December 24th, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Manga
Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 514 Review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Maria tells Nagi she was bored, which is why she’s here for this Leverage x100 Roulette game. Further, they can only use the ¥10 million gold coin to place their bet. She tells the five (Hayate, Nagi, Miki, Risa, and Izumi) that Kayura and Aika are already below to get the coin.
As they start to leave, Nagi warns Hayate that this is a bog game, in that with Maria playing second after the player, she will never lose. Yukiji arrives, stating that she has to try. Hina and Isumi also arrive and concur since ¥2 billion is at stake. When they arrive at the door to the next room, they find the entrance fee is ¥1 million. They are joined by Tsugumi and Chiharu, where Tsugumi borrows millions to get them in.
They enter a large, empty room with a dome roof, with the key hanging from a string and no way to reach it. Naturally, there’s an ATM to borrow more money, and a dispenser to exchange bundles of cash for bricks of the same size. They figure they’ll need to spend ¥1 billion to get enough bricks to reach the coin. Yukiji decides she has no choice but to borrow the money and take on all debts in order for them to get enough bricks to build a stairway to the coin.
After having borrowed ¥1.82 billion, Yukiji climbs the brick tower to get the coin. When Hayate asks her what her plan is, she reveals she has his passport. She says she will give the passport back, only if the roulette game is played by Nagi.
Thoughts/Review:
Ugh. As the catch phrase in Star Wars goes, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
So just what is Maria playing at? Kananiwa’s original intent with this roulette game could not have been a positive one (even if Hata-sensei seems to have neutered her as a threatening character). Hata-sensei loves hiding things in jokes, but it seems hard to believe a bored Maria would go along with some game that could potentially saddle people with the massive debt shown here.
Still, from a purely comedy perspective, having Maria be the dealer at this roulette game is pretty humorous. Maria can be quite sadistic when it comes to games. When she first met Nagi, she destroyed Nagi at chess. She had no problems at whipping Hayate and Kotetsu at ping pong. She could have beaten Hayate at pool, but she purposefully lost.
I suppose it is possible that Maria could throw the game, but if she’s facing Nagi, I just can’t believe she’ll back down.
Of course, that assumes Nagi is the one to actually face Maria. Yukiji is quite devious, so there’s no telling what her ultimate aim is. She would willingly see Hayate saddled with a lot of debt to suit her ends. And she has Hayate’s passport, so who knows what kind of mischief she could get into, beyond her demand that Nagi face Maria.
Man, I really hope Hata-sensei doesn’t saddle Hayate with another large debt. I still can’t shake the feeling that when all is said and done, Hayate will have at least ¥150 million in debt again. I hope not.
As an aside, Hayate and Nagi using the name “Katejina” seemed like a mistake in the name to me, but looking at the raw, it is “Katejina” and not “Kananiwa”. Turns out, this is a reference to Katejina from Mobile Suit Victory Gundam.
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She did destroy Nagi at chess… Maria is unbeatable when it comes to games. It’s payback tiem! Mai waifu is shining~
[spoiler]GG maria[/spoiler]
For some reason, I’m not getting that reference. ^_^;
maria is back to her old self and i hope she keeps at it. i like her being a tease and giving everyone hard time.
yes although its not serious now but kananiwa was fine with screwing her own students for her personal gain. whats surprising is hina’s attitude. she is is not stopping her sister but going along with her.
That’s a good point. I’d forgotten the Hina factor.
I’m kind of expecting the next chapter beginning with Hinagiku beating down Yukiji and returning that passport… Or doing that once Yukiji tries to extort more out of Hayate and Nagi for that passport.
😆 Yeah, I’d totally forgotten the Hina factor. Imagining that beating makes me laugh.
