ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 504 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Prior to the Level 5 class trip, Kananiwa pays a visit to Mikado to tell him of her belief that his daughter, Yukariko, is the one who removed the Royal Power ten years prior. Mikado rejects that since she had no stone and the only stone that could get to the palace was Hayate’s. Kananiwa asks him to recall how he came by the nine King’s Jewels, so he remembers Yukariko, accompanied by her best friends Mikoto and Hatsuho, giving him nine jewels. He then realizes that with their being twelve total jewels, Yukariko must have kept three and given two of them to her friends.

Kananiwa goes on to explain how Yukariko found the sealed Royal Power and gave her stone to Himegami. At some point, the power returned to the Royal Garden. Kananiwa continues, stating she know of Mikado’s later meeting with Himegami, his research to enter the palace, his taking in Maria in order to decipher the Phrygian text, and then how the path was finally opened by Athena. Kananiwa asks if it was the loss of her father that caused Athena to be able to open the path, so Mikado says it was the inheritance issues that followed.

Kananiwa continues, stating she knows that when Mikado tried to enter the Royal Garden with Athena, King Midas rose up against them. Athena was the only one able to get past Midas, but Mikado could not get in due to King Midas’s curse on the remaining seven jewels. Since Hayate had the only remaining, uncursed stone, that is why Mikado thought Hayate took the Royal Power, when in fact, Mikoto and Hatsuho each had a stone. However, Kananiwa knows that Yukariko was seen with Ikusabe (Ikusa) on the day Athena was saved and believes that the Royal Power chose her.

Kananiwa also thinks that Yukariko used Hatsuho’s stone to gain access to the Royal Garden, she used the Royal Power, then returned it to the palace. She doesn’t know what Yukariko used the power for, but speculates that there might be two cursed stones at Yukari-chan Mansion.

Kananiwa then talks of the remaining five good stones, since four were destroyed this year. She has one, she thinks Mikoto has one, Athena has hidden one, and the two he gave out to break the curse to unnamed parties. With that, Kananiwa announces that she’ll be using the upcoming school trip to find a kid to open a path to the Royal Garden through the kid’s despair.

When Kananiwa is gone, Athena shows up, sarcastically remarking on how Mikado is mocked by his younger, female relatives.  She asks what he will do since Kananiwa  appears to be set to get the power. Mikado says he has a trump card, but Athena isn’t impressed since Mikado’s other trump cards haven’t worked.

Thoughts/Review:

Egad! Hata-sensei loves to delay doing things with the plot, then when he’s delayed as much as he can, he is compelled to just do a massive plot dump, which is what we got today. I’m not complaining, since this was good stuff, but man. Let’s make a run down.

Item 1: Kananiwa

Well, I suppose it makes sense that Kananiwa is apparently yet another relative of Mikado, seeing as how she had a King’s Jewel as an earring.  Considering the Can’t Take My Eyes Off You anime, I was still thinking that there was a possibility that she still might be a Nymph as Dolly was (whom Kananiwa looks like) with similar motivations as Dolly. Now, it just appears she’s one of the many relatives given a King’s Jewel, kinda like Hisui.

So while it wasn’t hard to guess that the purpose of Kananiwa putting student’s through the Level 5 trip was to gain access to the Royal Power after seeing her with a King’s Jewel. However, I’m still not sure what the purpose of the different parts of the trip are for. In some ways, it seems like she’s looking for the strongest person to gain access since she’s setting up things to force all but the most determined to drop out. So how does she figure to bring out the winner’s despair?

Item 2: Himegami

This chapter further pushes us away from that terrible anime version of Himegami by giving us more info regarding him. For starters, he was given Yukariko’s King’s Jewel and he used that power for unknown reasons.

Second, it appears that the Yukari-chan House actually belonged to the Himegami family. That really surprised me, but it explains why young Himegami’s partial photo was found there.

Third, one of the old manga volume’s canon splash pages (I don’t have time to look it up) showed Mikado with a hooded someone, apparently in Greece, looking at the glyphs regarding the Royal Power. We now know that was Himegami.  I suspect it was after Himegami quit as Nagi’s butler.

Item 3: Maria

It was only a tidbit, but we now know why Mikado basically adopted Maria — to translate the Pyrygian text. Maria has been well cared for as a Sanzenin maid, but she’s been used by Mikado from the start. It will be interesting to see how Mikado came to know about Maria in the first place.

Item 4: Athena

Well, we now know how Athena got to the Royal Palace and got trapped there to see Hayate sometime later. Since she was connected to Mikado at a young age, she may have gone to school with Maria or the like. Either way, Mikado used her to get in. I wonder how she defeated (temporarily) King Midas to gain access to the Royal Garden while Mikado could not get in.

As an aside, I was amused by Athena’s banter with Mikado.

Item 5: Hatsuho

Although we haven’t seen Isumi’s mother with a King’s Jewel, it doesn’t surprise me that Hatsuho had one since Wataru’s mother Mikoto had one. Considering the initial page showing a Sanzenin party where Hatsuho has taken Isumi to, apparently for the first time since Isumi didn’t know who Yukariko was, I’m going to guess that this was the party where Isumi met Nagi for the first time.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Hatsuho educated Isumi on the King’s Jewel, at least to some degree. If I’m right, Isumi will know things later on when she rises up to kick some arse for Nagi’s sake.

Item 6: The 5 remaining, working King’s Jewels

So we know about Kananiwa’s jewel. We know that Mikoto gave hers to Wataru. Aika gave hers to Athena, who gave it to Machina. Interesting that Kananiwa doesn’t vocalize whom she thinks has the other two stones, but I suspect that Hisui has one, since she was going to use Ruka to open the path to the Royal Power. (Whatever happened to Hisui and her maid anyway?) And I suspect that Gilbert (Sakuya’s half brother) has one as well, since from the start, he was trying to get Nagi to despair.

Item 7: Yukariko

Finally, there’s Yukariko. Considering her carefree nature, I’m guessing that this is why the Royal Power would accept her as its master. She was not a greedy, selfish person. She was wealthy and was not ashamed of that either. As a person, one might say Yukariko was perfectly balanced.

I just find it interesting that Yukari-chan House apparently was owned by the Himegami family before Yukariko acquired it at a young age.

The fact that Yukariko used the Royal Power ten years ago is significant. I believe it was probably ten years ago that her husband passed away. If despair is the only way to open the path, then the loss of Nagi’s father would be a catalyst, in my opinion, even with Yukariko’s carefree attitude. If I’m right, then she may have used the power in a way that will allow Nagi to meet her father before this arc is over.

As an aside, I’m not sure that Yukariko is actually truly dead either. During the Shimoda arc, it is heavily implied that Yukariko called to Hayate before he woke up at her gravestone with Nagi, who suddenly had her mother’s shawl. With the supernatural powers at play here, anything is possible.  I’d actually love for Nagi to get both her mother and father back by the time the manga ends.

In the end, this chapter was quite good for giving us more plot stuff, but it was so crammed with plot, we could only get tiniest bits here and there to try to put together with all of our other pieces. It will be interesting seeing where things go from here.