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| Not too fond of this guy, but I don't hate him, at least. |
I’ve done quite a few character-centric essays on this blog
(mostly Nagi), but I just recently realized that I’ve never talked at length
about the titular main character of this manga, Hayate Ayasaki himself. I have
to thank Roop Banerjee from the comments for bringing this to my attention.
Now if you know me, you probably realize that I am not that fond of Hayate as a
character, but that does not preclude me from doing this character analysis
anyway. So to get started on my disorganized ramblings, let’s start with my
basic impression of him based on the manga.
Not As Saintly As He
Seems
If you only knew Hayate from the anime, you would probably
feel very sorry for him – and so do I. In fact, you might feel even more sorry
for him if you read what happened to him during the End of the World Arc.
With that aside, you should also realize that Hayate is not
as saintly as he appears to be in the anime. He is a good kid at heart, but he is really not that good.
In fact, if we look into his motivations and his past, you will realize that he
is a very broken individual – pretty much like a less serious version of Emiya
Shirou from Fate/Stay Night -- if you
are familiar with that anime/visual novel.
But I digress… to continue, Hayate may indeed be the type of person that you
can rely on to bail you out of trouble if you ask him nicely enough, but his
“nice” exterior is really just a manifestation of his very broken personality
and his rather misshapen sense of values.
He Is Nice Because He
Can’t Say NO!
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| Sorry, I'm not going to talk about Hayate's repressed cross-dressing tendencies |
If you read the manga, then you will notice several instances wherein it is
heavily implied that Hayate is not being nice to everyone simply because he’s
just a nice guy, but rather, because he simply can’t find it himself to refuse
to do something for anyone who asks him nicely enough. In short, he's sometimes doing it against his will -- even if he doesn't always show it.
This is rather dangerous because there are several instances
when people simply abuse his apparently kind nature and when he gets fed up, he
can resort to violence (albeit for comedic purposes so far) such as with the
Hakuo Baka Trio (Risa, Miki and Izumi) whom he has once kicked out of a
building for teasing him too much. (It’s somewhere in Ruka’s arc. It actually
happened. Look it up if you want. I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to.)
Hayate also selectively feels that it’s fine to use random
violence on certain side characters including
Yukiji, Eight, Gilbert and Kotetsu
In fact, in the earlier parts of the manga, even Nagi and
Maria have been shown to take advantage of Hayate’s pushover personality a bit
too much – and let’s not forget Yukiji (although Hayate does get back at her
often).
Anyway, to get back to the point, Hayate has become a
doormat of a person over the years because he is an extremely indecisive
individual by default. He is the type who will go with the flow rather than put
his foot down and refuse firmly. This is actually lampooned in the first
episode of cuties – which was also a part of the manga when various characters,
including Isumi, Fumi and Sharna take advantage of him for their own ends without
considering that they may be heavily inconveniencing Hayate. Also, this is no
isolated incident since the same thing happened when Nagi chased him out of the
house and he used the money that Maria provided him to help out random
strangers simply because he couldn’t say no.
He CAN Say “No” Now
Fortunately, while Hayate’s character development has been
extremely slow, he has been gradually learning to take charge of his
own life and to actually make decisions for himself – and for his own sake
rather than that of anyone else. This is a positive change from him in my
opinion and we can see this prominently when he actually outright rejects a
confession from Makise Konoha. To add to this, he has also learned to be a lot
less vague with his actions and words when he makes it clear to Ayumu , who
asked him directly about meeting with Konoha , that he rejected her.
Hayate’s Past
Now that we’ve established that Hayate isn’t such a nice guy
even if he apparently IS a nice guy, let’s try to figure out why? What probably
goes on in the head of our cross-dressing combat butler?
Hayate’s past might be known only to a few characters within the manga, but
it’s always been pretty much an open book to us. We know that Hayate has extremely abusive
parents who not only trained him in all sorts of illegal activities, but also
sold him off to the mafia for his organs in order to pay off the debt that they
probably ran up through gambling and poorly-planned get-rich quick schemes.
