ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Chapter 360
Hayate the Combat Butler Manga Chapter 360

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Hina gets up in the middle of the night to get something to drink when she hears unidentifiable laughter, twice. She goes up to Hayate’s room, and tells the story, deciding that the apartment is haunted. Hayate figures it is the ghost priest who laughed at some gag anime or manga, so Hayate decides to fool Hina and defeat her ghost. She thinks Hayate doesn’t believe her, so when he asks her what she’s going to do about this ghost, she tells him she’ll exorcise it, as ghost must be exterminated like roaches.

Hayate is concern for Father Radiostar since Hina has the weapons Shirozakura and Wooden Masamune at her disposal, which might well dispatch the priest. Father Radiostar comes out in a panic to Hayate, causing Hina to react to his presence. Hayate informs the ghost priest that he’ll use a secret technique to get Hina back to sleep, after which she’ll think the ghost thing was all a dream.  When Father Radiostar asks how Hayate will get Hina to sleep, he realizes that Hayate is winging it, thus the priest flees the apartment.

Hayate is impressed with Hina’s ability to sense that Father Radiostar had left, but decides to take advantage of the situation by offering to finish it off for her. He instantly produces a cup of hot milk for her to drink, then leaves to finish the job. Radiostar wonders if this will really work even though Hayate is sure. Soon, Hina falls asleep as Radiostar decides to lay low for awhile. Hayate decides to take the sleeping Hina to her bed, when Chiharu comes in and sees Hayate over Hina in a suspicious fashion.

Thoughts/Review:

Man, I’m totally bummed that Hina no longer sees Father Radiostar.  After all, he was instrumental in getting Hina to come up with the wrong idea about her feelings for Hayate way back when Hayate was to fight her in the clock tower (though he was trying to properly advise her).  I know that even after the Butler’s Pit arc concluded, it was mentioned that eventually everyone would become unable to see Father Radiostar, but it is still disappointing that Hina is now there.

Anyway, the story reminded me of Hayate’s little adventure with Hina at Hakuou’s old school building, only she didn’t have a sword to work with then.

It will be interesting to see where and how Hina scores Shirozakura, which I’m assuming is another sword.

While this chapter wasn’t all that funny to me, it was still amusing and enjoyable.  However, I’m starting to want those longer, multi-chapter stories that Hata-sensei used to do.  I’ve been re-reading the volumes Viz published and am at the point to where Hayate and company did that mountain, school trip and encountered the massive, vicious bear. That had lots of funny moments in it.

Oh well. I still enjoyed this chapter and manga. I’m going to try to catch up on another volume very soon.