Hayate the Combat Butler Episode 32
ハヤテのごとく！Ep. 32

SPOILER Summary: Hayate is trying to sleep when a sleep-walking Tama enters the bed with him and expresses his love for Brenda. When Hayate wakes him up, Tama sees him as food and attacks. And so, Hayate tries to sleep out in a secluded part of the yard, only to have an afro come around. From out of the afro comes Watanabe Shinichi, aka. Nabeshin. The narrator gives a lengthy dissertation on Nabeshin.

Nabeshin is this week’s butler and after a brief battle (and a Lupin III reference), Nabeshin is working on his next anime project. After much nuttiness, he comes to Nagi’s house and has his wife and child over for more nuttiness. In the end, the wife and kid end up apologizing for Nabeshin’s behavior. The wife offers Hayate a collection of Nabeshin collectibles but then wants Hayate to pay for the items. Hayate is going nuts but is saved when Nagi needs him to go find Isumi, who’s taking a solo trip to Nagi’s house.

Isumi is lost again but she has a brand new cell phone. However, she doesn’t know how to use it and thinks its broke, leading a smack of the harisen from Sakuya, who’s just arrived. Sakuya, who’s annoyed, decides to lead Isumi to Nagi’s home when they encounter Tochigami — a half man, half fish. He’s being pursued by youkai and needs help. Since Isumi has the power to send youkai packing, she helps to Tochigami against the youkai. However, the youkai acts like a virus and becomes several daiyoukai (great youkai) and Hayate has to come in to assist. In the end, Isumi dispatches the youkai and makes Sakuya and Hayate promise not to tell Nagi about all this.

Thoughts: Insane. When I saw the afro, I wondered if Nabeshin would be parodied. I didn’t actually expect him to guest star in this. The insanity was…well, insane. I got a good laugh, mainly because I enjoyed Excel Saga (and that was parodied as well in this). However, it was just all pointless insanity.

The 2nd-half of the anime wasn’t much better on the sanity scale. The Tochigami and the youkai/daiyoukai didn’t do much for me. The description of the difference between “Oni” and “Youkai” was of interest to me though.

Overall, this episode was a mixed bag for me, I guess. I laughed at the Nabeshin stuff and didn’t at the other stuff. ^_^;