First Impressions / Hayate no Gotoku!

Summary:

Hayate now owes Nagi after she paid off his debt, and it will take him about 40 years to pay her back. For now, he accompanies her in playing a video game, and she tells him about how there are only three people living here because it’s a small house. When Hayate says that he’s just happy to be living under the same roof with a cute girl, Nagi assumes that he’s talking about her, so she gets angry when she finds out he’s actually referring to Maria. Hayate begins his new job in earnest the next morning, and he goes to ask Maria about what to do. She assigns him to go wake up Nagi, but when Hayate gets to her room, he finds a large white tiger on the bed with her. In his mind, he concludes that it must be a new Sony product. Nagi soon wakes up, so Hayate tries to alert her to the danger, but Nagi seems well-acquainted to the tiger who she calls Tama. Around this time, Klaus, the head butler, appears from under Nagi’s bed to ridicule Hayate. He insists that if Nagi calls Tama a cat, then it’s a cat. Not buying it, Hayate says that Tama should be caged, which causes the tiger to get quite mad. Klaus explains that Tama is a stupid cat who can’t be controlled by anyone other than Maria and Nagi, but Hayate realizes that this means Klaus can’t control the tiger either. As if on cue, Tama attacks Klaus for what he said and then charges towards Hayate. It’s only because Nagi says something that Tama suddenly turns nice and hugs Hayate instead.

However, Nagi also notes that if Tama wants to play, he should do it outside, so the tiger tackles Hayate out the nearby window. Nagi has all sorts of confidence in Hayate and doesn’t think that he’ll lose to Tama, so Klaus makes it a bet: if Hayate loses, he has to leave. It’s only after Hayate and Tama start fighting that Klaus notices that their battlefield is actually Maria’s garden. In fact, Maria discovers Tama winning against Hayate, and the sight of an angry Maria scares Tama off. She also figures out that it was Klaus and Nagi who had set up the fight. As she treats Hayate’s wounds, Maria reveals that Nagi adopted Tama and pampered him after she found him in Africa when she was a little girl. Because of this, Tama would never hurt Nagi and would risk his life for her. Maria makes Hayate realize that he and Tama are the same in how Nagi helped them both, but after Maria walks off, Tama suddenly speaks up, saying that he doesn’t want to be grouped as a loser like Hayate. He also tells Hayate to keep it a secret that he can talk, though all of this just causes Hayate to think that rich people’s pets can speak. In actuality, only Hayate knows about it.

Although this incident is over, Klaus still doesn’t like Hayate, and Nagi continues to stick up for him. Maria finally suggests an aptitude test, so Klaus goes to prepare one. In the meantime, Hayate asks Maria if Nagi has high expectations for him. She explains that Nagi isn’t good at expressing her feelings and hasn’t been smiling much since losing the previous butler Himegami. Thus, it’s been a long time since Maria has seen Nagi so energetic, and so she was quite happy that Hayate saved Nagi. Since Nagi does seem to have high expectations for him, Hayate decides to live up to them. When Klaus leads him to his challenge, Hayate finds himself up against a nursing robot in a butler skills competition. Nagi, however, has a few choice words for the robot, including that it’s ugly. This gets the robot so pissed off that it tries to kill her, meaning that Hayate has to jump in and save her. As a result, Hayate ends up having to fight the robot anyway. He succeeds after pinning it down with silverware and then electrocuting it without regard to his own safety. Klaus thus has no choice but to accept Hayate, at least until they find the next butler. Hayate wakes up sometime later and apologizes to Nagi for messing up the room they were fighting in. She tells him that there are a lot of replacements for the room, but there are no replacements for him. Hayate remembers that on this day, he swore to protect Nagi with his life. And now, back in the present, Hayate finishes telling his story to a very bored mecha. The two of them then finally resume their battle and charge at each other.

Preview:

There were some good jokes this week, including Nagi’s “Hayate still has two transformations left,” and Hayate responding “…I’m not Freeza.” Of course they had to beep out the word Freeza, but that made it even funnier. It’s also interesting to note that this episode would appear to mark a departure from the manga, at least timeline wise. I hadn’t expected them to go back to the mecha that Hayate had been fighting at the beginning of the first episode, and the preview for next week would suggest that we’re jumping ahead to volume four where Hayate visits Nagi’s school. I’m certainly not complaining about this because it means that we’ll get to meet Hinagiku and Yukiji, and go ahead with some of what I consider the better parts of the manga.

37 Comments

  17. Not too happy they’re skipping over Izumi’s introduction chapter, but I do agree that they had to fast forward to the start of school. Aside from Izumi, the next significant plot progression is Hinagiku.

    Eleutheria
    Reply

  19. In stuff like anime, plot acceleration is sometimes necessary… the manga in Japan _is_ already at 10 volumes, so people will probably get bored if the artists/plot people dawdle.

    Does anyone remember how tigers don’t live in Africa?

    cbhl
    Reply

  21. not to sound too negative, but i think this week’s episode wasn’t as funny as the previous 2. Prolly the only lol moment was when the tiger started talking, but that’s about it. Hope it gets funnier in the coming episodes.

    JCSlim
    Reply

  28. This was a funny episode. It adapts the manga well.
    Especially hearing the robots voice (it sounds so stereotypical of a robot).

    AND YEAH. They’re definitely going forward. Hayate’s not supposed to go to school until volume 3. But this is good because an early of Hinagiku and her sister is going to be nice (Hinagiku’s introduction is really good).

    maybe we’ll get Isumi (my favorite character) episode after next. Then Wotaru and Saki.

    Avisch
    Reply

  32. Actually in the manga, the mangaka made a note that it was a mistake on his part and was going to fix it but he decided to leave it alone since having a tiger coming from Africa can’t be anymore abnormal than a talking tiger.

    Darkone
    Reply

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