Moé Moé Rabu

With this being the last episode of Hayate no Gotoku, I had no idea what to expect as the ending of episode 51 ended on a pretty good note. But once again, the series has proved to go beyond my expectations and delivered an episode that places a smile on my face at the end of it. This episode we have Hayate, Nagi, and Maria off in Greece taking a holiday and Hayate tries to convince Nagi to play outside. Of course Nagi being Nagi, she eventually agrees to do so and this sets it up for the plot this episode.

Impressions

Quite funny how Hayate happens to leap through a time skip and ended up meeting a young Nagi, and coming to understand why she is a hikkikomori. But I also find it kind of romantic how Hayate was the man that Nagi meet when she was younger, and back to the present, Hayate is there to finally keep his promise. It’s also these small developments throughout the series that I really love, even though the series itself is more comedic than anything else, as it gives a balance to the show. Not to mention this has to be one of the more action packed episodes of late as we get to see Hayate show some real skills.

One unexpected thing for this episode was seeing Ayumu and Hinagiku together enjoying a vacation with Risa, Miki, and Izumi. I’m quite sure throughout this entire series Ayumu and Hinagiku have never met before, yet we get a flashback scene to when the two were on a ferris wheel. So we somehow got a HUGE gap in between that doesn’t explain how they came about meeting, and the conversation they had on that ferris wheel. I can pretty much gather what they were talking about but it kind of enrages me that they brought this in now at the very end of the series. However I see the two of them very good friends since both are fairly regular girls unlike Nagi and others but in the end, they are all contenders for Hayate’s heart. Still I’m glad we had some Hinagiku and Ayumu screen time.

With this final episode, I’m rather impressed how this episode relates to the 4th ED sequence as it all makes perfect sense. I would have thought that everyone would’ve met up at some point, but then it would’ve ruined the mood built up between each group.

Final Impressions

As I’m writing this, I’m kind of in disbelief that I have finally reached the end of the series for various reasons. Firstly I can’t believe I actually blogged right through 52 episodes but I am indeed sadden that this is the end. Initially when I first heard of this series, I had no knowledge on what the series was about, but after a few episodes, I became hooked. I looked forward to each episode each week, but there have been times when I have thought about drop blogging about the series since at that time, I had read up on the manga, and the series started to divert from the manga quite a bit. The episodes mainly after Hayate declaring to be Nagi’s protector and the Butler Battles were the slower parts of the series, but during the Butler Battles, it started to pick up once again.

One of the enjoyable aspects of Hayate no Gotoku was indeed the various parodies as well as the simple and quick jokes. The series certainly has that “anything goes” style of presentation and it has worked really well. SynergySP have delivered week after week of not just the parodies, but as well as excellent and clean animation with very little or no signs of decline in quality. That’s something quite rare to see in series that stretch out as long as 52 episodes. Although some parodies we reused many times, they have managed to keep it fresh by bringing in a variety of anime and gaming references where I surprisingly picked out most of them.

The number of characters is quite large, yet it does feel that we know most of them pretty well. Although I would say some characters didn’t get enough screentime, but the rest got some moderate amounts. Hands down Hinagiku is right at the top of the list of all time favourite Hayate no Gotoku characters along with Maria and Isumi. Nagi at first I found to be pretty annoying, but as the series progressed, I found her to be actually pretty cute especially with the tsundere aspects. Though I would say it’s probably because of the 3rd ED sequence that made me like her even more. Ayumu is also a great character in the normal sense and is one of the better rivals with Nagi since any episodes that involve those two turn to enjoyable.

Despite this being a 52 episode series, it has suffered quite a bit now and then where it stays on track with the manga, then diverges on a completely different path. This does piss me off now and then as some parts of the manga that I have read are really good and I think seeing it in animated form would be the greatest. But that isn’t to say that the anime originals were bad, in fact some turned out really well. With the second season coming along, I only hope that it doesn’t suffer the same thing.

In the end, Hayate no Gotoku has become of my all time favourites, although it doesn’t rate high enough to reach the near top of the list, but it does have a lot of rewatch value since I can just pick a random episode and just watch it. The “anything goes” theme certainly does work, and if anything, it almost reminds me of Ranma 1/2 with it’s “anything goes” style of martial arts as you don’t know what to expect, except a lot of laughter.