Category: Anime

Hayate no Gotoku manga review

Hayate no Gotoku! a.k.a. Hayate the Combat Butler is an anime based on a manga series by Kenjirou Hata about a debt-ridden butler and the rich young girl who saves him. The story is pretty straightforward: Ayasaki Hayate’s parents rack up a debt of 159 million yen to the yakuza and take off, leaving Hayate to handle it. After a failed attempt to kidnap Sanzenin Nagi (the rich girl) for money, he ends up working for her as her butler and owing his debt to her instead.

I started out by watching an episode sometime in November and really liked it, but didn’t have time to really dig in until earlier this year. I spent a couple of weeks blasting through both seasons of the anime and then read the manga from chapter 148 onwards. I’d like to go back and read it from volume 1, but I’ll save it for another time.

I tend to prefer character-driven manga to story-driven manga anyway, unless the story is really good. HnG has a number of interesting and likeable characters (Hayate, Maria, Nagi, Tama, Hinagiku, Isumi) and not so interesting and not so likeable characters (Sakuya, Wataru, Saki, Klaus), but even the less interesting ones still make for a few good laughs.

I enjoyed the constant spoofs of and references to other anime and manga as well. I actually got a lot of them, which shows I’ve been watching too much anime… That said, I thought the quality of episodes in Season One was really iffy. Some were good, some were not so good. Later on I discovered that most of the ones I thought were bad were actually filler, which just goes to show that Hata’s unique touch isn’t so easily imitated.

Anyway, after putting the anime behind me, I’ve finally caught up to the current manga chapter, chapter 309. That was a whirlwind ride, especially the Mykonos arc where Hayate ran into his old flame Athena. I like Athena a lot. This is may sound like blasphemy to Hinagiku fans (of which I was one until Athena showed up), but I think Athena fits Hayate better in a lot of ways. She understands that he has feelings, that he’s often in pain, that sometimes that smile is just a mask. Hinagiku still doesn’t really know Hayate, deep down inside. To be honest I think the main frontrunners for Hayate’s affection right now are Maria and Athena, with Hina in third place. Athena x Hayate forever!

That being the case, I’m rather pissed off at this whole Alice arc, wiping out Athena’s memory and turning her into a kid again for 3 months. That puts a halt on any romantic development for the next 200 chapters or so. Boo! Hiss! Hata’s also added another girl called Luca/Ruka to the mix, we’ll have to see what she can bring to the party. It might be time to drop this for a while and see how things work out.

Guin Saga Episode 1

After much hesitation, I finally sat down and watched the first episode of Guin Saga.
I say hesitation because I heard the original novels the anime is based on has been running since the seventies for hundreds of volumes, and I hate starting things that have no end. Either the anime runs on for a long time with no resolution or the writers make up their own, usually-unsatisfying anime-only ending and calls it a day.

Still I had the episode sitting on my computer for a while and eventually I ran out of things to watch, so I gave it a go. It’s not half bad at all. It seems to be moving very quickly, which is always a plus for long-running series. The animation is clean and crisp, and while the characters look a bit squat and chubby, they move very fluidly. The action scenes were over the top, but this is a series about a man with a leopard head and a princess with psychic powers, so I don’t think anyone’s looking for realism here.

The story hasn’t broken new territory yet: royal twins, kingdom sacked, parents dead, all alone, rescued by mysterious man, chased by the bad guys…or are they, etc. etc. It’s only one episode so it could go any way. Indeed the ending sequence featured some other characters we haven’t met yet, so I’m looking forward to finding out more soon. Until then!

Ponyo on the Cliff

I had a bit of time on my hands over the weeked, so I finally got round to watching that cam of Ponyo on the Cliff I uh, obtained a while ago. As expected, someone in the cinema got up and walked across the screen halfway through the show (I think it’s obligatory, really), but apart from that it was an excellent-quality cam.

The movie itself was okay. Very childish, but I’m obviously not the intended audience. My adult brain wouldn’t stop screaming at me that while it was very pretty to see a whale swimming across a road, a tsunami huge enough to turn a cliff into an island would be extremely disastrous and would result in an extremely large amount of extremely dead people. Not to mention all the stranded, dead and rotten fish in people’s houses once the waters finally receded. And just think about all the destroyed goods and boats and personal effects and books and money and clothes. They’d better have been insured or they’re in for a world of financial hurt.

Still, even if I was the intended audience, I don’t think this is one movie I would watch more than once. Growing up, the favorite movies in my house were those with lots of tension and nail-biting moments in them. Disney’s Aladdin was one of those. And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which we watched until the tape tore, then patched together with sellotape and kept on watching. Ponyo on the Cliff has very lovely animation and stirring music (Wagner called, he wants his royalties), but there’s never any doubt that everything was going to come right in the end. You can tell by the way the characters take the time to chow down on ramen and ham then snuggle down on the couch while the world goes to hell around them.

Did it help my Japanese ability any? Not really. The script was written for 5-year-old kids = very easy to understand. And the art and actions are expressive enough that they needed even have bothered with any dialogue at all. It was fun though, definitely worth at least one watch. Next on my to-watch list is Laputa: Castle in the Sky. And that’s all for today.