ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 508 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Hayate confronts Kananiwa over the recording he made of her which proves she was involved with the terrorist incident earlier in their trip. As such, he demands that the final orientation begin immediately and that she has to take part with her King’s Jewel at risk. If she does, he promised to hand over the MP3 player and tells her that an intense round of gambling should cause an explosion of negative emotion.

Kayura, Izumi, Yukiji, and Hina come down to join Hayate and Kananiwa (Nagi is bailing since she’s tire), where Hayate announces that they will play Reverse Old Maid and the winner will win the ¥150 million. When Hina questions this, he says that a game of chance gives Kayura and Izumi the best of chance. Hayate convinces them to join in the competition.

With the cards dealt, Izumi’s face gives away that she has the joker card. Kayura is able to read Izumi’s face to pull the joker card from her. It is Hina’s turn to take a card from Kayura, but when Kayura tries to put her cards face down so as not to give away where the joker is, she discovers she can’t risk everything to chance and decides to use a strategy to foil Hina into not picking the joker card. However, Hina is able to deduce which card is likeliest to be the joker card and pulls it.

It is Hayate’s turn to pull a card from Hina, so she does lay her cards face down and tells Hayate to draw, betting on her luck being greater than his.

Thoughts/Review:

Well, Hata-sensei certainly seems keen on pushing forward as fast as possible. I don’t object to this, but it does seem that even though the manga is currently set in Las Vegas, we likely won’t get anything about Nagi’s dad.  And it is starting to seem that Ruri’s involvement with Nagi is nothing but fanservice, although it is possible that Ruri will have a more substantial role to play in the future.

Speaking of Nagi, I had to laugh at how Hata-sensei basically caused her to give up without having pushed her completer button (at least, not that we are aware of).

The sadistic Hayate is back, and that always amuses me. It was funny seeing how he roped the seemingly fearsome Kananiwa into his scheme, then got Izumi and Kayura to go along before baiting the Katsura sisters into playing his game.

And then there was Izumi giving away that she had the joker and even where it was, just by her facial expressions, which was quite amusing. I saw a GIF meme going around a few weeks ago for some idol anime series (sorry, don’t know which one), where the idol girl is playing cards, has two, beams when the hand coming in to pick a card is going for the one card, but then becomes horrified when the hand goes for the other card. Since I know it is a popular franchise, I’m guessing Hata-sensei may have been influenced by that anime scene.

As for Hina and luck, sometimes, Hayate has great luck at games. Just saying. 😉

Sadly though, this entire school trip arc just seems so poorly planned out in terms of pushing the plot forward. While there have been humorous elements to the arc, for the most part, it really has felt rather meaningless, even though the goal is supposed to be to get a pathway to the Royal Garden opened.

In the end, while I enjoyed the chapter, I just have a hard time with this arc as a whole since it doesn’t have the well planned feeling of other arcs in the series.