Hayate no Gotoku!

I don't remember what specifically propelled me to start watching Hayate no Gotoku, but whatever the cause, I was taken for a ride down parody lane, where almost everything was up for parody, sometimes with humorous results and sometimes not.

With four 12-episode seasons under its belt, Hayate no Gotoku starts off strong as a comedy. The parody stuff is there, but it is the wacky comedy that grabs the audience's attention. Why? For me, good comedy is in the unexpected. Even if the joke is as old as the hills, if you make the expected payoff happen in an unexpected time, it is good stuff to me. The unexpected is what the first season is full of. That seriously falls off by the thirds season, but does make a small comeback by the final season.

Slapstick humor and parody humor also play a large role throughout the entire series. Sakuya often wields a harisen and isn't afraid to use it. Other characters do other slapstick things. However, the parody moments are the biggest part of the show. The writers clearly love mecha of all kinds, Neon Genesis Evangelion, various Power Rangers shows (which are still huge in Japan), Nabeshin, Dragon Ball Z, and a rather lengthy list of additional anime titles. However, American shows or movies weren't forgotten either as references to Rocky, Back to the Future, Knight Rider (the original 80's version), Titanic, Jaws, Die Hard, Star Wars, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and many other titles. From an American gaijin perspective, the fact that the Japanese writers would not only be so well versed in these American titles (especially something like Knight Rider) and that they expected the audience to be as well was pretty impressive.

Because parody and comedy are the names of the game as it were, the over-arching plot of Hayate working off his ¥150,000,000 debt to Nagi (and Nagi's subsequent romantic interest in Hayate, to say nothing of other girls' interest in him) are merely vehicles to take us from parody/comedy moment to parody/comedy moment. The writers do change things up a bit in season three with the introduction of the Combat Butler story arc, but frankly, having this quickly became somewhat tedious to me. Ultimately, the writers were parodying things like Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, and the like, but because the writers had to deal with a plot (weak as it was), I felt it dragged the series down. Fortunately, season 4 gets some lift again, though it has tedious moments as well.

So why not a "buy" rating? Well to be frank, I started getting bored with the series. Too many parody references went over my head because I've never seen those anime titles. The humor began to become very predictable to me and as such, it was not only not funny, but tedious. That's not to say the series completely falls apart because it doesn't. There are still good things in the final two seasons, but I grew weary after a while. Indeed, even though I had a recording of the final two episodes, I kind of set them aside and just forgot about them until this week. That's not a good thing to say about a show.

Bottom line: a very strong start that begins to fall off slowly over time with peaks and valleys all over. The cast is good and the parodies are endless but in the end, I can only give this a high Rent rating as I don't feel a strong call to want to re-watch this series anytime soon.

Last updated Tuesday, May 20 2008. Created Tuesday, April 10 2007.

• Hayate
• Hayate & Nagi
• Hayate & all of Nagi’s friends
• And that the series is beginning to stray from the manga

• Drama : Low
• Comedy : High
• Action : Med
• SciFi : Low
• Ecchi : None

• Ep12 : Now that was the funniest episode to date. Nishizawa vs Nagi!
• Ep17 : First Part was good, but 2nd was a waste of time.
• Ep18 : Loved it, completely filler, but loved it.

• 9/11 - 24 - Looks like we are going to end with the Isumi Arc (Which actually happens BEFORE Hayate goes to school). Very good arc, but I hope the anime ends good.