Even as a prostrate worshiper, I’m undoubtedly an hour short and a dollar late, but I must mention the anime “The Garden of Words.” OH MAN, this work jumps off the screen. Makoto Shinkai’s signature backgrounds actually glow with what I call “magic reality” — very realistic but not photo so that one gets the feeling of being immersed in a very plausible magical world. Bright, digitized colors keep your attention riveted to the incredibly fine animated rain falling on the incredibly fine animated park in the center of the incredibly fine animated central Tokyo — with Takao and Miss Yukino sitting in the gazebo, quietly talking. Green is the theme color, even to the extent of being reflected on the skin of the 15 year old Takeo and the 27 year old Miss Yukino. I’ve watched it four times since I got it yesterday, the last time three hours ago and I’m still sitting there with them in the gazebo — in that absolutely glorious setting.
I’m happy to say that the mood and outcome of the plot differ greatly from Mr. Shinkai’s other masterpiece “5 cm. per Second,” which had a tragic ending. Takeo is a serious “first year” who sees school as irrelevant and puts all his attention and efforts learning to become a shoemaker, so he skips school when it rains and goes to the park to sit in the gazebo and draw feet and shoes by himself. One day, the opening scene, there’s a woman there who moves over to give him room. The usual polite intercourse ensues and Takeo starts drawing until he drops his eraser. She catches it and gives it to him saying, “Here.” He notices she drinks beer and eats chocolate, now, at 10 in the morning, in the park! His mother is a drinker so he worries about this lady. We see her recognizing the school emblem on his sweater but saying nothing. Turns out she is skipping school also, as a teacher. Not so incidentally, she is one of Shinkai’s most attractive and adorable heroines, which makes her world class. She is pretty, sexy and troubled; he is plain, earnest and worried about what’s to become of him. I watch every microsecond, with English subtitles.
If you don’t know the plot, you should. It’s intensely emotional, Japanese-y and beautiful. See it. You will savor the ending as one of the all-time best loves scenes ever.
At the end of Mr. Shinkai’s included interview he requests us to give him our opinions about “The Garden of Words.” This is mine. I cut about 95% of it.
Thanks for the info.
(Sorry, cross-post from Batoto) For the most part I’ve been okay with the new character designs and style of drawing, but I wonder who the new character is that’s cosplaying Maria? She looks similar in most of the panels, but on page 4 (particularly the pic you used for this review) she looks even less like Maria than most people look like their Facebook photos. Not to mention the gold standard for identifying women in manga: If that’s Maria, she’s dropped 2-3 cup sizes since 444:15. (^_~)
A few people at Batoto quite aptly noted that the whole “we have to stack bricks” (versus forming a human pyramid, Hayate or Hina using their superpower athletic abilities, etc) scene seemed more than a little contrived. Any idea whether this might have been parodying something?
A couple of random thoughts from looking back at the earliest strips:
Your mileage may vary wrt the newest designs, but overall, there’s no question Hata-sensei has refined his drawing style over the years for the better. Even Maria in this chapter does look more realistic… just very different in some of her expressions.
Feel free to laugh if I’m just the last one to realize these, but the “usual disease” joke has actually been around since 18:10… and the “final boss” notion started all the way back in 19:11.
Yeah, it is contrived. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some wacky Japanese, comedy game show being parodied, but I couldn’t say for sure.
Oddly enough, I’ve come to understand that he would change his character designs to match the current anime character designs. With no anime on at the moment, his designs have started improving. For a while there, I hated how horrible the characters were starting to look. (And they all seemed in desperate need of a hair cut.)
That’s what always makes folks wonder what’s being hidden in the joke.
Re “The Garden of Words” again. I found that gazebo. Google Satellite maps/Japan/Shinjuku Gyoen Park, scroll the 360 degree camera entries and hunt. Pretty easy. Very cool.
Yeah, Google Maps can be pretty amazing.
Last “Garden.” Maybe this response will be more helpful than slavish, deserved praise: Japanese animes still don’t have nearly enough “in-betweens.” I.e. panels, frames, or stills between milepost frames during movement, especially by the lead characters. This absence produces that jerky jumping action when a character walks by. This problem’s especially bad when an aircraft flies by in the scene. Disney set the gold standard 75 years ago by putting about 5 “in-betweens” per second in. By hand, on tracing paper. That’s what you saw them doing when an artist had six papers threaded through the fingers of one hand, flipping them up and down and drawing on each one intermittently. These guys were the in-betweeners. The lead animators drew what I call milepost frames and the drudges learning the craft drew the in-betweens. Surely, Japanese artists could do something similar, faster and more accurately, with their digital, one-pixel-at-a-time machine programs. The idea here is to provide more visual input to the human eye than retina chemistry can separate, making the action appear to be smooth.
