ハヤテのごとく！Manga Volume 7
Hayate no Gotoku Manga Volume 7
Hayate the Combat Butler Manga Volume 7

–> PURCHASE FROM RAKUTEN.COM (formerly BUY.COM)
–> PURCHASE FROM BARNES & NOBLE
–> PURCHASE FROM RIGHTSTUF!
–> PURCHASE FROM YES ASIA (Japanese Tankoubon)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

After Hayate recovers from the poisoning in the dungeon, a power failure that evening at the mansion has Hayate going across the snowy grounds when a blizzard comes up. Turns out the source of the blizzard is Sakuya with a giant snow-making machine but the a real blizzard comes up forcing the two to seek shelter at the mansion’s power station with its own onsen. Hayate manages to get power back on to the mansion but offends Sakuya in the process.

It is Valentine’s Day and after consulting with Wataru, Ayumu decides to get two chocolates for Hayate — a love chocolate and an obligation chocolate. She takes them to Hakuou Gakuin where she’s caught by security. Hina, who was out to buy some milk, uses her Student Council President job to get Ayumu in. She learns of Ayumu’s desire to give Hayate a chocolate and so arranges for Hayate to receive it. When she realizes that Ayumu only gave Hayate the obligation chocolate, she has Hayate go after Ayumu, where Ayumu gives Hayate the romantic chocolate, leaving him stunned. She takes the obligation chocolate and gives it to Hina as thanks, leading Miki to tease Hina on being so kindhearted, which is why she gets so many chocolates.

Back at the mansion, Nagi fails at making chocolate, so she orders Hayate to make one. Maria makes one as well but when she sees Hayate’s elaborate chocolate, she has to outdo him. In the end, Hayate gives a simple chocolate to Nagi, which embarrasses Maria. He gives Maria one as well.

With that holiday over, Nagi is fretting over not winning manga contests and decides she needs more life experiences. As such, she decides to become a maid and help Maria with not so great results.

At Hakuou Gakuin, Katsura-sensei is distressed to learn that robot creator Shiori (who’s being punished) is assigned to be her co-teacher. So she hatches a scheme to get Shiori in a compromising situation with Hayate. She scores a digital photo of Hayate on top of Shiori (Katsura-sensei having pushed Hayate into Shiori) but is still losing to Shiori. Hayate learns that Miki, Risa, and Izumi are class officers with Izumi being Class President. Risa and Miki abandon Izumi when it comes to working the class report, but Hayate agrees to help. Katsura-sensei still has the picture of Hayate and is threatening him with it. Izumi takes Hayate’s side and because she’s wearing bicycle shorts under her skirt, Hayate is able to use his deadly technique (a whirlwind attack) destroy the camera’s memory card.

Isumi is lost but feeling confident because she has a cell phone. She can’t figure out how to use it and thinks it is broken, leading Sakuya to whack her with a harisen. A carp patron spirit approaches to plead with Isumi to get rid of a youkai who’s threatening the area. Isumi figures it is a carp herpes youkai and she’s right. Isumi gets Sakuya to act as a diversion and she ends up getting trapped and has to be rescued by Hayate. Isumi then easily destroys the youkai with a touch, leading Sakuya to realize that Isumi was getting her back for the harisen whack earlier.

Ayumu’s little brother Kazuki has fallen in love with Nagi and so when they meet again on the street, they end up having an impromptu date (Kazuki having even confessed to Nagi). Nagi gets concerned that Hayate might get jealous if he sees her cheating on him. For his part, Hayate ends up observing things from a distance to make sure Nagi is OK, even saving her from falling into a lake when she and Kazuki are taking a boat ride. However, Hayate’s attitude about the whole thing leads Nagi to believe that Hayate hasn’t been seeing her as a woman. Nagi first consults with Sakuya before consulting with Maria, who can’t tell Nagi that Hayate has no romantic feelings for her. Through a miscommunication, Hayate ends up entering the bathroom where Nagi is bathing and sees her nude. Nagi wants him to stick around and with a blindfold on, Hayate dries Nagi’s hair, leading her to kiss him on the cheek.

Thoughts/Review: Until volume 7, the only problem I’ve had with Viz’s adaptation of Hayate the Combat Butler is the lack of translator notes. Viz has done an excellent job translation-wise (as best as I can tell) and have provided an otaku-friendly adaptation, using all of the Japanese honorifics and even titles that many English-speaking otaku fans might not be aware of. I’m all for that and I praise Viz for that and chastise them for the lack of translator notes. The list of negatives goes up one with this volume however.

Take a look at this image and without regard to the story, tell me what the smeg this is. I’ll give you a clue — it is a dessert.

Now, take a look at the same image from the Japanese tankoubon.

When Hata-sensei drew the image, he had the Japanese text be transparent so that the artwork would still come through. This desert looks like an extravagant cake. That is NOT apparent at all in the Viz version.

To date, I have not said anything about Viz’s removal of 99.9% of Japanese text in favor of English text, to include sound effects. Companies like TokyoPop and Del Rey cut costs and leave the Japanese text in most of the time with little translations to let us know what the sound effect (or sign or whatever) is. Viz spends extra money in removing that same text and placing English in its stead. Until now, that really hasn’t been a problem but in this case, removing the Japanese text in favor of English text completely kills the original art and the joke behind it (Maria’s outdoing Hayate’s chocolate). That’s just bad, bad, BAD policy, Viz. If you cannot preserve the original art when replacing Japanese text with English text, then don’t bother replacing the Japanese text! It isn’t going to kill us to see some Japanese text with a little translation somewhere. After all, we see it in a lot of other manga titles.

While the lack of translator notes has been annoying, killing the artwork is downright enough to make me a bit angry. I really hope that Viz will not do such a thing ever again!

On the other side of the coin, I do have some praise for Viz. With this volume, they introduced the term “youkai” to the vernacular, which is a term that hardcore Inuyasha fans (and those who’ve watched FUNimation’s Yu Yu Hakusho w/ subtitles) will be well versed with. The story provides the Japanese idea on how youkai are formed and Viz even left the term “oni” untranslated. Very cool indeed.

As to the manga itself, I can see were the anime really stretched many of these stories. No wonder at times the anime seemed tedious to me by the midpoint. A lot of filler was injected into 1-chapter stories to make them fill a 30-minute block.

I liked the introduction of Kazuki as someone with a love interest in Nagi. The fact that he’s Ayumu’s little brother makes it all the more interesting to me and since he was not in the anime, it will be fun seeing where Hata-sensei takes that story. I find it humorous that both he and Ayumu are friends with Wataru, Nagi’s official fiance.

No character profiles this week as Hata-sensei decided to publish some 4-koma strips that were used to advertise Hayate promotional giveaways.

So while I’m not happy with how Viz destroyed artwork just to have big English letters replace the transparent Japanese text, I am happy with the manga overall.