Hayate no Gotoku! – 21 - Random Curiosity

Posted by Omni on August 18, 2007 August 19, 2007 First Impressions / Hayate no Gotoku!

Summary:

In a junkyard somewhere, a bolt of lightening strikes the robot named Eight, reactivating it. Meanwhile at the Sanzenin mansion, Nagi and Maria force Hayate into a change of clothes so that he can accompany Nagi to an amusement park. Hayate doesn’t think that a hikikomori like her would be okay going out to an amusement park, but as it turns out, the one they’re going to is right on Nagi’s property. When they get there, the two are greeted by the four mascot characters, one of whom is really glad that they came because, as Hayate soon finds out, it’s been three years since Nagi last came. Nagi also reveals that she got this amusement park as a present from her grandfather, but she still hates him because he made the minimum height to ride everything 140 cm, and she’s only 138 cm tall. Hayate, however, is tall enough, so he’s forced onto the rides. Afterwards, another one of the mascots suggests they go to the haunted house next, but since Nagi is too afraid to go, Hayate first goes by himself.

Inside the haunted house, Hayate gets attacked by one of the mascots that reveals itself to be Eight. Hayate doesn’t remember who the robot is, and before Eight can hurt him, the other mascots turn on the lights and escort Nagi in to show her around. When Nagi calls Eight ugly, the robot tries to attack her, but the other mascots quickly jump on him and beat him up. Frustrated, Eight then blasts off and flies somewhere. Around this time, Mikado Hyper Energy is conducting a test with a devastating new robot, but Eight suddenly arrives on the scene and dives right through the other robot’s torso, grabbing its control chip in the process. After installing this chip into himself, Eight changes from 8 to 8.1, but since the person in charge there named Makimura doesn’t remember who Eight is, the robot flies off in tears. Eight then returns to the Sanzenin mansion and attacks Hayate again, remembering how he had been dumped after his creator Makimura Shiori had found out that he lost to a human.

Since Eight intends to hurt Nagi as well as Hayate, Tama steps into the fight and takes a swipe at the robot. Tama knows all of Nagi’s bad points, but since she saved his life, he won’t let anyone hurt her. To Tama’s surprise, Hayate actually tries to protect Eight because he knows what it feels like to be thrown away, but Eight responds by trying to kill Hayate anyway. In the end, it’s Shiori arriving at the mansion that stops the fight, and she claims that she remembers Eight now. She admits to having made a mistake throwing Eight away as non-burnable garbage, but the truth isn’t much better – Eight was supposed to be oversized garbage instead. Shiori then has a pair of workers tie Eight up and carry him away, and, just like that, they’re gone. To help Eight out, Tama then imitates Nagi’s voice and phones Shiori to make sure that the robot doesn’t get destroyed. As it turns out, Eight later asks Shiori to go out with him, and she agrees.

Preview

So they consolidated two different parts of the manga that involved Eight and added a part in the middle to link them together. It turned out relatively well, but I still find Eight asking Shiori out kind of weird. As usual, there were a lot of anime references, but the funniest line for me was Hayate wondering if they were at Michael Jackson’s house when they arrived at the amusement park. Other stuff I caught included PreCure, Yotsuba to!, the Newtype reaction from Gundam, Evangelion, the Goldion Hammer from GaoGaiGar, and the Kamehameha from DBZ. As for the preview for next week, it made liberal use of this shot, but the actual episode looks like it’ll involve fishing.