ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 450 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Having returned to adult form, Athena remarks on how she never knew Ikusa is Hayate’s older brother. Athena summons a giant hand wielding a giant hammer, but Ikusa dodges it. Athena explains that it is to restore his memory, so when she attacks again, he destroys the hammer. With time running out, Athena summons multiple hand wielding hammers, but Ikusa doesn’t want to remember his past. Athena manages to ask him if he saw the the one who removed the Royal Power from the Royal Garden.

Hearing this, Ikusa has a flashback to just after he rescued Athena, encountering a young woman who knows the girl. The woman tells him to take the girl to the police or the hospital as she’s been missing a long time. Ikusa asks the young woman, Yukariko, if she’s going to that place he just left, expressing a concern over it. Yukariko is not worried as Ikusa defeated the bad guy there. Plus, she has a friend there waiting to be rescued.

In the present, Ikusa briefly indicates that he remembers something, but it fades like a dream, frustrating Athena. As such, she summons a swarm of hammers, causing Ikusa to blow her off with the notion of something so easily be recalled (by a whack of a giant hammer) can’t be that important. She’s taken aback by this as he doesn’t think there’s a reason to cling to old memories. She counters that there is, citing her own situation whereupon she as a child, who’d lost hope and everything else important to her. It was then that Ikusa came, overcame the challenges of the Royal Garden, and saved her.

Athena continues, saying that when she woke up, she’d been left there alone with the sword Shirozakura. This causes Ikusa to have another flashback, where he stopped a bicycle cop while carrying the unconscious young Athena and Shirozakura.  The cop arrested him as Athena came to. Ikusa says some things are unavoidable, leading Athena to question his amnesia. However, she wants to thank him, which he doesn’t want, since he helps people all the time. Tearfully, she asks him to remember as she expresses how happy she was to be saved and wanted to thank him.

Thoughts/Review:

Man, Hata-sensei was really on his game with this chapter. We got to see some of Athena’s great power, even if in a comedic sense. We got to learn more about Athena’s rescue from the Royal Garden, even if a lot of that is done in a comedic sense. And, we got to see a bit more about Yukariko’s involvement with the Royal Garden.

I won’t speak much about the comedy stuff, even though I loved it. Hata-sensei’s comedy is what it is for the chapter.

One of the flashbacks showed that terrible picture of Athena right after Hayate left the Royal Garden.  That image of Athena so perfectly captures her hopelessness and devastation.  So with that in mind, it is no wonder that Athena has long wanted to thank Ikusa for saving her from that hopelessness.

That’s what makes Ikusa’s obstinate attitude about trying to remember his past more infuriating. He’s just being an arse to be an arse. Even though Athena’s giant hammers are a comedy prop, I wanted one to whack Ikusa just because he needs it worse than Touta from UQ Holder.

We didn’t get to see what happened after Ikusa was arrested, but since Athena never knew what happened to Ikusa, it seems that the cop who saw her just arrested Ikusa, but abandoned Athena. However, there may be other pieces to the puzzle that we haven’t seen yet, whether couched in comedy or no.  Ikusa’s arrest was funny, but it made the cop look stupid.

Then again, I just reread chapter 264, and I’d forgotten that Athena apparently slept there for a year, guarded by Shirozakura. So she must have just disappeared from view.

Finally, there’s Yukariko’s role in this. Hata-sensei has been very cagey about her involvement in the taking of the coffin from the Royal Palace. He’s only shown glimpses of her involvement and teased her involvement. This was one of the bigger flashbacks regarding Yukariko’s involvement and it raises some interesting questions.

1. How did Yukariko know Athena?
2. How did Yukariko know that a friend of hers was trapped in the Royal Garden?
3. Why was a friend of Yukariko trapped in the Royal Garden?
4. How was a friend of Yukariko trapped in the Royal Garden at the same time as Athena, yet Athena apparently didn’t now about it?
5. Why was Yukariko at the entrance of the Royal Garden when Ikusa emerged with Athena?
6. Why did Yukariko decide to take the Royal Power and apparently stash it at Yukari-chan House?

The first question might be easy as Athena appears to have been working with Mikado for some time before she was trapped in the Royal Garden. As such, Yukariko could easily have known Athena back then, and may have even been involved to some degree with her father’s scheme regarding King Midas’s treasure.

I fear question four might be answered by one of Yukariko’s friends being sealed in the coffin. I could be wrong, but I suspect that Isumi’s mother might have been the one sealed, and that it was Isumi’s great grandmother that sealed off the coffin’s room after the fact.  But that’s just sheer speculation on my part with nothing to back it up storywise.

Oh, and one more thing. I do not for an instant believe that we have Athena shipping to Ikusa. I think that Athena still loves and cares for Hayate a great deal. However, she owes her life to Ikusa, so it is only natural that she would be so emotional and want to thank him so much for saving her from despair and hopelessness.

In the end, a good chapter with a lot of humor, some irritation with Ikusa’s obstinate behavior, some smiles at Athena’s power, some nifty little flashbacks, and a whole lot of new questions to be answered. I can’t wait for the next chapter. ^_^