ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 503 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kananiwa visits Mikoto at her Vegas residence to ask about the King’s Jewel. Mikoto says she doesn’t know much about it, even though Kananiwa knows that Mikoto found one as a child while playing in Mykonos. Mikoto still feigns ignorance, so Kananiwa says she’ll just do things on her own. When Mikoto asks what she’s going to do, Kananiwa says that she wants the Royal Power that Yukariko once held, that becomes available when the path is opened by the stone.

Mikoto again denies knowing anything, but she cautions Kananiwa about following her present path. When Kananiwa asks why, Mikoto says the power is unusable by she and the old man (Mikado). Seeing she’s not going to get any information from Mikoto, Kananiwa turns to leave. She’s stopped when Mikoto gives her one final piece of advice, revealing that the path to the Royal Garden is opened through an explosion of negative emotion from someone’s failure of a great desire.

At the hotel, Nagi and Hayate discuss how this is supposed to be the final battle, but all that they’ve done in Vegas is sightsee. Nagi ponders this and decides that the final battle may have already begun. Hayate is shocked by this, but he’s more shocked by the arrival of Sakuya, who confirms the final battle has already begun. Because of the way she’s dressed, they make fun of her.

Thoughts/Review:

You know, Hata-sensei worries WAY too much about stupid things. This has come up quite a lot in the past via his manga volume notes, and it comes up again in the chapter. However, he seems to be under this ultra strong impression that if he isn’t doing gags all the time, or throwing out meaningless fanservice, no one will buy his manga. He has a story he wants to tell, but if he actually sits down and starts telling it without constant interruption to keep the brainless morons around, his manga gets flushed. *_*

(As an aside, I can give Hata-sensei credit for at least acknowledging in a mildly humorous way that he has these insecurity issues.)

That aside, I find it interesting that Kananiwa and Mikoto have known each other for a long time, at least, based on the fact that they used each other’s childish nicknames of Miko-nyah and Kanegon. It is also possible that Kananiwa knew Yukariko as well.

So far, this entire trip has been meaningless in terms of Kananiwa and her agenda, at least as far as I can see. The only thing that has happened is that one of the King’s Jewel people, Aika, has found a backbone to go with her sadistic side, which I’m guessing will come into play later.  Otherwise, what was the point of everything that has happened so far, other than this cash prize for winning the competition?

That being said, I got the impression that Kananiwa didn’t know about the negative emotion requirement, but she does now (assuming she didn’t before). With this information, I can see her having a purpose to achieve her goals, but then that begs the question, “Why Vegas?” I still hope this has something to do with Shin, but we’ll see.

Last chapter, I made a joke about Sakuya being MIA in the manga (and she’d been gone for ages). Sometimes, one just has this sense of things to come, and I admit that a small part of me wondered if Hata-sensei would do something to bring her back, through flashback or with some gag chapter to show Sakuya doing Sakuya things. What I didn’t expect was for Sakuya to actually be in Vegas.

No new chapter for this week, so we’ll have to wait to see what happens. While there were some minorly interesting developments of plot in this chapter, we also got pointless fanservice and weak jokes.