Hayate Reflections: Missed Potential

First of all, a shoutout to MeteorD or GLaDOSVista or whatever you like to call yourself. Would have been nice to have one more Nagi shipper on board while the manga was ending, but hey, it’s never too late to poke fun at Hayate’s salty fanbase and talk about how awesome Nagi is together.

Now then, when it comes to the Hayate fandom, when you see the phrase “missed potential” uttered, it is most often about how Hayate should have been all lovey-dovey with some other girl who is not Nagi.  I mean, the salty fans of this series act like a broken record – and I believe it has to do with the lack of creativity of a majority of these salty fans. Don’t worry, if you’re not a salty fan, then this doesn’t apply to you.

Anyway, from personal observation, it would seem to me that most uncreative fans simply rely on the few people from their ships who actually read the manga and have the brain power to make inferences about it – no matter how wrong those inferences actually turned out to be in hindsight. So what these uncreative fans do is simply regurgitate the false information that they see from other fans who are a little bit more creative than they are… but hey, that’s just a speculation from me. Let’s get right down to the actual topic of today’s Hayate Reflections: missed potential.

So while I am obviously super happy with the ending of Hayate no Gotoku which more than favored my favorite pairing of Hayate and Nagi, there are some things that I wish had been executed much better – and here they are.

Athena’s Ring Box

Ok, let’s look back to chapter 266 or the closing moments of the Golden Week arc. It was here wherein Nagi and Athena first met face to face. They would become friends later on when Athena becomes Alice, of course, but it was here in this chapter when the two most important ladies in Hayate’s life (with Nagi being a little bit more important than others) really first met. 

It was a pretty simple scene. Nagi lost her favorite hat (the one that Hayate gave her back in Radical Dreamers – which also happens to take place during the Mykonos Arc, by the way, even if the chapter itself came much earlier.) So the hat was blown by the wind to some clump of trees. Athena, who happened to be there, catches it. She then gives it back to Nagi and impliedly tells her to take good care of Hayate (which a lot of fans misunderstood, of course. They thought that Athena was threatening to take Hayate back as her boyfriend and that she would do so eventually – which was of course, just silly fan speculation with no basis in truth whatsoever). But that’s not where the missed potential lies. 

When Athena departs, she leaves something else in Nagi’s hands – it’s the ring box for the ring that Hayate gave her. This is where the missed potential really is. The ring box was never really brought up again. I mean, you can actually see it inside of Nagi’s room later on near the end of the manga, but nothing really came of it. There was tons of potential for a romantic moment between Hayate and Nagi with this setup, but it was never used. 

Like, it was clearly implying that Nagi would someday fill the gap in that box with a ring from Hayate as well – but of course, Hayate showed his affection for Nagi in other ways – which was fine, but I just saw this as a real missed opportunity for a satisfying romantic moment.

Hayate’s Birthday Present

The second one would have to be Hayate’s birthday present, of course. Remember that sometime early in the series (also covered in season 2), Nagi promised to buy Hayate a birthday present with money that she earned by herself for doing a part-time job at café donguri and when she asked Hayate, he said he wanted a watch so that he could keep it with him all the time. Well, it’s actually brought up several times. At the end of the class trip arc, Nagi actually mentions that Hayate’s birthday is coming up. 

In the end, Hata skipped past Hayate’s birthday completely and then just skimmed over Nagi’s birthday. This was a really missed opportunity to have Nagi give Hayate a watch… or even if she did give him the watch off-panel, it could have been the trigger for him to realize his true feelings for Nagi later on inside of the Royal Garden. Sadly, it was never utilized – but at least Hayate still fell for Nagi in chapter 567, so it’s all good.

So with that said, that wraps up Hayate reflections for this week. Are there any particular scenes in this manga that you think might have been a missed opportunity? Do let me know in the comments.

Fanart Corner

Oh, and here are some fanart for the week. Some of them are a bit lewd, but it’s OK! Anyway, I’ll be on vacation away from my main pc next week, so I probably won’t have any Hayate reflections to show. With that said, I will try to make a blog post, so I’ll definitely still see you next week. This has been Hayate Reflections and this is lordcloudx out. By the way, Hata-sensei noticed my art this week again~ so happy!

Finally got a good shot of this. Prismacolor colored pencils and Nagi's glorious booty.

Dat ass is quite fine~

Actually just painted over an old piece that was becoming faded with age. Original was in colored pencils and felt tipped markers. This one is done in watercolors.

I should scan this one. Watercolors with Sakura brush pen for the outlines.