Hayate no Gotoku! – 10 - Random Curiosity

Posted by Omni on June 2, 2007 June 3, 2007 First Impressions / Hayate no Gotoku!

Summary:

Nagi is playing a game on her Famicom when her character gets killed, and the game proceeds to insult both her and Sakuya. After they leave the system to have dinner, it starts exuding an evil aura. The next morning, the same sequence of events occur as on the day Hayate was forced to cosplay. However, it seems that Sakuya actually comes back to the mansion after leaving for school and finds that the Famicom video game had come alive. She immediately gets her two bodyguards to douse it with fire extinguishers and then sends them to hit the reset button. However, the television suddenly spews out a ton of takoyaki and nearly drowns them. The culprit is the buxom Demon King who lives at the top of a tower, but she appears to be strapped into her throne. She wants to be free and plans to do so by getting a hero to fight her as the final boss. To capture a hero, she lays out game controllers as lures all over Nagi’s mansion, but most get stepped on and destroyed.

By chance, when Izumi, Miki, and Risa come to see the new butler at Nagi’s mansion, Miki picks up a controller and gets pulled into the game world along with the other two. Their first enemy is a slime that quickly kills Risa, and because it’s about to kill the Izumi and Miki too, the Demon King decides that she has to do something or else her heroes will die. She saves them with a lightning bolt that hits both the slime and Izumi, though Izumi survives with a single hit point left. Meanwhile, Isumi senses a monster and heads into the bath to investigate. Ayumu then does a horoscope countdown, but she never gets to the number one. Back in the game world, Miki calls up Hinagiku for help. Hinagiku arrives almost immediately after having driven away all enemies with a mere stick, and the girls try to explain that they’re inside a cursed game. However, Hinagiku doesn’t believe in something unscientific like that, and thinks instead that this is a large-scale surprise event being thrown by Nagi. She wants to get back to school and is looking for the goal, so the Demon King drops them some equipment to help them quickly reach the tower.

100 hours of play later, they finally get there, but the battle ends as soon as it begins because the Demon King manages to drop a metal basin on her own head. Thus, the girls defeat the Demon King and return to the real world with no memories of their adventures, able to proceed with the rest of the events of that day.

Preview:

This was easily my favorite episode of Hayate so far in terms of comedy. In fact, I challenge someone to name all the parody references and where they occur because the 2ch list has grown to over 40 games and anime. My own list includes:

Gundam SEED – the Meer concert parody scene – doubly appropriate because Maria voiced by Tanaka Rie who also did Meer

Suzumiya Haruhi – the Mikuru eye-catch

Dragonball Z – Karin Tower, Kami’s Lookout, Sakuya’s bodyguards doing the fusion dance

Dragon Quest – the game Nagi was playing

Busou Renkin – Papillon’s mask on the bust this shot

Kinnikuman – his head was on another bust sculpture

Doraemon – the girls being sent to the game world was similar to Doraemon’s time machine

Evangelion – the slime’s attack

NG Knight Lamune & 40 – Miki calling forth King Sccasher

Street Fighter – Klaus dressed as Akuma

Otogi-Juushi Akazukin – Hinagiku dressed as Akazukin

Ninin Ga Shinobuden – Isumi spitting out Onsokumaru

Whew. I know that’s not even half the list, and it doesn’t include all the self-parody they did either.
Overall, the episode felt a little random at times, but since it wasn’t based on the manga, it was all fresh for me with tons of laughs even if I didn’t recognize all the parodies. They even made fun of Maria being 17 years old. I also didn’t expect Yuuko Goto to make an appearance in this show, so her voicing the Demon King used her fast-talking voice was an additional treat. This is one of the few times I’ll ever say this, but this episode makes me want to see more anime original episodes from this show.