ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 506 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Sakuya tells Nagi and Hayate that Mikado sent her Las Vegas to watch over things since this is an important event regarding the Sanzenin inheritance. Since the trip sounded like fun, Sakuya agreed to go. When she hears Nagi say how this trip hasn’t been fun, she decides that she will change that since trips are supposed to be fun.

She pays Isumi a visit and discovers that even though Isumi doesn’t find the ¥150 million prize to be much money, she will never choose to lose and she won’t lose if she doesn’t press the button on the completer. However, Sakuya tricks Isumi into opening up the completer case so Sakuya can press the button. Isumi is not happy with this and not swayed by Sakuya’s statement that trips should be fun.

Sister Sonia and Yukiji are discussing things and wondering what happens if there are more than one person when time is up. Director Kananiwa shows up and informs them that if more than one person survives to the end, they will all be disqualified. Yukiji realizes that they have to take out everyone so she can win.

Nagi and Hayate are surprised to see the completer number drop to seven. They suspect that she is attacking students, but instead, she’s been offering them ¥1 million to quit. She offers that to Hayate to have him quit. Sonia and Aika observe this shrewd strategy by Yukiji since Aika has the offer to pay off Yukiji’s debt if Yukiji quits. However, Aika believes her victory is getting closer.

Sakuya pays Aika a visit and mentions the fight Sakuya had with her butler boyfriend. She denies that they had a fight, but that she wanted to prove to him she wasn’t spineless. On cue, her butler-boyfriend shows up, saying that after her actions in the jungle, he would not consider her spineless. With that, Aika quits and Yukiji is suddenly ¥28 million in debt without a safety net.

Thoughts/Review:

Whew. I hate it when I get so busy with things that I far this far behind on reviews.  Oh well.

Hata-sensei seems to have gone into this arc without a huge plan of action. Of course if rumors are right and he was originally going to use the plot from the Can’t Take My Eyes Off You anime and was forced to abandon that and go a new route, then that would explain a great deal about this arc and why it feels mostly pointless even though it is tied to the main plot.

It felt very cheap for Sakuya to just show up out of the blue (why isn’t she doing her own school stuff?) just so she could press Isumi’s completer. Having Aika’s boyfriend show up out of the blue kinda kills the interesting turn of events with her plans to win the competition.

Well, Aika’s dropping out does put Yukiji in an interesting spot. However, I really don’t see much coming of that. I did like Yukiji’s strategy up to that point to pay others to quit.

So far, other than the initial excitement of seeing how Kananiwa looks like Dolly from Can’t Take My Eyes Off You and that Ruri from that same anime is here, this entire arc has been very disappointing to me. I was hoping for something deeper, where we’d get to see Nagi’s father again and more. While that could be in store for us, somehow, I’m not that confident that we’ll get anything like that, or anything that satisfying.

So while there’s nothing wrong with this chapter, my weariness with the meandering aspects of the school trip arc dampen my enthusiasm for the chapter. Well, two weeks to the next chapter.