His brother was the one family member whom he seemed to look up to, but Ikusa just had too much of an archer complex and wanted to spread himself really thin and save THE WOOORLD!
His one refuge 10 years ago from the current date of the manga was meeting with
Athena and becoming her butler/live-in boytoy
(they were six and Athena is an extremely mature six year-old, remember
that!) inside of the Royal Garden. It was at the lowest point of Hayate’s young
life when his father had just betrayed him that he met his first love, Athena.
Being at a rather impressionable age, Hayate naturally took to whatever piece
of advice Athena had to give him and this was when his rather ill-conceived
notions of love began to take form – when Athena taught him “the pain of love:” that you do not deserve to have a
girlfriend unless you have enough money to take care of her for the rest of her
life.
Athena’s Roadblocks
of Love
In my opinion, this triggered two psychological roadblocks to romance within
Hayate’s mind – and which has been a huge barrier between him and Nagi (and
with every other prospect except Athena, but who cares about these other prospects?
Not I, my friend. Not I.)
1.
He believes that he is not worthy of any girl
since he is (was) nothing more than a debt-ridden butler. The complete opposite
of someone who has “enough money to take care of a girl for the rest of her
life.” Currently, Hayate seems to have
grown out of this attitude a bit, but not quite completely, I would say.
2.
He has become extremely attached to money. This
can also be attributed to him living in scarcity for practically all of his
life – but I’m betting that Athena’s initial conditioning when he was a child
has a lot to do with this as well. This is apparent in the way he wants to
protect Nagi’s inheritance at all costs and how he sees money as the thing that
had been protecting Nagi all her life. This definitely hasn’t changed as you
can see right now in the current chapters how he values protecting Nagi’s
inheritance when she had just inadvertently confessed her truest feelings to
him through her manga. If he does not give justice to Nagi’s feelings, then
Hayate would be the worst character ever in his own manga – but I do have faith
in Hata and his unobtrusive style of developing his characters.
Hayate’s Relationship
With Nagi
It’s no secret that I’m a big Hayate x Nagi shipper (for
Nagi’s sake and nothing else), but don’t worry, I’ll keep the shipping talk to
a minimum… really!
Hayate’s relationship with Nagi is rather hard to pinpoint. Many people happily
want to believe that it’s purely platonic, but Hayate doesn’t treat Nagi like a
little sister at all – nor does he treat her the same way that a real butler
would treat his mistress for that matter.
We know for a fact that Hayate and Nagi are actually quite
friendly with each other. Whenever they interact, their conversations just flow
very naturally – this is of course, not unique to Nagi and Hayate as the same
could be said of Hayate x Hinagiku and Hayate x Ruka… not so much for Athena x
Hayate, actually (think about that for those still sailing the sunken ship).
If anything, I’d say Hayate treats Nagi like a cute junior
(kouhai), someone younger than him whom he doesn’t view as a romantic prospect
(yet) because of her age. I would say that he imagines himself to be something
like a doting, protective senior when it comes to his relationship with Nagi.
This is why he is able to have natural, friendly conversations with her and
even make frequent pokes at her because of her hikkikomori otaku lifestyle.
She is “Different”
Yet, one frequently observable thing about Hayate’s
relationship with Nagi is that he values her much more than anyone else in his
life. He has proven this time and again – and the best example of this is still
Heaven Is A Place On Earth (It’s canon. Suck it, haters!) Let us also not forget that Hayate’s demon
mode and his special move, the titular Hayate no Gotoku! is reserved only for
Nagi’s sake. So at the very least, this proves that Hayate cares a whole lot
for Nagi – even if we cannot definitely call this “care” love for now –
dismissing it as purely platonic is delusional, but keep dreaming if that helps
you sleep better at night~
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| His special move was created out of a need to rescue Nagi. |
Furthermore, Hayate himself is aware that he gives Nagi
special treatment. He has no qualms about admitting that she is “his life.” He has mentioned that she is a “special case”
when Ruka asked him if he would treat her the same way if she became a resident
of the Violet Mansion. Again, we can dismissively say that this is just because
Nagi is still his mistress, but then again, Hata has proven how he loves giving
a nod to continuity in this series, so I would like to assume that there is
something else that makes him treat Nagi differently.
