Hayate the Combat Butler “2nd Season” Ep. 19
ハヤテのごとく！！Episode 19
Hayate no Gotoku!! – 19

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

 It is spring break and Nagi is a bit frustrated that Hayate and Maria are allowing her to sleep in until noon even though that’s what she wanted and they couldn’t wake her earlier if they tried. Thinking about how she spends her days, she decides to be a better human and so when Hayate accidentally breaks his cell phone, she decides to go with him to Shinjuku to purchase a new one. The experience is a new one for her since she mostly shops online (without paying attention to prices) and she finds the ¥1-million prices for various high-end electronics to be very cheap.

Despite her attempt at being a new human, she’s soon bored while Hayate fills out the paperwork for the new cell phone. Hayate notices this and tells her to go ahead and look around. She gets lost but decides it is Hayate that is lost and so goes to the lost child section where the attendant assumes Nagi is the lost child despite her protests.

While she waits for Hayate to come, there are three punk kids in the lost-and-found room who after losing to Nagi at the Hayate no Gotoku card game, they address her as “boss” (taichou – lit. “commanding officer”). It is in very pleased state that Hayate finds Nagi, who’s immediately embarrassed by this. Returning home, Hayate teases her by addressing her as “boss” despite Nagi’s protests.

Sakuya comes by and informs Hayate that her birthday is April 3. As such, she wants him to remember this because she’s wants a good laugh for her birthday. She’s also hit Wataru up with the same request. Hayate consults with Nagi who decides to use the “Sunday Box” (four boxes that phonetically spell out “Sunday” in Katakana — スンデー) after selecting Maria as their comedy target. Hayate picks the “Su” character. Nagi lifts the box and reveals a harisen. Sakuya shows up and she and Nagi convince Hayate to go forward with the comedy plan on Maria.

As Maria and Hayate clean a room together, Nagi and Sakuya observe from the doorway while Hayate looks for a comedy opening to use the harisen. Hearing Maria hum a tune from an old anime, he ends up not going for a gag and honestly asks her where she picked up the song. Naturally, it was some anime Nagi watched and as the tension builds, Maria sees a broken window and says something that gives Hayate his comedy opening to use the harisen. Unfortunately he trips and ends up face-planting into Maria’s chest, leading Nagi to whack him with a long-handled hammer (from an anime series I believe). Sakuya has a great laugh and thanks Hayate for this but reminds him that he has to make her laugh like that on her birthday.

Meanwhile, Nagi begins instructing Isumi and Wataru on the fine art of Japanese physical comedy to Sakuya’s amusement.

Thoughts/Review:

It is at times like this that I wish I were current with the manga, but the Hayate no Gotoku manga series is one I’ve only been following via the Viz releases and not from Japan. Having the “Hayate no Gotoku” card game in this episode made me wonder a great deal. While it is true that this is a exclusive to the anime, I did find out that Nagi did have a battle card game in the manga, so changing the name of the game to advertise the Hayate one is not a problem to me (and is funny because the episode makes fun of itself for doing so).

If you haven’t read the manga, you may remember episode 42 from the first series which told of the game whereby one chose a box and lifting the box revealed a frog that looked like Keroro from Keroro Gunsou. That part of that story was lifted from the final chapter of volume 12 of the manga. That gives you an idea of how the first series cherry picked things out because this current episode is from the second chapter of volume 13.

I mention this because of story flow. Had the first series not interfered, the “Hanamura Box” (as it is called in the manga) joke would have had a stronger double-punch and there would be more of a reason for Nagi to use this method again (because she’d just used it before). I often complained that the first series didn’t flow that well where the manga does. Now, we have the decisions of the production team for the first series causing flow bumps in this current anime and that’s a shame.

Getting to the specifics of this episode, I rather enjoyed the battle card game parody as well as the little punks submitting to Nagi as well as her attitude. *lol* The story gets tougher when it comes to the physical comedy bits because it is so rooted in Japanese puns and culture.

That aside, it was still a lot of fun especially since Sakuya is the driving force convincing Hayate to make a comedy whack attempt on Maria with a harisen. I’m told the jokes are somewhat modified in the anime from the manga, but the core of the jokes are the same so that’s fine. I liked the comedy training bit at the end too with Wataru failing to be able to whack Isumi due to his feelings for her.

So a really fun episode to be had here. ^_^ I’m really glad this second series is sticking to the manga and it is sad the first series’ shadow still lingers though.