Hayate The Combat Butler Chapter 440: I Want To Meet Ika-Chan At The Beach. Actually, I Want To Meet Ika-Chan No Matter Where It Is -- Review and Synopsis

Not a fan of either of these two, but they do look quite lovely here.

Synopsis: We pick up from where the manga left off in the previous chapter, but not without a gag page featuring Hayate and Nagi and a full-color cover page with Hinagiku and Athena.

Anyway, Hina, Hamster, Chiharu, Kayura and Alice discover that the beachside restaurant where Hayate’s brother used to work has been destroyed. They’re confronted by a “mysterious beauty” who tells them that they won’t find the person they’re looking for here because the restaurant called life went out of business. The mysterious beauty points the group to an employment agency building and tells them that they might find the person they’re looking for there. The group decides that it’s pretty useless information and return to the hotel to report what they’d found to Hayate and company.

Fanservice of almost all the girls in one page.

Nagi states that this whole trip was a waste, but Hamster says it wasn’t, and brings out her secret weapon… a swimsuit. We get a fanservice page of all the girls present during this trip in their respective swimsuits. We then get a blatant Ikamusume reference panel; followed by a scene of Nagi stepping on a small octopus that looks nothing like the real thing. (seriously, Hata?)

There’s a brief conversation between Hinagiku and Chiharu wherein Chiharu teases Hina and tells her that she should try to seduce Hayate. Hinagiku responds by saying that Chiharu should do the same since she still believes that Chiharu has also fallen for Hayate. Chiharu almost quickly denies that, but decides it would be funnier to actually seduce Hayate just to troll Hina.

Meanwhile, somewhere else on the beach, Hayate is alone and thinking about his brother when he stumbles upon an octopus. Just like in the previous chapter, a mysterious person appears and tells him to hand over the octopus if he doesn’t want to die.

Review: Hmm… not much I can say about this chapter except that it’s still building up on the current plot, I suppose? At this point, it’s anybody’s guess where we’re going from here – although I’m not in a hurry for this manga to get anywhere, quite honestly. I’m personally enjoying these tiny, plot-advancing chapters, as tedious as they might be for some. Let’s just go with some random comments then.

Do I dare guess that the mysterious person might be Ikusa? It seems like it, but it’s also the most obvious speculation – which is never the right answer where Kenjiro Hata is concerned, so I’m not taking that bet, son!

Lovely full-color page there. Athena and Hina both look really pretty. I’d have preferred it if Nagi was there too, though… but I’m a hardcore Nagi fanboy, so that’s always to be expected.

The girls all look very cute in their swimsuits. I notice Nagi’s bikini is most likely the one she’s wearing on her swimsuit figure from Kotobukiya due to the star-shaped pattern, althoug the strings seem a bit different. I guess Hata was thinking, “I might as well get all the fanservice out of the way in one page.” I dunno about the Alice fanservice though. Nagi might barely be a teenager, but Alice is clearly a toddler.

I’d say miss “Mysterious Beauty” is probably the mystery silhouette person from the confession scene in the previous chapter.

Shinryaku! Ika Musume!

Finally, that Ika Musume reference was a nice touch… (Ika, Eiko and Chizuru in that panel.) the chapter is a blatant reference to that series after all.

Anyway, on to the next chapter. No break next week, so huzzah!

Random fanart insert from me

Oh yeah, have some “special feelings in snow” fanart. Thanks to Doughnut Gunso for the caption suggestion via Twitter.