March 17th, 2012 
AstroNerdBoy ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Chapter 353
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Hayate catches a cold from his housemates, which is discovered by Maria. When Nagi gets word, she’s worried he’ll fail his exams and be expelled, causing Hayate to pretend to be OK. It gets worse when at school, Hina expects him to do well because of the help she gave him in studying. His bad luck continues when he encounters an ill Fumi-chan, who demands to be carried to the infirmary, and guilts Hayate into doing so.
Completing this, he races to get to class, only to be called by Saki, who has a massive document detailing Wataru’s doujinshi shop plans. Saki guilts him into reading it. However, as he attempts to get to class, feeling worse by the moment, Isumi appears, needing lots of his blood AND his assistance to defeat some horrible monster on the loose. So, Hayate has no choice but to help.
Katsura-sensei is starting the exams and about to give Hayate a zero for being late, when he arrives, battered and bloodied. He’s allowed to take the test, but when Katsura-sensei attempts to play a handheld video game, her chair collapses and the game unit crashes into Hayate’s head. He removes it, then breaks it, but finishes his test.
Returning home, Maria greets him with cold medicine and warm milk, telling him to get some rest.
Thoughts/Review:
OK. Since Hayate the Combat Butler is a comedy manga, I thought I’d jump cold into the current chapters and go from there, despite the fact that there’s been an ongoing overall story from where Viz’s official releases are until present.
First, let me say that I don’t like the character designs of the manga now. Hata-sensei’s character designs were quite attractive for the ladies. Now, everyone looks like their heads have been squished and that they are in desperate need of haircuts. *_* At times, glimpses of the former glory of the character designs come through, but only briefly. It’s clearly a case of over-compensating on tweaking of character drawings.
Not too bad, but not quite right either when it comes to character designs.
This is supposed to be Nagi? Doesn’t even look like her. *_*
As to the writing, Hata-sensei still does what he does best — whacky comedy. Hayate still appears to be cursed with very bad luck.
Fumi-chan is still as outrageously, stupidly funny as ever. She’s been great ever since her introduction.
Fumi-chan proves once again, the hilarious power of frank stupidity.
Anyway, I have a lot of catchup reading to do. It looks like Hayate, Maria, and Nagi are living someplace other than the mansion. I don’t know what that’s about, but I’m sure it will be interesting and fun finding out. I’ll see about writing some sort of posts to track my catchup reading.
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Now that I think about it, the character designs for the 20th volume looked like the 2nd season of the Hayate anime and the character designs on the 31st volume look almost exactly like the Hayate movie.
I do seem to recall hearing Hata-sensei mention that he was tweaking the character designs for the 2nd TV series, but I thought he was joking. Frankly, the anime companies should be making their character designs look like the MANGA, not the other way around.
I see you’ve decided to look at the scanlations for this because of Viz’s slowness.
I agree about the art-style. We were eased into it, but it’s still rather bad compared to early-series.
But I’ll still be purchasing the Viz releases. ^_^
Glad to see you blogging this one, and you’re right about the character designs, though I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe the change was too gradual to notice over time, or maybe I’m just getting more senile… not sure which. (^_^);
Well, it is a few years between volume 19 and where the manga is now. That gives readers plenty of time to make the adjustment.
I want to say the new art-style isn’t all bad, but it has been pretty inconsistent, and I do like the older designs better. (mostly)
Given another year or so Hata might settle down and end up with something good, though.
In any case, you’ve got a GREAT run of chapters to catch up on, so have fun!
I’m looking forward to reading the new stuff. Actually, I’ve finished volume 20, but that blog post is scheduled for later. (I’m having to queue up several posts to cover a busy time coming up in my life.)
”Anyway, I have a lot of catchup reading to do. It looks like Hayate, Maria, and Nagi are living someplace other than the mansion. I don’t know what that’s about, but I’m sure it will be interesting and fun finding out. I’ll see about writing some sort of posts to track my catchup reading.”
Okay, this explains how you could talk this soon about this chapter ^_^ I have to say it’s interesting to read a non-manga reader’s reaction to the latest chapter in the story.
”I don’t like the character designs of the manga now”
Yeah, normally I would be in support of mangaka evolving their art work, but I don’t like this new art either. He seems to be changeling the manglobe designs more than anything so it looks like he wants to make the manga easier for them to adapt (I think)
Anyho, looking forward to your impressions.
And I’m looking forward to giving my impressions. ^_^
I don’t really like the art-style when compare to the older ones, but in the last three chapters the old art-style has slowly started to return.
Interesting. Hopefully, it will fully return soon.