Hayate The Combat Butler Chapter 478: In Search Of A Love Comedy -- Review and Synopsis

Nagi covers are the best covers.

Synopsis: This week, we check back in with Nagi who is lounging about her mansion and watching Ruka on TV. She reflects on how it hasn't been long since she'd had a doujinshi competition with this idol.

Nice to see you again, miss teen idol.

Maria chimes in and warns her that she's not taking things seriously enough since they do have a rematch scheduled after ten years and she hasn't actually gained any significant improvement in skill.

Kayura also makes an appearance and adds that she only won because Maizumi used his influence and made her manga popular -- in other words, she won out of dumb luck.

See, I knew Maizumi was a lolicon.

This convinces Nagi to take a new, drastic step in her path towards becoming a true Mangaka. She declares that she would submit a manga to a magazine and possibly win an award.

She won't need to look very far.

She decides on Shounen Sunday since it's apparently been losing steam lately and they're now taking submissions for new serializations. As for the subject matter, she decides on a love comedy.

Having said that she takes a jaded glance at Maria and then quickly drags Kayura down to Wataru's place at Akihabara to search out a love comedy.

Once they get there, she shows Wataru to Kayura and reveals her plan to create a love comedy situation by having Kayura confess to him all of a sudden since Kayura is the person least involved in romance that she knows. Kayura is against the idea of a sudden confession, but she doesn't seem to be against getting to know Wataru better. She notices Saki and asks who she is and Nagi explains that she's Wataru's maid.

Kayura assumes that he's rich, but Nagi quickly tells her that he's poor. Kayura then declares that Saki must have fallen hard for Wataru if she's staying with him even though he's poor. Nagi is flabbergasted that the thought never crossed her mind before.

With that aside, she thinks it would be an even better idea to get Kayura into the mix and turn it into a love triangle. However, Kayura asks her what would happen if the confession actually went well?

Nagi thinks that it's impossible, but Kayura shows her an "I love you nyan" moe moe confession, to which Nagi responds that there's not a chance it would work.

Review: Okay, so we're taking a break from Hayate and his antics with the new girl, Makise Konoha for now to check back in with Nagi this week. It's great to see Ruka again, even though it was just a short cameo -- although I have to say that there's something off about the way her face was drawn in this chapter.

Nagi makes EVERYTHING epic.

Anyway, looks like Nagi's branching off into a separate mini-arc from Hayate from here on in with Hayate busy trying to resolve his Konoha problems and Nagi busy trying to manually create a love comedy situation and/or otherwise find some inspiration for her magazine submission.

More Nagi chapters are always fine by me, of course, but there's not much to be said here. It was a fairly amusing chapter and I've noticed that Nagi is a lot more independent of both Maria and Hayate nowadays since she can just go off to do things on her own or with her Violet Mansion support group... that's a good thing, in my opinion. It's also nice to see that 10-year promise being mentioned here again. We're definitely moving towards a timeskip ending to this manga, I'd say.

Speculation Corner: The way I see it, there are several ways that this mini mangaka arc could develop:

1. It could be resolved separately from Hayate's Makise Konoha mini-arc with Ayumu and company and perhaps we'll get some clues along the way as to the bigger, possibly final arc involving Hisui Hatsushiba.

2. This mini-arc could eventually result in Nagi and Hayate crossing paths at some point (which is probably most likely) given that Wataru and Saki are already in the middle of things and the story could develop into a more serious tone.

3. Hata might dream up something else entirely that I never even considered... very possible considering my track record with these speculations.

Fanart Corner: Here we go. For this week, I drew another Nagi fanart. I actually wanted to draw her with more realistic hair with individual strands in this one, so the main focus of this piece was really the hair. I added the little heart at the upper right corner after I'd finished rendering everything just because.