ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 447 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Miki and Risa ask Izumi if she’s made her video for the video koushien, which she hasn’t. She’s surprised when she learns that both Miki and Risa have secretly made videos. Izumi believes that whatever they’ve done will be no better than their previous, failed video creation attempts. They respond by saying that they put in maximum effort into their work when it comes to giving Izumi a hard time. To prove their point, Miki shows a video of a giant squid she made in 2005, saying it will have good ratings in 2013.

Risa shows off her video, which is a 1000-day coverage of the production of The Wind Rises from Studio Ghibli.

Izumi rejects their videos as cheating, since this isn’t the kind of thing one puts online. After giving an example of what she describes as a true video, telling them she will amaze them with her efforts. She decides to document a fish’s growth and sets up a camera to document a fish in an aquarium. Kotetsu agrees that such a video would be interesting, but it won’t be as easy as she thinks since fish move whereas plants are stationary. Further, keeping a fish alive is harder than keeping a plant alive.  He suggests she consult their father regarding promotions, since she’s under the impression that fish grow and get promoted to new names all the time.

Izumi asks their father for something that gives promotions, so he gives her a bottle of Rémy Martin ZO. She pours some of the contents into the fish tank, causing the fish to grow arms. Koutestu and Izumi are horrified, but Izumi sees this as her chance for her video.  She begins pouring more in, but the fish, now having grown larger, grabs her by the arm and says it can’t stand more of that food.

Now armed with legs and apparent lit humanoid eyes and mouth within the fish’s mouth, the fish-man runs away. Izumi orders Kotetsu to chase it, so he does.

Meanwhile on murder island, Ah-tan turns to face what she thinks is the murderer, only to find the fish-man there. It attacks her, saying it loves little girls, but Ikusa shows up to send it flying. When the startled Ah-tan asks who he is, his response is one she hasn’t heard in ten years. Thus, she clicks the button on her power meter key fob.

Thoughts/Review:

Heh. Well played, Hata-sensei. You had us thinking that you were going to go for another pure filler chapter after rehashing one page of Ah-tan at murder island, then you did the twist and tied in said filler to the actual plot. *lol*  That’s the thing about Hata-sensei — he knows how to troll his audience big time, and he got us all with this chapter.

So, Hata-sensei hadn’t forgotten the video competition. I think the last time it came up in the manga was in chapter 414.  I wonder when it will come up again.

The giant squid video referenced in the chapter as being Miki’s work is a parody of what Discover Channel did early 2013.

That’s why Hata-sensei has the joke with Miki first citing 2005 (the year the manga story is taking place in) and 2013 (when the video was aired and I believe the actual ratings from NHK).

The fish-man seems to be a parody of the fish-men in The Slayers (Noonsa & Rahanimu being a couple of named ones).  In one of the anime episodes, the sorceress Lina Inverse is captured and they often refer to her as “ojouchan” to insult her as a “little girl” before sending in Noonsa to go after her is a deep kiss. In the light novel, it was a bit more severe as Lina’s captors wanted Noonsa to rape her, but being more fish than man, well…*lol*  (Not that rape is funny, but this was a funny, if wrong, moment in the novel.)

Anyway, there’s a similar vibe as the fish-man in this chapter goes after Ah-tan in a perverse way.

This chapter also shows something Hata-sensei likes to do — give reasons beyond sheer comedy for things.  When Kotetsu showed up earlier in the story arc, I think we all presumed that he was there just stalking Hayate. Hata-sensei actually provides a reason for him being at the same location as Hayate and the others — chasing the fish-man

So now we have Ikusa on the island and and Ah-tan has clicked the button on her power meter key fob. One presumes that this will restore her to her former glory, but with Hata-sensei, you can never be sure about anything. ^_^;

No new chapter next week thanks to Golden Week. So, we have a couple of weeks to wait to find out where Hata-sensei is going to take us next.