This jumping, skipping phenomena occurs often in “The Garden of Words,” alas. Hard to ignore.
Of course, each frame drawn on tracing paper was transferred to clear celluloid pages, called “cels,” inked and colored. All by hand. After being photographed onto movie film stock one page at a time, the result was spectacular. When watching the movie, we saw about 30 frames go by the projector lens per second, so we perceived smooth, continuous motion. I still watch “Snow White,” and can see Japanese tributes to it everywhere, as in “Hi ho, hi ho.”
“Snow White” remastered in Blue-Ray and out now!
OK. Thanks for the info.
Oops. Disney put in a lot more in-betweens than 5 per second. It was more like 25 or 30. All by hand and photographed one frame at a time, with that elaborate station setup that contained wooden frames, spacers and a very good camera. Sorry for my usual oops, but the difference is important.
Picked up the MANGA “The Garden of Words.” Just as good as the movie! If you’re skeptical about my description of Miss Yukino as pretty, sexy and troubled, see page 92.
I thought I had found all the good stuff in Nakatani-sama’s art work in her manga “Bloom into You.” But now I’ve discovered some more. The cover of volume 5 contains lots of good visuals, especially the shading. For example, I counted at least ten different hues in Yuu’s shirt-dress garment. Also note that the two girls’ lower and upper arms are very slightly different colors, contributing greatly to the 3d effect. Finally, I caught the extremely thin, almost invisible vertical line on Yuu’s lower back. Why would any artist put a line there? Especially Nakatani-san? Every line she draws has a rationale, so after the tenth time I had come back to it in a quandary, I finally realized that that vertical line on Yuu’s posterior is to suggest, very subtly, the beautiful orb of Yuu’s right butt cheek!
The artist slips in many such hidden-in-plain-sight suggestions. Again in Volume 5, one of my favorites is the enormous phallic stuffed animal that Yuu embraces on page 42, which is the title page of Chapter 24, titled “Lighthouse.” The scene looks like just a comfortable sleep-together for her and Touko, but notice where Yuu has nestled the bottom of this four foot long stuffed eel. Directly in her crotch with her left leg lifted a little! At first I thought it was just my fevered imagination at work, but the more I reread Miss Nkaatani’s work the more I realized that her inventions way exceed those of other manga sensei. That tiny vertical line on Yuu’s rear and the giant stuffed eel she’s hugging are deliberate statements. She includes things like this often, and these two are not isolated cases.
Oh, and see the front of Touko’s shirt on the cover of Volume 5 again. Very interesting.
More “Bloom into You.” On page 141 of volume 7 the adorable Yuu lies on her bed looking at the stars outside her window. It is 12:19 am and Yuu is trying unsuccessfully to sort out her feelings after her apparent rejection by the smart, athletic and gorgeous Touko. Touko had given Yuu a spherical star projector, which she opens then closes on her ceiling every night just before sleeping, but tonight Yuu stares at the real star field outside her window. Long a theme for love stars often figure in BiY, so it’s fortuitous that I recently discovered the song “Stardust” from 1941 on satellite radio. Apparently it’s iconic and everyone recorded it, but the best version is Nat Cole’s, which is on one of his CDs. The melody by Hoagy Carmichael carries some of the best lyrics ever, by Mitchell Parrish. The first line is “And now the purple dusk of twilight time steals across the meadows of my heart.” Great image. The rest of the lyrics are a gentle melancholy for a long lost love, perfect accompaniment for Yuu in her solitude with stardust.
Thanks for the info.
