Seeing as Hiromu Arakawa is my second favorite mangaka ever, you can bet I've been looking forward to this.
There are few mangaka like Arakawa, and I mean quite a lot when I say this. It's not just nostalgic remembrance that keeps
Fullmetal Alchemist in my mind as one of my favorite series ever, and it's not just because it's incredibly popular even now that it's finished publication and the adaptations have finished airing. Arakawa is an incredible storyteller, and even if she's not writing hard fantasy like
FMA there's something wonderful about her work.
Gin no Saji is about as different from her old works as a manga can get, but it nevertheless carries her charm, wit, and intelligence, and most importantly, as a comedy, it
carries her sharp humor. So even if it's not as angsty or as grand a tale as
FMA was, it remains a compelling and fun read, and even better, A-1 Pictures is doing a great job in adapting it.
Gin no Saji chronicles the life of Hachiken Yugo (
Kimura Ryouhei) after his decision to attend an agricultural boarding school, who discovers too late just
how impulsive and poorly thought out a decision this was. We're not told why Hachiken wanted to move away from home so badly, especially when it's implied he attended a well-off prep school and is very intelligent in school topics, but now he's stuck in a world completely new to him, and it's time for him to adjust to the realities of a very physically exhausting school. Not only is he
learning to care for animals, but he's also completely unused to the tough regimes and labor, as well as unknowledgeable in most agricultural topics. It's a classic fish out of water sort of tale, but told through the lens of someone with the proper experience and flair to make it hugely entertaining.
The humor is really quite Arakawa too, and she doesn't shy away from the less than idyllic realities of farm life. Things that would naturally be unsavory to us city folk, such as the
stench of live animals living together (this is really unbearable, if you've never experienced it yourself), the every day truth that animals you care for must be killed for food, or even something as humorously disgusting as the fact that eggs technically come from chicken anuses. But that's also what makes watching Hachiken so interesting. Most of us can really identify with how weird these things can be (though I'm sure there are people who identify the other way around and
laugh at Hachiken's attempts to come to terms with all of this) and how out of place the protagonist feels, and though he makes an idiot of himself, we can all laugh since we'd probably be in a similar situation. I for one, find this to be great stuff, and thus on the schedule it goes.
N.B.: Thanks to Ivan for the caps!
OP "kiss you" by miwa
Episode 1 Screencaps: "Welcome to Ezonoo"
ED "Hello Especially" by Sukima Switch
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