Hayate the Combat Butler Chapter 433: Those Stones Were Once Considered More Valuable Than Gold - Review and Synopsis
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| Housen's back... like a boss! |
Synopsis: From atop a building overlooking the
Violet Mansion, Yozora Housen (you guys following the manga haven’t forgotten
her, right?) reports in to her still unidentified employer. Apparently, things
concluded too smoothly and for some reason, Ruka can’t be used for their plans
anymore.
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| Ruka's made her choice already. Move on, people. Just move on. |
Meanwhile,
presumably back at her studio, Atsumari asks Ruka if everything is over and she
re-affirms her decision to follow the path of being an idol by declaring that
this time, she would go all out.
August 14th,
back at the Violet Mansion, Nagi reveals to everyone that she would be
returning to the Sanzen’in mansion and that she had always planned to do so as
soon as the doujinshi competition was over. This elicits some anxious and
rather amusing reactions from the current residents of the Violet Mansion who
have pretty much made it their home.
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| U funny, Chiharu |
Hayate
chimes in to reassure everyone that nothing would change and that he and Klaus
would simply take turns serving as the butler of the mansion (this is the setup
that we see in Cuties – which confirms that season to be at least partially
canon now along with the non-manga-conflicting parts of CTMEOY).
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| Athena gets a panel. |
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| I understand the symbolism of the mask, but what's with those coffee cans? |
Back with
Housen, we find out that she’s actually a maid for this other candidate – who happens
to be Hisui. In case you’re curious as to who she might be, according to
discussions from everyone over at Animesuki
and RPG
dot net, she’s most likely a niece of Sanzen’in Mikado and Jenny’s (Nagi’s
childhood friend) sister. Hisui was first mentioned in chapter 384 of this
manga. The name totally didn’t ring a bell with me, but that’s what being a
lurker comes in handy for. I went ahead and hunted down the
panels where she’s mentioned.
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| Totally glossed over these panels |
Review: I was honestly prepared to write a
short review for chapter 433 since just like everyone else, I had expected a
fanservice beach chapter this week, but what do we get instead *GASP* actual
plot development. Apparently, Hata-sensei is determined to keep moving the plot
along at a steady pace, thus, while there were some light-hearted moments in
this chapter, most of it was all business – just setting forth the premise of
this new story arc – which we can all expect to be about Nagi getting her
inheritance back.
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| Just seeing things through rose-colored glasses, but Nagi looks pretty epic here. |
Furthermore,
I think it’s pretty much a given now that the events of Can’t Take My Eyes Off
You will definitely follow after (and make sense) after this current arc is
concluded based on how it’s now been set up how Hayate and Klaus will take
turns being the Violet Mansion’s butler.
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| Nagi: Just reminding everyone that I'M the main heroine here. |
The great
thing is that while we do know that Nagi seems to be living a life of luxury
again in CTMEOY, we are still unaware of exactly how this came to be. There are
so many unknown elements just recently introduced in this chapter, so the
journey to getting to CTMEOY promises to be an intriguing one – especially given
that this arc appears to be more action-oriented given the presence of Yozora
Housen, who, if you guys still remember, managed to hold off both Hayate and
Isumi (let’s include Tama as well since he still is a white tiger after all) at
once with a smirk on her face.
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| Her appearance reminds me a bit of Nagi... so I'll just call her "Dark Nagi" from now on |
Based on
what we’ve been shown so far, it seems that there’ll be no new shipping angles
for this new story arc – which I think is a good thing since we pretty much got
an overdose of that in Ruka’s arc. Ruka herself will probably be pretty busy
with her own concert schedules and won’t feature too prominently in this arc.
This might disappoint her fans, but I’m sure she’ll still make an appearance
from time to time. In any case, since this arc appears set to advance the main
plot and not the romantic subplot of HnG, we can at least expect the passengers
of this manga’s ever-conflicting ships to just settle down and enjoy the story
for what it is for a while without any heroine-centric whining – unless both
Yozora and Hisui somehow fall in love with the oblivious butler, but I doubt
that would happen.
