ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 498 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Hina is explaining the reason for her visit to Chiharu’s room, when Chiharu asks if she can put on clothing. Hina, and Hayate in hiding, are surprised that four more people drop out of the competition, allowing Hina to realize that there’s more than one person eliminating the competition.

Sister Sonia teams up with Yukiji to press the buttons of the student’s completer. Yukiji decides they’ll save the tough students like Hina for later. As the summon the elevator to move to the next floor of targets, they find it filled with armed guerrilla terrorists.

Ruri enters Nagi’s room from the balcony to warn her about the terrorist threat.

Back in Chiharu’s room, Hayate is fleeing back through the ventilation shaft and is pursued by Hina, who suspected he was in Chiharu’s room. Chiharu answers a knock at her door and finds another of the armed terrorists there, causing her to scream, which causes Hina to stop her pursuit.

Sister Sonia and Yukiji defeat the terrorists that stood in their way. A screem has them coming to one of their female students, who’s also under assalt from a terrorists. Yukiji angrily knocks him out, but the relieved female student soon discovers that Yukiji betrays her as Yukiji presses her completer button.

Students are being evacuated outside the hotel. Hayate is missing, but as Nagi sees the completer number continue to drop, she knows a fight is still going on inside the hotel.

Thoughts/Review:

I gotta say that this was a pretty darn funny chapter!

The first laugh for me was Hina verbally going in for the kill on Hayate, whom she is pretty sure is in Chiharu’s room, only to have her line of thought interrupted by Chiharu’s request and the completer dropping another four numbers. I guess it is because Hina got thwarted when I was expected her to actually nail Hayate, which was my incorrect call last week.

The next set of laughs came from Sister Sonia and Yukiji working together. Sonia actually comes off as the sane one here because she can’t believe Yukiji, as a teacher, would do such things to her students (removing them from the competition), and even refer to her students as background characters.

Of course, Sonia and Yukiji initially freaking out over encountering the terrorists struck me as funny, but even though I knew that they would kick arse, it was still funny seeing the aftermath of that.

Yukiji going nuts on a terrorist who’d targeted a female “background character” student continued that line of laughs, as was the eventual betrayal by Yukiji to said student to remove her from the fight.

Also adding to the humor of this terrorist attack (which isn’t remotely funny in the real world, but hey, this is fiction, and this is funny) is the irony that it was the then unknown Sister Sonia who hired terrorists to go after Sakuya’s cruise ship to get Nagi.

So by next chapter, I figure we’ll be down to Aika (“safe” in the jungle), Hayate, Hina, Chiharu (who wasn’t drawn with a completer on for her shower in the last chapter), Nagi (protected by Ruri), Yukiji (not sure if she has a completer or not — I bet she does), and of course, Sister Sonia.

In the end, this was a pretty funny chapter that removes “background characters” to allow the core characters to continue on.