It must be because of the debt, right? Well, Hayate paid off
his own debt near the end of the Level 5 arc and yet, he also freely choose to
continue on being Nagi’s butler again.
Still, this cannot be considered a confession of love from Hayate and we
can clearly ascertain this based on the look of shock on his face when he read
Nagi’s latest manga plot detailing her feelings for him.
Yet again, Hayate still hasn’t responded to her confession
and has instead dedicated his life to ensuring that Nagi becomes the sole
heiress to the Sanzenin inheritance. We have no clue what he thought of her
confession and again, we can dismissively claim that he is only trying his best
for Nagi because of his promise to Yukariko – but again, that would be a denial
of the continuity and connectedness of the events of the manga; and we all know
that Hata loves to connect seemingly unrelated events together and will somehow
make even the most insignificant event/action relevant at a later stage. It’s
convoluted and not as straightforward as you might be used to from reading
young adult novels from western authors, but that’s the way the manga rolls –
deal with it.
So what we can be sure of is that Nagi is “special” to
Hayate, but why this is so, is something that no one can really say for sure
with 100% certainty. In my opinion, Hayate himself is ill-equipped to answer
this question because he has never really given his relationship with Nagi the
kind of reflection that we all want to see from him (whether you are hoping for
this ship to sink or sail).
Complementary
Opposites
With that said, it would not be very bold of me to say that
Nagi completes Hayate and vice versa. We all know the basics that they are both
the main characters of this manga and the usual
opposing character traits that they possess, but here are two more
points you might not be aware of.
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| You do know I had this subject matter in mind when I drew this fanart, right? |
1.
Hayate might be the king of misfortune, but his
life has been generally peaceful and happy together with Nagi. Why is this so?
Could it be because his mistress is “blessed by luck?” Again, you have the
choice of being dismissive and underestimating Hata here, or you could
(finally) admit that he does have a good plot outline for this manga and we are
still on track even though he had to change a few events around because of the
third anime season adaptation.
2.
Hayate is extremely passive and noncommittal.
Instead of coming to a point and making a definite choice when the chips are
down, he’d rather get depressed and become evasive. In fact, the women in his life have been the
ones who have bailed him out of making some of the most crucial choices that he
should have made himself. Just take a look at the Golden Week arc when Nagi
saved him from having to make a decision himself by sacrificing her inheritance
just so he wouldn’t feel depressed (also, how can you not love her character
after that?)
So why was Nagi able to make that decision so quickly? Because she is Hayate’s
complementary opposite, that’s why. Hayate is indecisive and Nagi is extremely
decisive – to the point of being needlessly impulsive at times. When she says
she will do something, she will do it by hook or by crook even if she is often
ill-equipped to follow through on her bold statements. After having grown out
of her tsundere nature, we can also observe just how straightforward she can be
– especially in expressing her feelings for Hayate, which she no longer feels
the need to hide – even if Hayate had been too dense to notice them until he
saw her manga (he might still not know the full extent of her feelings at this
point as well.)
Lopsided
Co-Development
A long time ago, people would have been justified in hating
Nagi and singing praises for Hayate. In the light of the more recent
developments of the manga however, the opposite is quite true – unless you’re
reading a different manga and/or you just hate Nagi, in that case, screw you,
hater! Die in a fire!
