Category: Reviews

March’s Manga of the Month: Hayate the Combat Butler

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Hayate the Combat Butler (ハヤテのごとく!) by Kenjiro Hata

Hayate the Combat Butler is hardly an obscure series but I wanted to bring it up for two reasons. The first is that as far as a I can tell Hayate, much like many other Shonen Sunday titles is hardly doing gangbusters in the English-speaking world. Viz has already slowed down the release schedule on the series. While I don’t think it will be canceled anytime soon I would like to see its schedule speed up rather than slowed down further.  The other reason is the is the lull between the end of the second season and the movie. Manga seems to generate less conversation when there is no anime running at the same time. So I have decided to hopefully get some conversation going before the movie comes out.

Hayate Ayasaki has the worst parents in the world. One day he comes home to discover they have saddled him with a 156,804,000 yen debt. Through odd circumstances he winds up in the employ of the insanely rich Nagi Sanzenin as her butler. Nagi has  fallen in love with him but sadly Hayate is blissfully unaware of this fact. At first Hayate had to protect Nagi from people who would try to steal her fortune. Recently Nagi renounced her inheritance and is running an apartment complex with the little money she has left. So Hayate tries must keep the apartment complex afloat while dealing with the strange residents within and their equally troublesome friends.

People often ask me why I like Hayate the Combat Butler so much. My answer is that it is refreshing. Whenever I read the newest chapter of the manga I just feel my worries fade away. Kenjiro Hata has a gentle writing style that is both soothing and invigorating. The series is consistently funny and mixes high level otaku humor with your more standard comedy elements. There is also a mixture of romance, action, and drama in the story but every chapter is sure to have some laughs to balance it all out. The other major appeal is that the characters are very endearing to me. While I wrote a whole article on why Nagi is such a great character I could write similar articles on the rest of the cast.  I think since our review of the anime I have realized that the otaku level for the series might be a little too high for some but I think any decently experienced anime fan will find something to enjoy in Hayate.

Gosick #008: Dear Seyrun, Don’t Soak Your Buildings in Lamp Oil

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Victorique came to her mother’s village to solve mysteries and chew bubblegum but bubblegum would not be invented by Walter Diemer for another 4 years. Therefore Victorique must solve murders from the past and present while uncovering the motives of the various parties in town. But when the detective brings the light of justice to this town will the guilty go quietly to face justice? I think not.

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Broken Blade Movie 3: Scars from an Assassin’s Blade, Mecha Porn

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CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MOVIES 1 AND 2

I just have to reiterate that if you like mecha and you haven’t been watching Broken Blade, shame on you! I’m pretty much anxious all the time waiting for these movies to come out. This film marks the halfway point for the series giving it an important climatic and possibly game-changing role. Even though most of this movie is combat, pieces are still being moved into place.

Broken Blade movie three is the end of the beginning. Athens is ready to escalate their campaign against Krisna and are preparing to finally deploy a majority of their forces to the war.  This movie is the last of the small-scale skirmishes before full-fledged war breaks out. After this the dynamic of the battles will be on a whole new level. Guerrilla warfare will give way to armies clashing as part of an all out war of conquest. But there has to be one last clash between the current players and that battle may pan out in ways the audience does not expect. 

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