Hayate no Gotoku! – 24 - Random Curiosity

Posted by Omni on September 8, 2007 September 9, 2007 First Impressions / Hayate no Gotoku!

Summary:

When Isumi and Sakuya come by the Sanzenin home, Isumi loses her stole worth 50 million yen, so Hayate searches for it. He finds Tama about to use it as a blanket, but fortunately, before Tama can ruin it, Wataru shows up and kicks the tiger. Unaware that Hayate is also in the room, Wataru then sniffs the stole, and although Hayate catches him, he thinks that this is normal for someone in puberty. He thus promises not to tell Nagi or Isumi. Tama, on the other hand, is willing to embarrass Wataru and tries to spread a rumor on the internet about it. Hayate scares the tiger into stopping, and afterwards, Wataru thanks Hayate for saving him. When Hayate returns the stole to Isumi, Nagi notices how her friend is blushing a bit, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Moments later, when Isumi is about to get into her car to leave, she comments on how Hayate seems happy, and he explains that it’s because he got thanked after having recently experienced some misfortune. As he’s talking about this, Isumi notices a dark spirit around his chest, so she falls into his arms and kisses the spot where he’s wearing his pendant to stop it from reacting. What’s more, she says that she likes him because he had just been talking about people looking coldly at him. Unfortunately, both these things made it look like Isumi just confessed to him.

Having witnessed the embrace, Nagi is unable to sleep because of her worries, and she goes to visit Hayate early the next morning. She directly asks him if he asks likes Isumi, and to her surprise, Hayate admits that he does. However, when she asks him if he really loves Isumi, he replies that he doesn’t really love her or anything. This leads to Nagi misinterpreting him to mean that he’s just playing with Isumi. In truth, Hayate thinks that he’s simply well-liked by children. Not knowing this, Nagi runs away from home and goes to Wataru’s video store. Wataru had also witnessed the embrace, and he and Nagi now decide to go to Isumi’s house together to ask her about her feelings. By coincidence, Hayate is also at Isumi’s house looking for Nagi after having found the note she had written about running away from home, and when he and Isumi are talking, a wind blows some dirt into Isumi’s eyes. Nagi and Wataru arrive on the scene right as Hayate is checking to see if Isumi’s okay, and from across the lake, it looks to them like he’s embracing her again. Feeling hurt that Hayate went to see Isumi when she wasn’t around, Nagi angrily declares that Isumi should just take him for the 150 million yen. To everyone’s shock, Isumi agrees to do so.

In the aftermath, Nagi returns to Wataru’s video store and starts working the front desk there, but when she tries to push Gundam anime onto the customers, Wataru yells at her for lending out his own DVDs. He points out that the reason she doesn’t want to go home is because Hayate was there, but since Hayate isn’t there anymore, she should go home. Thinking about Hayate not being there anymore causes her to start crying, and Saki then yells at Wataru for bullying Nagi.

Preview

As expected, this was the Isumi story from volume three of the manga with some extra stuff at the beginning to show that Hayate was experiencing a lot of misfortune. I saw references to Haruhi, Rurouni Kenshin, Tsukihime, and Gundam, but for me the highlight of the episode turned out to be Wataru and the kitten rather than the jokes or the main story. It was surprisingly cute and funny, and I hadn’t expected Nagi’s mother (voiced by Minaguchi Yuuko) to make an appearance so soon either. I wouldn’t mind if they included more scenes from the past like that in future episodes. Next week, though, is a continuation of this week’s episode and will have Hayate fighting another robot.