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| This fanart accurately sums up my impression of how much their respective characters have been developed so far. |
Anway, we have all seen Nagi’s amazing growth throughout
this manga. We can complain about how abrupt this growth has been and how
unrealistic it is, but it is what it is. The author has favored her development
and she has matured into quite an admirable young girl – even though she still
has her flaws and is definitely still a work-in-progress.
At this point however, let’s go back to Hayate. Throughout
the 500+ chapters and 47 (soon to be 48 and I’ve preordered it because there’s
a special naughty card of Nagi) volumes of this manga, his character
development has been very subdued. Yes, there are some slight signs of
development here and there, but there have been no major breakthroughs like
what we’ve seen from Nagi:
- · She is
able to sleep on her own now when she used to need Maria by her side.
-
- · She has learned to use her incredible luck to
beat even someone who is supposedly unbeatable at games like Maria.
-
- ·
She has now become the most insightful member of
the “brainy” group. She is the one who always comes up with the best ideas.
-
- · She has grown out of her initially tsundere
nature when it comes to Hayate, although she still retains a somewhat subdued
tsundere persona.
And if you want to see just how much she has changed as a
character, just imagine the Nagi from season 2 of the anime and how she would
react if she ever saw Hayate confessing to say someone like HInagiku? She’d
probably try to beat him up or scream at him in a comedic fashion, right?
Now imagine the Nagi from the current manga chapters in the
same situation. Boom! Explosion of negative emotions! Why? Because her love for
Hayate is real – it is something that she has nurtured (despite the
misunderstanding) throughout the manga and even if you dismiss it as idealistic
or “incomplete,” the manga heavily implies that this love isn’t fake nor is it
some form of compensation with Nagi lying to herself as in Ruka’s case. I
personally do not look any further than that.
So how about Hayate? Let’s imagine the Hayate from 400
chapters ago if he ever saw Nagi in trouble:
Hayate: OMG! Ojou-sama is in trouble. I must rescue her!
Here I come, ojou-sama!
Now let’s imagine how the current Hayate would react:
Hayate: OMG! Ojou-sama is in trouble. I must rescue her!
Here I come, ojou-sama!
Ok, let’s say Ayumu confessed to him (which she already did)
Several hundred chapters ago Hayate: I prefer 2D women!
Current Hayate: Ehehe… (patiently waits for something to happen to bail him out
of this situation)
My point being: yes, he has changed a bit, but not by much
and his character development feels extremely lopsided next to the co-main
character (mai waifu). Hayate’s development needs to catch up with Nagi’s or he
just keeps making himself look bad next to her, in my opinion. I’d go as far as
to say that Hayate doesn’t deserve her (or anyone for that matter) at this
point even if I still want them to end up together for Nagi’s sake.
Major breakthroughs for Hayate so far:
- He has finally learned how to say no at times.
- He has started considering his own future and happiness
- He finally acknowledges that girls do find him attractive
He's still got a long way to go in my opinion... but that can be rectified with...
Hayate Needs Some
Introspection
We need a window into Hayate’s thoughts at this point. It’s
been far too long. We need to finally see how he thinks and what he thinks
about the rapid developments going on around him. Hayate is already an
intentionally vague character and it doesn’t help us in understanding him any better
when Hata purposely hides his deepest thoughts from us.
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| Just look inside yourself and embrace your inner lolicon, Hayate... actually, you don't have to. She's only three years younger than you and you're both teenagers. |
There is some excitement building up as we go into the final
arc and prepare for this much awaited introspection but at the back of my mind,
there is this nagging fear that we will never have it and Hata will just show
us Hayate making his final decision out of nowhere and then explaining things away
with a one-liner. That could make for a cute ending, but the frustration level
of some readers might have hit the saturation point at that stage and Hayate’s
character might seem irredeemable (he already is to some readers) if Hata waits
too long to spring the butler’s inner thoughts on us.
Anyway, this concludes my very disorganized ramblings on Mr.
Ayasaki. I hope you found it entertaining, at the very least and I eagerly
await your comments for further discussion.