Add BiY. In Kyoto on their 2nd-year class trip Sayaka finally tells Touko that she loves her, but it’s way too late. Long before, Touko had fallen helplessly in love with Yuu, but until recently, and conveniently, Yuu hadn’t reciprocated. Yuu does finally learn to love Touko and tells her so, but because Touko is terrified of love that’s aimed at her, she hesitates and Yuu infers from this hesitation that Touko doesn’t love her back. Stalemate for all of Volume 7. However, Sayaka’s confession of love to Touko finally triggers Touko’s courage and on the return trip via the Shinkansen she desperately texts Yuu to meet her at the student council room. Volume 8, which is the last, fills out our best expectations for these two.
As usual, I was very tardy recognizing what those white disks with small rays emanating from the circumference are. They’re not random. They’re love blooms! They only show up when the character undergoes heartfelt love or intense infatuation. Very cool; I’ve never seen such a signal before in any manga, but Nakatani-sama always gives them to us.
Initially, the lead character Yuu frets because she can’t seem to fall in love, even though she really wants to. Indeed, the motif for the entire manga is that love will eventually “bloom into Yuu” (Bloom into You). This seems to be a very good English adaptation of the Japanese title, “Yagate-kimi-ni-naru,” which I’ve seen rendered as “Sooner or Later I Will Become You.” I welcome comments and corrections.
Nakatani-sama’s “Bloom into You” is ending with volume 8, and as usual it;s great. She includes one of her favorite tricks, that of having a character look directly at the reader. On page 154 [Yes, I number the pages with the inside surface of the front cover as page 0] she has Touko with the back of her right hand over her mouth while Yuu undresses her. Mouths contribute greatly to expression, so the artifice of covering it forces the reader to look at the eyes. After about five readings, I could tear my gaze away from Touko’s beautiful chest and glance at her eyes. Fantastically, her gaze went directly to my soul. Wow, gorgeous Touko’s looking right at me, in the body of Yuu, as I’m taking off her pajama top. And Touko’s helping with her left hand! Her expression radiates heat. I highly recommend this non-prurient panel. Nakatani-san often puts the reader in the body of one of her characters, which puts you right in the action.
Stars flood several panels. They’re also mixed with those love blooms. In the only panel in the entire manga in which Yuu leaks tears, on page 25 when Yuu says “I love you” and Touko responds happily and positively, they cover the entire top half. Even from outside the student council building the viewer can see some of them escaping to the sky. More of the author’s incredible attention to deail.
There’s only one word to describe Nakatani-san’s new picture book, “Bloom into You Illustration Works.” GORGEOUS. It’s a full-sized 81/2 by 11 paperback with 128 pages on heavy, archival, semi-gloss paper, packed with very high density, full-page color panels by her. Unusually for a paperback it’s Smythe bound! The stitching is only about one centimeter apart. It comes in a plastic sleeve-box that is transparent to exhibit the beautiful, specially created cover art.
All the good stuff from “Bloom into You” is included, so literally all the color pictures of Yuu and Touko appear, along with all of the black and white illustrations on the title page of each chapter. Many other characters also appear, including most of those in her “Eclair” work. The real bonus is the several portraits of Yuu and Touko that are not in BiY. Also, she includes a sequence of 12 panels showing the stages of creation for the cover illustration. Her rough drafts are so good they don’t nee much adjusting, and as I suspected she uses many hues of grey to get that great variety of shading in her work. The sequence begins with a VHD photo of her workspace.
Text has been limited to a couple of lines for each picture and it’s all in Japanese, but that’s no problem for us otaku. We know the whole story, so you can easily fit all these beautiful images into the context. For example, I was always disappointed that we didn’t get to see the girls exiting the train after their ride from the aquarium in volume 5, but a two-page panel showing Yuu pulling Touko out of her seat on the empty train in prep for departing is included in this picture book. Both girls wear the same clothing that appears nowhere else. Great stuff.
You can order it directly from kadokawa.co.jp. I paid $20 US, which is a big bargain. It would be at least $40, and probably $50, if printed in the US. Miss Nakatani-sama must be very proud of this top-of-the-ine book, “Bloom into You Illustration Works,” that contains so much of her magnificent art work.
Thanks for the info.
Heh. You know, I should make these posts of yours actual blog posts, where you get the credit.
OK