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| Can we expect to see Kohaku, Shiki and Arcueid next? |
Things I’d
like to see in this arc:
- Himegami finally featuring as a prominent supporting character and some details on his relationship with Nagi in the past
- Showdown between the battle-ready characters of this manga vs the new bad guys. Hayate, Hina, Athena (teenage version), Isumi vs Yozora Housen and Hisui(?) Not too sure if Hisui is a battle-ready character, but Mikado somehow fears her, at least.
- Nagi taking an active role (despite not being a battle-ready character) in this arc instead of reverting to her damsel in distress role from several hundred chapters ago.
- Hayate getting pushed to use his trademark “Hayate no Gotoku” move once again
- Hina going for a Wooden Masamune (lol) and Shirousakura dual wield.
- Developments explaining Hayate’s reaction to Nagi’s confession in Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (like I said before, I’m a Hayate x Nagi shipper foreeever!)
In any
case, this was a pretty awesome way to start off the new story arc. I’m quite
excited to find out what Hata has in store for us. How do you guys feel about it? Lemme know in the comments.
I'm glad that Hata decided to just move on with the story then have a few gag chapters, which is what everyone expected. This is also a good way to start making Hayate's brother relevent to the story, because as we know he has Hayate's King's Jewel, which Mikado may or may not know about. While all the shipping aspects seem to be dying down as the series go on, with much more focus on the character growth of the people in it. Overall this was an interesting chapter, moving along the story and introducing the new character Hisui (Who does like a bit like Nagi, with I think a bit of the hamster mixed in personally) I look forward to seeing where this will go next.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that struck me about this chapter is that Nagi seems pretty confident that Mikado is actually on her side. I guess this comes from the fact that she is still his granddaughter
DeleteI think I've got a pretty sound theory for why Athena is currently in chibi mode based on Yozora Housen's message about finding candidates to open the Royal Garden. It might be that Athena temporarily relinquished her memories and powers on purpose in order to prevent Hisui and Housen from using her as a possible candidate.
I swear, I wish I knew why my company is blocking the reply button from Blogger but...
ReplyDelete>I understand the symbolism of the mask, but what's with those coffee cans?
(1) The end of the doujinshi contest in chapter 429.
(2) This was foreshadowed in chapter 218. ^_^
Pretty awesome, considering how many years passed from Hata-sensei dropping an image of the coffee cans until that actually paid off.
>The great thing is that while we do know that Nagi seems to be living a life of luxury again in CTMEOY, we are still unaware of exactly how this came to be.
This is the same element that I enjoyed from the doujinshi arc. We knew that Ruka would somehow be out of the picture and that Hayate would be with Nagi, but we didn't know how that would come about. The journey was the fun part, and I think it will be more fun for the "Nagi returns to the mansion" arc (or whatever the arc ends up being called).
BTW, I see "Violet Mansion" referenced, but I've never seeing Yukari-chan House called that in the manga. Where's that coming from?
Re Coffee Cans: Now that you mention it, I think I do remember you mentioning those coffee cans on your blog. I guess those coffee cans symbolize whatever Nagi might have gained at the end of the doujinshi contest?
DeleteRe Yukari-chan house: The wiki says it's called that in the manga "often." (trivia portion) http://hayatenogotoku.wikia.com/wiki/Violet_Mansion Maybe the scanlators are omitting this when they translate? That reminds me, we still dunno what was up with that coffin in the secret room.
I just thought of a pretty epic plot twist while writing this reply: what if Ikusa turns out to be Hisui's own personal combat butler? Hayate and company might be overmatched even with Hina and Isumi around unless Athena grows up real quick. (although she is still shown to be in child form in Cuties -- we can't be sure if her powers and memories are back or not in episodes 11-12 though.)