ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 448 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

In the past, Aika attempts to return the King’s Jewel Mikado since she doesn’t want to be bothered with it. Mikado convinces Aika to take the stone to Athena in Greece.

In May, Aika visits the ruins of Athena’s place. When Aika does what Mikado wanted and tosses the jewel at Athena, Athena realizes the Midas curse is gone from the stone. Aika turns to leave, hearing a frantic Athena instruct Machina (Makina) to take the stone and go where no one can find him.  When Aika turns around, Machina is gone and Athena is now a child unconscious on the ground.

Returning to Japan with Ah-tan, Aika is not happy with Mikado about this. Ah-tan knows this is the result of the curse of the jewel., Those who use the Royal Power can not use it again, so if they touch the light of the King’s Jewel, they will be cursed and they will be reverted to the age and memories they had when they last used the power, which in Athena’s case was when she was a child. Mikado says that the memories are there, just sealed and that it is possible to return Athena to normal.

Mikado is not happy when he learns that the stone sent to Greece is lost. With Mikado out of it because of this, Ah-tan gets Aika to help her to find a way to return to normal, even for a short time.  At that point, Ah-tan wants Aika to explain things to her older self.

In the present, Ah-tan is talking to Isuka, remarking that she didn’t expect him to rescue her. He says that she was the one most in trouble on the island, leading Ah-tan to concede that it would be hard to put the other two in danger (Hayate and Hina). However, as she wanted to speak to Isuka, she’s OK with the situation. She explains he won’t be speaking to her, but another version of her. With that, she clicks the power meter key fob, whereby she appears in her adult form, complete with a dress to match from somewhere unknown.

Thoughts/Review:

Heh! Good old Hata-sensei. One thing I’ve come to really respect about him as a writer is that while he make us wait YEARS for an answer, he does have one, and he will give us one. We now see what Aika’s mission to Greece was and the results of that mission, including how Ah-tan got to Japan.  So even though I had to wait a very long to get those answers, they did happen. This in juxtaposition to a certain other mangaka who makes us wait years for info and may or may not be bothered to give us the answers. ^_^;

But I digress…

We recently saw Aika getting somewhat flabbergasted by Yukiji-sensei by her actions, and we’ve seen Aika’s devious side.  However, this is the first time that we’ve ever seen Aika get so boisterous as she was when she returned to Japan and whacked Mikado on the head with a harisen. I laughed out loud about this.

We now have an explanation as to why Ah-tan turned to child form, and why she was able to return to adult form, at least for a time. I suspect that when Athena came to visit Hayate about three months ago, it was right after she’d returned to adult form and been briefed by Aika.

Now that she’s used the power gathered to return to normal for a time, how long will she remain in this form?  I don’t think that she’ll be this way for long. Further, I think that we’ll see Ah-tan/Athena exit from the story for a time and provide Hayate a motivation for finding her again and returning her to her normal self. I’m basing my theory partly on the fact that Ah-tan/Athena wasn’t in the HIAPOE movie and the CTMEOY series.  Since I think she’ll be a part of the manga plot until the end, this would tie into what I think the final plot will involve — Maria.

The chapter had its usual mix of plot and humor.  One of the humor elements was the child Ah-tan turning into an adult, but amazingly having an adult-sized dress to quickly put on and wear.  I couldn’t help but wonder if this joke was a poke at Akamatsu-sensei, who’s had characters change age from child to kid (and back), but amazingly have adult clothing when they turn older (or vice versa).

OK, the manga is off next week (I was thinking it was off this week, but Weekly Shounen Sunday‘s week off is next week), so we have a couple of weeks to see what Athena has to say to Ikusa.  I bet we shift down to Hayate and Hina, or otherwise get trolled. *lol*