Hayate the Combat Butler!! Ep. 05
Hayate no Gotoku “Season 2” Ep. 05
ハヤテのごとく！！Episode 05
Hayate no Gotoku!! 05

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Sometime in the recent past, Ayumu’s little brother Kazuki met Nagi and gave her a handkerchief when she appeared to be crying. In the present, Nagi is attempting to get a box of delicious cookies from the top of a high cabinet and fails. When Hayate gives her the box, she ends up giving it back to him and storming off. Since she’s upset at being so short, she decides to pay Wataru a visit. Wataru is currently manning his store and talking with Kazuki, who casually inquires about Nagi. Wataru doesn’t understand what Kazuki sees in Nagi and to Kazuki’s delight, Nagi shows up. When she insults Wataru about his height, Wataru points this out to Kazuki and asks why he’d want to be with Nagi.

Nagi leaves and Kazuki tails her. She turns and asks if he is stalking her. Instead, he makes a love confession, which embarrasses her to no end. Realizing what he’s done, he decides to apologize and do something for her. She’s not interested until he suggests a train ride. After some learning mishaps at the station, Nagi is excited to ride the train. Kazuki takes her to an arcade, which she enjoys. He then takes her on a boat ride. While she’s enjoyed herself, she tells Kazuki that he can never get close to her since there is someone already in her heart. Kazuki thinks it is Wataru, which gets Nagi to excitedly deny this. She nearly falls out of the boat but is saved by Hayate, who’d been hidden in the water. Returning to the shore, she tells Kazuki that she’ll give him his handkerchief next time they meet.

Sometime later, Ayumu is concerned that something happened with Kazuki and Wataru agrees to find out. Wataru asks Nagi if something happened between herself and Kazuki, leading to an angry response and a threat for Wataru not to talk to Hayate about this. Nagi is upset that Hayate hasn’t shown any jealousy over finding her with Kazuki, but Sakuya has arrived and suggests that Nagi needs to spice things up by showing off assets. Sakuya gets embarrassed and flees when Hayate suddenly shows up, seeing her somewhat exposed.

Later, Maria is giving Nagi a bath and they are talking about Nagi’s “relationship” with Hayate. Maria leaves to get a towel and has Hayate deliver it. He does and ends up seeing Nagi naked. Nagi has him stay to dry her hair, which he does blindfolded. She’s now calmed down and can’t remember why she was angry with Hayate. She kisses him on the cheek as a reward, which Maria sees and wonders how things got like this.

Thoughts/Review:

Waaaa! I cannot tell you how pleased I am with how this new Hayate the Combat Butler series is going. When I watched the first series, I loved a lot of things about it but then there were times when it just became somewhat tedious. Hugh Roe, long time reader of this blog, mentioned that I should read the manga, which I did AFTER the first series completed. Upon reading the manga, I was stunned by how well the manga flowed vs. the first anime series and I wondered why whole stories had been flushed.

Now with this second series, the anime production team has clearly abandoned any attempts at doing their own thing and have focused on making a really good and faithful manga adaptation. Yeah, there have been minor changes such as Nagi having Kazuki’s handkerchief (their meeting in the manga was over a balloon with a message tied to it IIRC). However, those minor changes are no big deal and so I’m a happy, happy man.

While I’ve been pleased with the official translations for the most part (as they’ve retained the Japanese perspective on things), I am a bit disappointed that the running “big sister” (oneechan) gag was completely scrapped in the English translation. What do I mean? Well for starters, there was Kazuki wondering about her “oneechan” acting weird and Ayumu telling Wataru that as Kazuki’s “oneechan,” she could tell something happened after Kazuki got back from his date with Nagi. Here, the translator at least translated “oneechan” (though I would obviously preferred it left alone, but that’s OK), likely because they are brother and sister.

However, when Wataru goes to visit Nagi to try to find out what happened between her and Kazuki, Nagi responds by basically telling Wataru that “oneechan” is busy. The “oneechan” aspect is dropped completely, meaning the English doesn’t even try to translate it but rather avoids the “big sister” gag. The gag appears again when Maria tells gives Hayate advice as “oneesan” — a big sister. Again, dropped. Next, Sakuya appears to Nagi and is going to give some “oneechan” help to her. When Sakuya fails, Nagi says that Sakuya is a worthless “onee” — big sister. All of those big sister gags are dropped and that’s a shame.

As to the episode itself, despite knowing the story very well, I still laughed when Nagi tried to get the cookies and couldn’t. I smiled at Kazuki’s crush on Nagi. I laughed at Nagi’s sudden change of heart at the thought of taking a train ride, then laughed more at her experiences at the train station. I smiled at her entire date with Kazuki as well as the sweet moment later between her and Hayate when he’s drying her hair. So again, I come back to the fact that the anime production team have done a really good adaptation of the manga and prove that a good adaptation is not boring nor tedious just because you know the story. The color and the characters and situations coming to life add all the additional flavor one needs in this situation. So sorry to repeat myself, but this is turning out to be a sequel that is better than the original. I hope it stays that way.

One side note — while the references have been down this series, there were some nifty posters in the background for Wataru’s video shop — Aliens and Blade Runner spring to mind. ^_^ I figure folks on the team must love those two movies, and they are classics.

Next episode — Hina goodness! I hope the next story is two episodes in order to be done properly.