Hayate The Combat Butler Chapter 455: Love Stories Happen Surprisingly Suddenly -- Review and Synopsis

Hamster cover this time. She actually looks nice with the new art style.

Synopsis: Left with only Nagi and Hamster to help him out at the seaside restaurant, Hayate says it would be better to just give up, but with one huge slap from Nagi and some words of encouragement from the hamster, he declares that their determination has reached him and they go on and open the restaurant anyway.

Hit him harder, Nagi. He needed that!

The restaurant is packed and it seems like all is going well with the three of them working together, but after only an hour, both Nagi and Hamster are exhausted and decide to go back to the hotel and support Hayate by watching over him... from the hotel bed.

He should have seen this one coming given Nagi's stamina.

We leave our desperate butler alone for a bit with his predicament and revisit two characters who haven't made an appearance in this manga since forever, Fumi and Sharna.

Anyway, Fumi wants to go to the beach and thinks up some cockamamie excuse to go there and Sharna just humors her and plays along as usual, but not without the usual zingers. They stumble upon Ikusa who picks up a fish sausage that Fumi threw and opens it up for her. He then leaves and tells them to enjoy their time at the beach.

Lewd... (Joking aside, I wonder if the innuendo is intentional)

Fumi instantly falls in love with him and declares that she's now going to stalk him.

Review: Well, I suppose it was about time for Fumi and Sharna to show up, but I'm surprised that Hata didn't show us some of the more significant side characters such as Wataru and Saki as well as Isumi and Sakuya.

This line was kinda funny, actually.

Anyway, I didn't care much for the Fumi and Sharna segment, but I did get a kick out of watching Hayate get b|tchslapped by Nagi. I'm also quite surprised at how easy it was to convince him even though he gave it all that thought that it was impossible from the very beginning. Did he somehow think that they could make it through with sheer determination alone?

Anywayz, looks like he just managed to dig himself into even more trouble this time. 

Speculation corner: One very Hata-ish solution to Hayate's problem would be for Ruka to suddenly show up and endorse the restaurant as well as temporarily man it with her TV crew. In any case, I'm actually kinda glad that Nagi and Hamster are sort of out of the picture as well with this chapter since this whole matter is really between the brothers and I think it's time for Hayate to receive a little bit of character development on his own.

It would be easy to write in Athena suddenly showing up and using her wealth to help him out, but that just wouldn't seem right.

One other way to resolve the problem would be for Nagi and company to return in full force with Athena, Hina, Chiharu, Kayura and perhaps even the Hakuo baka-trio and Fumi and Sharna in tow? Isumi and Sakuya could also just stumble upon them and help out as well. This way, Hayate's problems would be resolved because of the friends that he has to help him out -- as opposed to Ikusa who needs to be invincible all the time because he works alone. Pretty shounen-ish way to end this arc -- and rather fitting too, I might add.

Anyway, no new fanart from me this week. I'll see if I can do a few scribbles for the next chapter.