12 Days of Christmas – Day 5 – Worthy of a Greek Goddess

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I managed to read all of Hayate the Combat Butler, though I’ve actually been trying to catch up for quite a while now. Got my first volume back in December 2009, if you can believe that. So I felt it was a good time to talk for a little bit about what I and most other readers consider the biggest and best part of the series.

Idol no Akahon – Review

13-year old Shiho Iida is one of those girls who always wanted to be an idol. When she finally received the call that a company wanted to book her, it turned out that a miscommunication caused the group to book three separate talents at once. Rather than turn down the girls who worked so hard to get there, it’s decided that the three of them will form an idol group, the uncreatively titled Triple Booking.

Hayate the Combat Butler – Who the Hell is Suirenji Ruka?

You’re gonna have to get in line.

Anyone who watched the recent Hayate anime for more than a few seconds would likely have noticed the presence of an idol singer who wasn’t in the series before. That girl’s name is Ruka. She’s like Hayate in a suspiciously large number of ways, up to and including the need to work off a 150 million yen debt her parents dumped on her. Her method for dealing with this debt, however, was to take on the role of an idol. While she has been trained in how to become a successful idol from a young age and seems to enjoy her work, the busy schedule has both given her serious health problems and gotten in the way of her secret goal of publishing manga. So she’s also like Nagi in a suspiciously large number of ways.

Invasion! Squid Girl – Isn’t it an Adaptation?

She hunted the meat for those dishes herself. The creature was Capture Level 40.

About a week or so ago, I watched the OVA for Invasion! Squid Girl. It was a fun little episode, though also somewhat saddening because unlike Seitokai Yakuindomo, we aren’t repeatedly getting new episodes added. It had a similar feel to the second season, and a big part of that is because I was able to read the original manga chapters beforehand. You could argue that doing this takes away from the humour, but I disagree mainly because it’s common for the anime to play things differently and use the medium to its advantage. This is why my favourite parts are usually when the characters start hamming it up (“Games are my life!” was nowhere near as awesome when I first read it). There is still a serious issue when viewing the anime this way, though. While it does like to add funny scenes wherever it can, there are also times when it very clearly takes away from the chapters.

Nisekoi – All The Planning In The World…

…can’t beat the impact of a single spontaneous comment.

The perfect thing to ask on Kirisaki’s birthday.

So, that happened. I love how completely casually this series can reveal important plot points to other characters, like back when Onodera and Ruri were told about the fake relationship. I still never expected anything on this level, because even with that history, there was never anything in this chapter to indicate any kind of confession was coming. It’s just something they decided to share all of a sudden.