ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 479 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Fumi informs Sharna that she needs a care robot to assist her as a Life Saver, eventually taking over her responsibilities completely so that Fumi can enjoy a life of ease. Sharna is not impressed and starts to tell Fumi that there’s no way a robot will be lying around when suddenly, they see Makimura-sensei with her robot-boyfriend Eight. Fumi wants Makimura-sensei to make her a robot, but Makimura doesn’t want to. Sharna thinks it is because robots are expensive and time consuming to make, but in reality, Makimura-sensei is on her way to Starbucks. As such, Fumi buy her a coffee to score a robot.

Makimura shows Sharna and Fumi her lab. Fumi wants a robot that can fly through the sky as she rides on its back. Makimura reveals an android that can do this, only is is built to look like a fat man in his underwear. Fumi rejects this, so Makimura inquires as to Fumi’s other requirements. Fumi wants a robot that can fight, so Makimura quickly modifies the fat man android. Fumi immediately rejects this as she doesn’t want a fat guy robot.

Makimura shows off a prototype robot she made, but it isn’t quite what Fumi was looking for in design. As such, Makimura displays the female version, which looks like a young teen girl. While Makimura developed the android to be able to do lewd things, she did not build in the ability for the android to fly or do karate. Since the female android doesn’t meet Fumi’s requirements, Makimura is going to scrap it. When Fumi asks what that means, Makimura shows her by scrapping the prototype droid, which screams as it is pulverized. In order to spare the female android this, Fumi takes her.

After deciding to call her Ell-chan, Fumi sets out with her new android and Sharna. When asked what she can do, Ell-chan says she can eat lots of rice. Fumi gets frustrated at that, more so when Ell-chan’s rice requirements are for an uni bowl (sea urchin) and an ikura bowl (salmon row) made with sansanishiki rice.

Thoughts/Review:

Heh!heh!heh! I got to admit that this chapter is the funniest Hayate the Combat Butler chapter in quite some time. I laughed quite a bit while reading this.

Fumi chapters are often good, but sometimes can be a miss. Hata-sensei pretty much keeps Fumi in super deformed mode, which sometimes works against the humor. Here, that didn’t seem to be a problem, at least not with me.

So, the good stuff. Fumi confessing to imagining natto spewing from Sharna’s bindi got the laughs started off on the right foot. *lol* Seriously, who imagines such a thing? But, that unexpected element is what makes it absurd and thus very funny to me.

Next up was Makimura-sensei not even acknowledging Eight as a robot, but rather walking junk. That ties back to early in the manga when Eight was tossed out as trash, then used junk to repair himself. I didn’t expect Makimura to call Eight “talking junk,” thus why it was so funny to me.

Then we have Makimura’s reason for initially rejecting Fumi’s request to build a robot — she’s on her way to Starbucks. *lol* Well, we all have our priorities.

The fat guy android in underwear…*lol*  And to make it funnier, Hata-sensei managed to score two jokes off that, both of which I just fell in the floor for, more so because of Fumi’s negative reaction to the android.

Makimura’s twisted persona is next on the laughs list, though that might speak negatively about me. On one hand, it is twisted and dark that Makimura has her robots able to feel pain, yet she’s able to shred them and hear their screams of pain with a smile. I remembered the droid torture scene in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which made me chuckle a bit back in the day. On the other hand, the casual way Makimura went about this, combined with Fumi’s horror just made me laugh.  I probably need help. ^_^;

Ell-chan brought up the rest of the laughs. After Fumi saves her, Fumi coming up with a name that doesn’t mean “lewd” made me laugh, as did Ell-chan’s desire for really expensive donburi (rice bowls).

Speaking of Ell-chan, I couldn’t help but notice she somewhat resembles the young teen body for Chachamaru in Negima. Considering how Chachamaru had the option to do lewd things, and Ell-chan was created with the ability to do things, combined with the fact that Hata-sensei and Kajishima-sensei are friends, I wonder if Ell-chan is a tribute to Chachamaru. I may be overthinking things though.

Knowing how Hata-sensei does things, I expect Ell-chan will come up and at some point, will save someone.

While this was a very funny and enjoyable chapter, Hata-sensei is avoiding doing anything plot-driven and I wonder why that is. Oh well. We’ll see what the next chapter has in store.