Hayate no Gotoku! Cuties
ハヤテのごとく！Cuties Episode 01 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Hayate is shown going through a typical day for him as the butler for Yukari-chan House, starting from when he gets up, to getting the girls off to school, to serving them lunch at school, to his work after school, and the studying he does late into the night, this time with Hina. The following day, Hayate discovers that Maria, Nagi, Chiharu, Kayura, and Ayumu (faking it) are all sick. Ah-tan warns Hayate that with the school’s final exams coming up the following day, he’s basically cursed. At-tan also shows signs of being sick, so Hayate sends her to bed as well. As he’s going to leave to get medicine for everyone, Kayura snags him, begging him to buy some doujinshi for her.

The next day, Hayate realizes he’s getting sick and is about to take medicine to get by so he can take his exams, but he’s spotted by Nagi, who’s worried that Hayate might miss the exam due to her illness. Hayate denies being sick and puts the medicine away. However, as he is going to a different class from Nagi to take his exam, he’s forced to help an ailing Fumi-chan. Then, Isumi arrives with Sakuya, citing an attack by a dai-youkai, requiring them to use 1000cc of Hayate’s blood to defeat it. Hayate finally makes it into class for his exam. After Yukiji-sensei accidentally tosses her PSP Hayate’s way, He breaks it, then finishes his exam. Exhausted, he returns home to find the girls have prepared a nice meal for him.

Thoughts/Review:

For those curious, this episode covers manga chapters 352 and 353 (I only skipped to current Hayate the Combat Butler manga chapters with 353, so no 352 review up for me).

As an adaptation of a manga story, this was pretty good with one MASSIVE problem, which I’ll get into later.  As one might expect, there is some padding done with this story. Half of it was dedicated to showing how Hayate spends a typical day as the butler at Yukari-chan House.

The tweaks to the actual housemates getting sick were fairly minor and worked in the context of showing a typical day for Hayate. The scene with Fumi-chan having the stomach ailment end up being MUCH funnier in the anime over the manga, and it was pretty funny to me in the manga. Hearing Fumi-chan’s lament over eating the offerings to the jizou made it funnier, as did seeing the spirits leaving her stomach. *lol*  This is Fumi-chan at her best.

I also enjoyed the visuals and audio when Yukiji is playing her PSP and Hayate ends up breaking it. Hayate didn’t look as brutalized in the anime as he did in the manga, but that’s OK.

Ah-tan finally gets some anime love. Unlike Ruka, whom the various production teams of late  have tried to insert come hell or high water, Ah-tan (Athena) has been avoided like the plague.

The character designs for Cuties is MUCH improved over Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, which is a relief. The characters look pretty normal for a change.

There was one thing that I absolutely hated, which I cited earlier as the massive problem. Because Ruka is a popular character, the production team decided to ram her into this episode for a cameo, where her car drives her up to where Hayate and Nagi are walking to school so she can give him the DVD of her Las Vegas concert, which happened in CTMEOY.

The problem with this is that in CTMEOY, Nagi, Hayate, and Maria are back in the mansion and that story takes place months after this story does in the manga. For this episode, which is based off the manga, it is months before the Las Vegas concert and everyone is still at Yukari-chan House. As far as I’m concerned, this is a big fail and it completely muddies the waters. Then again, the production team may not be worried about that, but I wish they’d said any other concert other than Las Vegas.

One fail does not fail the episode for me, which I rather enjoyed otherwise. I’m not expecting any kind of coherent storyline to be followed since this series focuses on the different characters, starting with Hayate. Hopefully, we get more fun stuff to come.