Hayate no Gotoku!! — Final Thoughts
ハヤテのごとく！！

The first series of Hayate the Combat Butler left me with mixed feelings as it was at times brilliant and at times it was very tedious. The story flow of the first series bothered me, but since there were those who encouraged me to read the manga, I discovered via the manga the true brilliance of the title with Hata-sensei clearly weaving a fun, funny, and interesting tale. So when Hayate the Combat Butler “2nd Season” was announced, I planned to watch it but I wasn’t sure on how good it would be. Fortunately, the anime production team decided that since the manga story isn’t broken, they didn’t need to “fix” it.

By closely following the manga story, Hayate no Gotoku!! does what an anime adaptation should do — enhance the already known manga story and jokes with color, animation, voices, and other sounds. As such, I get a different kind of enjoyment than I did while reading the manga, though the two experiences are similar since I love the core story and characters. I know there are some who dislike an anime adaptation that so closely follows the manga since they already know everything, but I reject that notion.

That’s not to say that there weren’t things changed. It appears that for time, the production team cut small bits here and there such as a chapter where Hayate butlers for Ayumu’s family or Miki’s report on Hayate to Hina. Also, the tenticles from the first anime series have some impact as that series grabbed a few chapters as far as volume 12 of the manga, and I missed some of those. That also had some impact on story flow, but it wasn’t too great of an impact. Fortunately, this won’t be an issue should there be another series.

So what works so well when it comes to story?

Well, there’s the build on the harem aspects of the series with time taken to address Hina’s feelings for Hayate. That’s complicated by her friendship with Ayumu, who’s the first one that was interested in Hayate and for whom Hina promised to support. I’ve rather enjoyed Hina and Ayumu being friends and now that they both understand where they stand with Hayate, it will be interesting to see where this goes (whether in anime or manga form). I liked Ayumu’s handling of the issue as well. Let’s not forget Sakuya apparently falling for Hayate in addition to Isumi’s own attraction to Hayate. However, this doesn’t play as a traditional harem title and that’s nice.

There’s some nice character development as well. Though Hayate’s development is somewhat harmed by the first series extracting certain stories, the same is not true for Nagi’s story, where we learn about her deceased mother in a touching tale (with lots of humor on the side). We see more of Isumi’s family, including her funny great grandmother. We learn more about Sakuya’s family, which is nice. We even got to see the story of how Nagi found Tama, which was a funny story. Characters like Klaus kinda take a back seat, but Father Radiostar is used well as is Sister Sonia.

The fact that the story flow works so well is the icing on the cake though. Even little side stories fit into the flow as these stories will often have impact later. So I want to tip my hat to the production team for NOT deciding to go off on their own.

I don’t know how much manga remains to be animated. I gather there’s probably enough for another 24/25-episode series. Regardless, if there is another series, I can wait to make sure there’s enough manga stories to completely fill a series without the need to add stupid filler that ends up failing.

In the end, while I may have failed in expressing how good this series is in terms of story, characters, and humor, what I will say is that if you liked the first anime series, you will like this series better. If you like the manga, you won’t be disappointed in this adaptation (beyond the small disappointments and the small things that ended up getting cut, but fortunately they are small). Assuming this is released on DVD with the subtitles that Crunchyroll used, I’ll be buying it for sure.