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Hayate no Gotoku! ~ First Impression
By Ace | August 7, 2007
Yeah, I know its on episode 18 but I’ve been busy and just got around to starting it up.
“Hayate no Gotoku!” (”Hayate - The Combat Butler” to the american manga audience) at first glance, seems to be against the grain compared to a lot of things that we’ve seen over the past couple of seasons. I’ll be honest, the past few seasons of anime haven’t been appealing to me at all. It seems like every writer and artist out there decided all of a sudden that they wanted to try to force themselves to be “artistic” (I’m betting it had something to do with Haruhi’s success). Before someone gets mad and leaves me a nasty comment about how, “Anime is the artist’s (creator’s, writer’s, et al) creation and if they want to be artistic its their right,” I want to say that I agree with you. It just felt to me like they were trying to force it out in a sort of new “fad” amongst anime.
Hm, nice derail there… anyway, moving along.
At first glance, I wasn’t sure what to think. With the recent trends in the anime world, I was afraid it would be another series that I would get my hands on, only to find it filled with mediocre characters, a lackluster plot, and all-around just blah-ness™.
I don’t think I was ever so glad to be wrong.
Meet Ayasaki Hayate, the main character. A hard-working high school student plagued by terrible parents. Thanks to his parents frivolous spending and unemployment, he is forced to work full time jobs as a way to make ends meet and provide for the entire family. In the beginning of this episode, we find out just how deep this plight goes as his parents first get him fired from his current job and take his paycheck, only to leave the country (I assume, this was never really told just hinted at) and leave him with a 150-million yen (roughly 1.25-million USD to put that in perspective) debt.
One interesting thing you find out about this guy is, he’s tough. After flipping his bicycle twice and getting hit in the face by a baseball in his introduction scene, he manages to just get up and walk away like nothing happened.
Enter Sanzenin Nagi. We first meet her after Hayate was chased out of his house by his parents debtors that want to sell him into slavery. Down on his luck and desperate, he decides to try to kidnap her as she’s trying to buy a drink from a vending machine. In the end, he botches the attempt and she thinks that he’s confessing his love to her. She’s what I would consider the secondary main character of the series, and probably my favorite character thus far.
Maria, Nagi’s maid, is another of my favorite characters out of those introduced thus far. Though she only plays a small (but important) part in the first episode.
Combine a cast like this with narration from Santa Claus…
…a guest appearance by Gendou Ikari…
…and a promising plot, that’s a winner in my book.
Production Values - 7.5
Video - 9
Audio - 7
Voice Acting - 8.5
Overall -8.5
Just for the record, I’m watching Static-Subs/Eclipse’s (XViD) fansubs for this series. I tried to play the hi-res h.264, but they lagged my computer until it nearly died, so fair warning if you decide to pick up this series.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Topics: Anime, Hayate no Gotoku! |
August 25th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Hi, this is Peter Payne from J-List. Sorry for contacting you this way, but I’d like to ask the webmaster to email me at peterpayne, domain name gmail.com.