The best film on academic burnout in the last decade isn’t an Oscar nominated film. It’s an anime about cows. While most people were watching the premiere of Attack on Titan, an anime adaptation of the manga, Silver Spoon by Hiromu Arakawe was released quietly in 2013.
Silver Spoon follows Yugo Hachiken, a studious boy from Sapporo who enrolls in Yezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido to escape the high-pressure academic expectations of his parents. But he finds that country life is harder than he imagined as he grapples with early mornings, the moral realities of farming, and his lack of life goals.
Early in the series, Hachiken names a piglet Pork Bowl as a joke name also representing its fate. This small moment haunts the rest of the season. When slaughter day comes, Hachiken has to struggle alone as his classmates, already used to the normalization of animal slaughter, have already made peace with it after living on farms all their lives. He enrolled in farm school to escape the pressures of city life, however he finds a new kind of pressure. The pressure of having to make life and death decisions on a daily basis and accepting that it is just a new part of his life.
It isn’t just Hachiken that has an amazing character arc. The side characters in Silver Spoon all have their own struggles and growth. Ranging from dealing with bankruptcy and the harsh realities of farming for a living to competing in horse riding competitions and chasing dreams that don’t always align with family expectations, together this anime provides an amazing slice of life from an unexpected perspective. So if you are feeling burned out and want an escape this anime is a must watch (both seasons are available on Crunchyroll).
