December 28th, 2019 
AstroNerdBoy ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku manga volume 31 review
Hayate the Combat Butler Volume 31
Since I’ve already reviewed this volume based on the Japanese tankoubon, this review will focus on the Viz release as well as additional thoughts regarding the content of Hayate the Combat Butler Volume 31.
Quick Highlights
The rivalry between Nagi and Ruka continues in this volume. Nagi’s decision to make her doujinshi commercially viable with a gimmick is fun. It also helps push her story along to allow her to continue to grow as a character.
The resolution of the Wataru x Isumi storyline is kinda sad, but kinda nice. I liked that pairing, but at the same time, I like Wataru x Saki.
Kayura shows up and will become another major supporting character.
And finally, anime-only characters Kirika and Shion make their first manga cameo.
All in all, Hayate the Combat Butler Volume 31 is good in terms of story and comedy. However, Hata-sensei’s character designs continue to suffer, which is unfortunate. And then there’s Viz…😠
Viz Sucks
You know, I’ve despised Viz for years. Originally, they just annoyed me because they wouldn’t use Japanese honorifics in titles. But one day they sent me promotional materials for some series of theirs that they wanted advertised. So I made a post using them and promoting the title (for no pay or reward, just to be pro-legal anime). And then the bastards turned around and made a copyright claim on my post. 🤬 After that, I angrily despised Viz because they wouldn’t rectify the situation.
Still, when they released Hayate the Combat Butler and went all out on the honorific usage, I put my anger and loathing of Viz on the shelf to support a quality product from them. Not that it really mattered ’cause apparently few people bought the manga, so Viz made matters worse by slowing down publication to just two volumes a year. 😑
As they slowed down production, I started noticing tiny things that began to annoy me at first. But now, it pisses me off. For a start, Viz no longer goes all out on the honorific usage to give the full Japanese flavor that’s accurate and readable.
Further, the adapter here really decided to rewrite things, likely in the name of localization, rather than be accurate but readable. As such, Isumi’s hilarious threat to boil water in Nagi’s and Sakuya’s belly buttons is replaced with some stupidity about horse-feathers and a snowball in hell. What? And that’s just for a start.
No doubt, the translator or adapter (whomever made this decision) has some reasoning FAR superior to ours, and knows why accurate but readable was NOT the way to go. Yes, a idiotic rewrite where none was needed was the best solution. Just like “doujinshi” had to be replaced with “manga.”
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
In the end, the story elements of Hayate the Combat Butler Volume 31 are fine. Hata-sensei’s character designs continue to degrade. And Viz’s adaptation gets worse because some smeghead feels that they need to rewrite things ’cause “reasons” makes it hard to recommend buying this. Amazing how Viz keeps doing things to further decrease sales of this title. And that’s why I say they hate the series.
Posted in 
Tags: 
The harsh truth is that, very often, honorifics just don’t sell or appeal to viewers or readers. For instance, Crunchyroll and Netflix’s decision to keep honorifics in recent anime releases for Latin America has provoked a strong backlash amidst the local online community.
This is still a business, and the workplaces of many employees rely on sales, after all.The mere act of keeping a niche, relatively obscure series like Hayate in the market at all is already, on itself, a large show of god trust on the series on Viz’s part.
And yet, with a good manga, they’ve not been a detriment. Fruits Basket did insanely well for TokyoPop, and that was translated by the Twins.
That surprises me ’cause I’ve seen Spanish scanlations of manga that have the honorifics retained.
I suspect they are contractually obligated to do so.
Petty complaint: I wanted to find out whether my memory was corrupted, or whether Viz was also behind one of the worst crimes in my memory – the godawful pronunciations in the Ranma dubs. (“Suh-SOO-key” versus “SAH-s’kay” being the one I most keenly remember. Maybe the hideous song dubs too, but I think I may have blocked that out completely.)
So I googled ep 104, and Viz’s website popped up. Went to the website, and it complained about my adblocker. Which was weird, since I already had viz.com whitelisted… I’m guessing from a previous attempt long ago. Tried reloading, tried whitelisting anything I could find in the page source. Tried googling for possible solutions, if others have run into same. Absolutely frickin’ nothing. So I’m still staring at this, but my patience ran out and now I just don’t care anymore. (I’m guessing that’s what happened the last time, too.)
Congrats, Viz. You’re apparently either incompetent enough, or hellbent against adblockers enough, that someone can’t watch video on your site without completely uninstalling their adblocker. To that, the most polite thing I can say is “Hell no.”
I guess I did care enough to find out about the atrocious song(s), after all. And yes, Viz were the culprits. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2007-12-27
Ugh.
I would never uninstall any of my protections. The only thing I do is drop VPN to watch streaming services, which I hate to do.
Yeeeeeeeah, vuck Fizz.
https://torrentfreak.com/mangadex-targeted-by-dmca-subpoena-now-migrating-servers-200103/
But tbh, I still think Cool Japan is probably the primary driving force behind this recent low-key mop-up operation. And I still think they won’t be satisfied until only small groups quietly share manga and/or anime, commercially available or not. I very much hope to be proven wrong.
Apparently, it gets better. Viz’s chosen attack dog is… well, let’s say a bit ethically-challenged.
https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-slammed-by-court-of-appeals-120713/
I hate copyright trolls with a passion. And Viz using someone like this isn’t surprising to me.
And even among copyright trolls, this one is a serious piece of work. (>_<)
Yeah, for sure. But no doubt, he’s gotten rich being the POS he is. 😑
You may be right.
The MangaDex folks don’t seem to be too worried about this turn of events. But we’ll see.
I’m not sure what if anything it means, but Firefox is now telling me mangadex.org is a Security Risk. (On occasion, websites that piss off the RIAA/MPAA/etc seem to have things like that happen – and iirc, Cool Japan teamed up with MPAA.)
Hopefully all just minor weird coincidence. (^_^)°
I can’t access the site at the moment, so I don’t know if Waterfox will give the same error or not.
Just s a footnote: It’s finally back up as mangadex.cc.
Thanks!