball star to support their family. Yuugo on the other hand, just wants to stay away from his family and be the top student of his class.
There are so many things that show Yuugo’s development throughout the series. He starts off as a kid who just wants to do good in all his classes, and eventually graduate. Later on, he realizes he has to take a club in order to graduate, and he chooses the equestrian club as a girl he likes is in the club. Eventually he develops a deeper love for animals, and it shows when he is helping with the pigs, and sees Pork Bowl, a weak little piglet that is in danger of getting killed for not having enough meat. Hachiken is now determined to help this little guy out, even though everyone warns him about getting too close to farm animals.
Another way you see Hachiken’s development is through his sleep schedule. He started out by not being able to get up at 5:30 with everyone else for practicums, and woke up earlier to help with horses, and even earlier after that on his own at 3:00 to help Pork Bowl and the horses, all before breakfast. The fact that he is willing to give up this time for his school, his friends, and his animals shows how much he has grown throughout the eleven episode season.
I think a more interesting part of the series is when Yuugo goes to stay with Mikage for the summer and works part time of her farm. He learns to deal with deaths of animals, and then the consumption of them by skinning and gutting a deer that was ran over (this sounds dark and gloomy but I promise it’s more light hearted). Also, seeing Yuugo and Mikage’s relationship grow over time was nice to see as well.
I think my only main problem with the series is the use of montages towards the end. I think there were three montages towards the end of the series that felt like they were there to make you get emotional, and while the first on seemed to work, it felt manipulative once the second one came and the sad music started playing again. I just feel like it could’ve worked better with a different way of getting the audience to feel emotional.
All in all, this is a show I see myself coming back to at some point, and I will be seeing season 2 sometime in the near future. So far the shows aired on noitaminA (the block that aired this) have done well for me. I enjoyed this and Wotakoi very much, and will definitely get to the show they’re airing this winter, and might do a marathon of their shows as well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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