Hayate the Combat Butler “2nd Season” Ep. 11
ハヤテのごとく！！Episode 11
Hayate no Gotoku!! – 11

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

After dreaming about Hayate, Hina finds herself troubled about how much she’s thinking about him. After school, she’s startled by Hayate and Nagi coming up from her behind and learning that Hayate is having trouble in school annoys Hina greatly. Hayate decides that he needs to apologize for something and Nagi sends him off. When Hayate catches her, Hina decides to inquire about his parent’s abandoning him and his thoughts there. After discussing the matter with him for a bit, Hina is OK with it and smiles to let Hayate know she’s OK.

The following day, Sakuya is at Isumi’s house where Isumi is setting up her Hina dolls for the forthcoming Hina Doll Festival. She warns Sakuya not to remove the head from one of the dolls as it is cursed and the head seals the evil spirit inside. If released, the spirit will seek out the unluckiest person out there. Sakuya accidentally removes the head to Isumi’s annoyance.

Elsewhere, Hina is again thinking of Hayate and has a talk with Father Radiostar about this. Her conversation leads her to the conclusion that the real reason she’s so consumed by thoughts of Hayate is not because she’s in love with him, but because they have unfinished business after the school running event where he tricked her onto a suspension bridge and forced her to lose.

Meanwhile at the Sanzenin mansion, Hayate discovers that Nagi has purchased an expensive watch for Hina’s birthday. While the money Nagi spent is a mere drop in the bucket, she’s annoyed at having had to spend it at all since Hayate was so determined to buy Hina a birthday present and Nagi couldn’t be upstaged by her butler.

Hayate starts to work and his clothing is suddenly transformed into that of a maid. Nagi and Maria are both shocked by this, but Nagi decides that if this is how Hayate wants to be, she can accept it and has Maria relay that message since Nagi finds she can’t do so herself.

After Maria starts talking with Hayate, he discovers he’s in a maid outfit and things Maria had something to do with it. Isumi and Sakuya arrive to see that the curse has hit Hayate. After explaining the curse, the only way for Hayate to be freed from it is to defeat the master of the tower before the Hina Doll Festival comes to an end.

Since that can only mean Hina (as president of the student council who is constantly in the Garden Gate clock tower), Isumi says she’ll write a note explaining the situation and requesting that Hina allow Hayate to defeat her so as to lift the curse.

Isumi comes up to Hina and Father Radiostar and delivers the letter she’s written, which is done in traditional Japanese style. Hina takes this as a letter of challenge and is impressed that Hayate saw things as she did, only Hina has no plans of letting Hayate defeat her. Isumi realizes that Hina has misunderstood the intent of the letter but is unable to persuade Hina from her goal of beating Hayate the night of the festival at the clock tower.

That night comes and Hayate is wearing a cloak to disguise the fact he is wearing a maid outfit. He’s with Sakuya and Wataru and observing the festival with all its stands below when they are discovered by Izumi, who wants to know why Hayate is wearing a coat in such warm weather. Hayate’s protests makes her curious and forces him to flee. That only makes Izumi more curious and she gives chase to see what he’s hiding under that coat.

Hayate manages to elude Izumi and make it into one of the school buildings and encounters a guy wearing a butler’s outfit. The guy assumes that Hayate is a girl and is smitten by what he sees. When asked for his name, Hayate says he is “AYASAKI Hermione,” which the guy thinks sounds like a witch’s name. Hayate tries to leave, but the guy decides to make a love confession on the spot. Meanwhile, Hina comes to the clock tower to wait for Hayate to arrive as part of his challenge.

Thoughts/Review:

WHAAA! I got no Miki love and that was one scene I was so looking forward to. *sigh* Oh well. For those who haven’t read the manga, after the koi pun, Hina heads to the clock tower where she’s startled by Miki. Hina casually asks Miki about her opinion of Hayate, to which Miki produces a notebook and spews off a vast amount of information in a single frame. This stuns Hina but Miki explains that as the daughter of a politician, she’s good at research. Miki ends by stating that Hina is wearing orange panties with frills and Miki doesn’t think it suits her. *lol* It was a small moment in the manga, but it was a nice Miki moment as well as a Miki-Hina moment (since they’ve been friends for years). Oh well (again).

Hmmmm…even though I’m WAY behind on blogging this week, I’ll scan the page in question (from Viz’s translations) and post it here. ^_^

In lue of this, the anime added a couple of small things and fortunately both were pretty funny. For starters, when Hayate is shown in the Alps in maid costume, having the yodeling was unexpected and oh so funny. *lol* Also funny was Sakuya’s lengthier attempt to see what was under Hayate’s skirt. It was amusing in the manga, but having her eyes go Terminator red just cracked me up to no end.

Still, removal of the Miki scene caused the production team to have to pad everywhere else. I’m guessing that to animate the scene would have used more time than they had, so removing it meant they then had to pad elsewhere.

You know what would be cool? Having that scene appear on the DVD release. ^_^

Another plus the anime has over the manga is Hayate’s seiyuu (SHIRAISHI Ryoko) getting to use her normal voice rather than her Hayate one. Its a testament to her abilities as a voice actress to be able to perform a teen boy’s role and make us believe this is a guy, not a girl especially when Ryoko’s regular voice is very feminine.

A scene that didn’t work quite as well as the manga was Izumi’s discovery of Hayate at the Hina Doll Festival. The anime production team attempted to capture things, but the facial expressions in the manga for Izumi actually worked better than the animated sequences did. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the moment in the anime but that I didn’t feel they quite captured Izumi’s eager curiosity that well.

Kotetsu makes his first appearance in the anime and that made me smile since I know what fun he’ll cause Hayate in the near future. ^_^ The Hermione reference survived from the anime and I loved that. ^_^ (Can’t wait to see the latest “Harry Potter” movie, but that’s another item.)

I will note that in the normal flow of things, this episode would have been the “Hayate has to study and pass his test” story that we saw in the first anime series. That’s why at the beginning, Hayate and Nagi mention studying and Hayate’s need to pass. Its a shame the first series had to pluck that story out of sequence like that, but oh well. I felt the anime writers covered for its loss well enough in this episode.

So despite a bit of disappointment at the loss of the Miki scene, this episode is still a good one that had me laugh, smile, and be thoroughly entertained. That is what we want from our anime, is it not? Plus, it had yodeling! *lol*

PS: I hope there aren’t too many mistakes in this thing. ^_^; As I write, it is all I can do to stay awake. Too many things going on. *_*