Hayate no Gotoku!

Information of Anime

Hayate Ayasaki is a 16 year old boy that has a lot of problems with life; particularly financial ones.  His unemployed parents spends all their money on gambling which would lead them to huge debt.  They have no choice but to sell Hayate to the yakuza.  To pay off his parents' debt, he decides to kidnap a girl for random.  However, his poor choice of words would lead the girl to think it's a confession of love.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The girl that Hayate tries to kidnap is Nagi Sanzenin, a girl from a very wealth family.  Nagi mistaken Hayate's words as a confession of love when he tries to kidnap her for a large ransom.  Because of Hayate's poor plan & good character, he ends up saving Nagi from real kidnappers instead.  His efforts would land him a job as a butler for the Sanzenin family with their maid, Maria, guiding him.  From here, Hayate works hard as a butler to pay off his debt to the Sanzenin family when they pay off his debt to the yakuza. 

Later on, Nagi would have Hayate go back to school by applying in to the same school & class with her.  There, he meets some interesting students & some of Nagi's friends.  Also, he meets some of the student's own butlers of different types such as a combat butler.  Later on, he battles with the superintendent of the school Kirika Kuzuha who tries to take Hayate into her butler roaster & change the school differently that school council president Hinagiku Katsura doesn't approve.  In this arc as the show gets close to the end of it, Hayate loses his butler powers to Kirika's snake & fails to do basic butler works.  At this time, Nagi's old butler Himegami appears as Princess God.  Learning what happened to him from Princess God, Hayate leaves the Sanzenin household. This arc would show us at the end that Kirika was under a spell in protecting the ultimate butler suit for 30,000 years.  It would later break off when Hayate brings out its true form & regaining his butler powers.

After that arc, everything goes back to the normal activities of Hayate serving Nagi.  It continues like this for the entire show with many short story misadventures mainly involving Hayate.  At one point, Hayate's debt problem had a solution where a giant butler agency wanted to hire him & pay off his debt to the Sanzenin estate.  But that gets refused & one last episode is left which leads to the show's ending which is Hayate going back in time to get rid of Nagi's habit of not going outside.

My Personal Review

Hayate no Gotoku! is quite an entertaining show.  It's very funny & uses a lot of parody from other anime series. 

Animation

The character designs are on the flat side.  A lot of the main human characters look the same in terms of the facial structures.  The differences are in the eyes & hair pretty much.  There are times where the characters would have some changes to their faces for parody & comedy reasons.  There are times where the black lines on their faces are very thick.  Also, the side character gags are pretty wacky & yet fit the anime's image well.

The 3D CGs really have that fake look to them.  It's impressively done in terms of the movement, but the colours make them fake.

The backgrounds are okay.  Not a lot of details as they seem pretty flat.

The colours are pretty bright & close to OVA quality.  The shading is pretty close to your typical comedy anime as it doesn't have a lot of detail.

In terms of the animation movement, it's a mixture.  Sometimes the movements are realistic & sometimes the movements are not normal.  But they are quite smooth with hardly choppy frames found.

Sound

The sound effects are really on the silly side.  Mainly because to make the show cute & funny since it's has a lot of parody.  They fit the show well & give it some life.

The seiyuus here are pretty good.  They play their roles very well & really fit their character.  The narrator gives the anime some flavour as well.  Very nice.  The side or support characters aren't too good though.  It's not very good or bad either.  It's pretty much average.

The music is more with some rock on the side.  A lot of background music is cute though, but it's not really something you would buy the soundtrack for.

Story

Basically, Hayate working off his debt for the Sanzenin family while Negi thinks he loves her.  Both are pretty stupid as they don't know what the other is really thinking from this situation.  The characteristics of the characters is pretty good as you have some interesting characters such as Hayate being a unstoppable like fighting machine & Nagi being an otaku.

Although there isn't a storyline, the anime makes a lot of reference to other series.  Although they beep it out, you can pretty much tell what they are talking about.  Also, a lot of it is nonsense with the narrator giving them away or clearing things up.  Because of a lack of a plot & the show being a series of short stories, the ending is open ended.  However, the show did indicate that a second season is in progress

Overall Conclusion

Hayate no Gotoku! is an interesting & funny show.  However, it's something that you would probably watch for pure entertainment.  It's almost full of nonsense & have a main plotline even though it's working off on Hayate's debt which is barely talked about the show in the later episodes. 

Hayate no Gotoku! gets a 7.5/10.  Although there is a base for the show where Hayate is working of his debt, this isn't mentioned much in the show.  It's nothing but small stories of Hayate's butler activities with the Sanzenin estate.  However, it's worth watching for the parody comedy.

Last updated on April 23, 2008