Hayate, we need to have a chat–it’s about that second season of yours…
Quite frankly? It sucks. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Oh, it’s not been all that bad, but when all’s said and done, it sucks. Well, it sucks in comparison to the first season. On its own, it’s simply average–which is a huge issue, especially considering that the first season was way above and beyond average.
I can no longer just force the blame on to J.C. Staff anymore, though. Even if they’re all soulless worker ants who couldn’t even grasp the concept of Art if they tried, it’s not All Their Fault. Only partly. I’m very sorry, Mr. Hata, but I must push most of the blame onto you. Hata Kenjirou is a wonderful idea man. He has great ideas for lots of fun and interesting characters. However, much like someone like–say–Tomino Yoshiyuki, this guy needs to be put a on leash. His lack of focus is quite frankly frightening.
My issues of course are fanboy driven. I really like the character of Sanzenin Nagi–she’s an introverted, socially awkward, lolita otaku. She’s great. She was also presented as something of “main character” as the series opened. But if that’s the case, why is she spending most of her time playing video games and sulking in two-minute scenes across the show while the rest of any given episode is devoted to Nishizawa and Hinagiku being all stupid about their feelings for the slightly-less-than-generic-but-still-generic male lead. I don’t give a shit.
There’s a couple issues here–the main one being that Hata has no focus, as I outlined before. He has a great, burning desire to write more new and interesting characters. His passion for this shines through in the character profile sections at the end of each Hayate manga volume. He often talks about how he wants to write entire stories for each character.
That’s great, dude. But you already have one story you’re working on. Be patient, Jesus Christ.
Losing sight of your main character and constantly introducing more is Bad Writing. That’s all it is. Oh, you can still introduce a bunch of cool characters, but don’t forget about your core cast. Dragon Ball ran for–what, 40 volumes?–but it’s not as if Goku all of a sudden stopped being the main character. Ok, I guess he died during the Cell Games (again) but he’s still the main fixture throughout the series.
Perhaps my understanding is wrong. Perhaps the title character, Hayate, is the main character. Man, I sure didn’t notice! I mean, he has good moments, but he certainly doesn’t stand out. A series like this is clearly all about the girls, and when you clearly label Nagi as MAIN HEROINE, you better damn well make her as MAIN HEROINE as possible. Fuck Hinagiku. She’s boring as shit.
I’m somewhat in the dark, though. I don’t know what’s going on in the depths of the Shounen Sunday editorial office. The other issue could be that the manga editor told Hata that forcing a romance between a 17-year-old and 13-year-old was bad, or something. I don’t know. I kind of want to know. Either way, the true audience of this comic is being neglected, and clearly it should be running in Comic High alongside Kodomo no Jikan. I guess it’s not a “girly comic”, though. Maybe Shounen Magazine alongside Zetsubou Sensei would be better? Who knows.
There are good parts about this show, though. One of them is episode 19, which I think I’ll highlight in another post. I do enjoy the odd serious portrayals they managed to get out of Nagi between fucking boring love triangle shit. They do well to highlight her loneliness, which I think is wonderful. There was also inspired bits of humour sprinkled across the show (with most of it concentrated on episode 19) and on the whole, the animation was nice, even if the character designs looked more like amorphous blobs and less like people.
But sadly, I must mark this series as “not very good” in my book. It’s painful, but Hayate in my heart will probably just be the first series. I want to like the manga, but if it’s just like this cartoon (which seemed to have covered most of the manga out so far) I think I’ll pass.
Yes, I know there’s still one episode left. I doubt it’ll redeem anything.
Thank you, and good night.
Here’s a picture of “Main Heroine” Nagi. Look at it whilst listing to Kaze Ni Hitori De.
Is it really that much of a mystery? Hinagiku got, like, more than twice as many votes as the next most popular character in the two popularity contests they’ve ran for the manga. Given that those results rather soundly put across that Hinagiku is the series most popular character, is it really any wonder they write her a larger part into the series?
To be fair, an awful lot of the Syngery SP series was either made up for the anime version, or content actually pulled from the period that this JC Staff series would have covered if it hadn’t been done already. Synergy upped Nagi’s role in the series more than the manga did, but they also creamed off a lot of the Nagi content you would have been getting now as a result. Kind of throws off the balance a bit.
Oh, I forgot about that popularity contest.
This comic clearly shouldn’t be running in Shounen Sunday. I doubt much of their readers are enlightened ones such as I.
I’m pretty sure that lolicons were never the target audience for Hayate no Gotoku. There are a couple of Shonen Sunday titles such as Kongoh Banchou and Hayate that are kind of like the Adult Swim of manga. They don’t take themselves seriously and usually mock conventions of their medium. Because of this, I feel that the romance founded on a misunderstanding between Hayate and Nagi is just another gag. Hata will probably need to give it some closure before he ends the series, but that’s not his main priority.
The lack of focus in Hayate is part of its charm. The best chapters of the manga are the ones that are about random stories with the minor characters like the student council trio. I can almost imagine John Cleese appearing between chapters and saying “And now for something completely different.” This is the energy and chaos that SynergySP captured in the first series. Once the series gets bogged down by plot and character development like the second season of the anime or the current manga, it loses a lot of momentum and turns into generic shonen harem bullshit.
Like you I was really let down by the second season. Because I had read the manga, I saw most of the jokes coming, so I was bored during most of the episodes. I’m not really sure if I want a third season since JC Staff will probably cock it up again if they make it. If the property transferred studios again, I would be interested in seeing what happens.
Sharing the mutual opinion: Hayate s2 is a big dissapointment. I got nothing too important to add since wah pointed out most of the flaws.
It’s so easy to see what Hata is desperately trying to do, but he is forgetting everything that was great in Hayate series. I love the crazy style of comedy in Hayate, but suddenly it’s just really hard to follow with all the new characters and uninteresting love talk. And of course I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just that I seriously miss the time when Hayate was desperately trying to get Nagi attend to the school, agonizing with his bad luck, misunderstanding everything… the love talk has always been there and it was ok for me as long the scenes had the same sort of humor I was enjoying in the series.
And now being bit more subjective: Hinagiku has so much screentime I think I’m going insane! Even people who likes her should’ve got bored of her already.
BLAME THE HINA SHIPPERS THEY RUINED THE SERIES
Yeah, I blame it on the manga and it’s fans, and our bad luck. Our bad luck being that the great ideas and a great character that we loved had to be in a manga that wouldn’t give them appreciation. It’s a shame, but it happens sometimes.
been reading the manga and well this season is more or less Frame by frame of the mangaa
Since I’ve yet to read the manga, I wasn’t looking for faithfulness to the original work. I just wanted this season to be as funny and stylish as the first one, which it wasn’t. By toning down the references and focusing on the characters’ relationships, Yoshiki Iwasaki sucked the life out of Hayate no Gotoku, and even JC Staff’s consistently good animation and artwork couldn’t save it.
I also agree about Hinagiku and Nishizawa getting too much screen time, but only because I’m a Maria fan.