Hayate no Gotoku!: Episode 1 April 12
Hayate no Gotoku! (ハヤテのごとく！) | Episode 1 - In English, “destiny” means “unmei” | Air Date: April 1, 2007
Summary: This is the tale of a young man named Hayate Ayasaki who, through hard work and devotion, is determined he will soon gain happiness… Not. After being fired from his part-time job, Hayate discovers that his so-called parents have sold him to the yakuza to pay off an outstanding debt of ¥156,804,000! Hayate manages to escape the grasp of three Yakuza memebers come to claim their payoff and winds up in the middle of a park. Suddenly, he notices a young girl trying to buy a hot drink. So, Hayate’s hit with an idea; he will kidnap the girl and hold her for ransom to pay off his debt! He notices that the girl is being confronted by some punks trying to pick her up and saves her without thinking.
In the heat of the moment, Hayate declares that he needs her and wants her to go with him. However, the girl, whose name is Nagi Sanzenin, misunderstands Hayate’s demand and takes it as a confession of love, to which she accepts on the condition that Hayate does not cheat on her. Hayate goes off to phone Nagi’s guardians and inform them of the kidnapping, which he ends up failing miserably at. As Hayate collapses from a combination of freezing and self-loathing, another girl happens to come across him. She helps him to his feet and gives him her scarf to warm him up.
Touched by the compassion he recieved from the girl, Hayate begins to cry uncontrollably. However, Hayate quickly regains his composure as he discovers Nagi being kidnapped! The other young girl, named Maria, seems to know her so Hayate declares that he will definitely save her and takes Maria’s bike and goes after the car Nagi was taken in. All seems hopeless for Nagi as there is no way for anyone to save her in a car going 80 kilometers per hour, however Nagi is determined that Hayate will save her. On cue, Hayate appears behind the car and quickly gaining on it. He launches in front of the car and demands they stop, but instead is hit by the car. He lands on the hood of the car and fightens the kidnappers into stopping. Afterwards, Hayate collapses from his injuries which, despite what he says, turn out to be somewhat serious. Maria arrives on-scene and greets Nagi, who states that she wants to make Hayate the successor to her old butler, Himegami, as a helicopter arrives to take the three away…
Kad says…
As I thought, the simple character design and art style lend themselves to animation very nicely, and the production values seem well taken care of. Naturally, the voice actors Hata-sensei hand-picked himself worked wonderfully. Of the acting and animation, the scenes at the vending machine and the flashbacks of a poor, deprived little Hayate were my personal favorites. So far I couldn’t be more pleased with how the adaptation from manga to anime has turned out, and I think it’ll only keep getting better from here.
MSZ says…
Possibly the best manga to anime transition I’ve seen since School Rumble. For one, the voice cast is simply amazing. A few weeks before they released the CV lists, I had actually been thinking that Rie Kugimiya would be the perfect voice for Nagi and had expected it to be her voice. Ryouko Shiraishi was a very welcomed surprise as she did an amazing job with Shiratori in Mahoraba and Jay in Tales of Legendia, and Rie Tanaka turned out to be an amazing Maria even if Lacus had soiled her for me <.<. Probably the best part was the casting of Norio Wakamoto as the Voice of Heaven (Narrator) due to him being one of my favorite voice actors of all time. He certainly gives a certain life to the role of narrator comparable to Kenji Fujiwara’s job in Keroro Gunsou. Moving on to looks; the animation and art are fantastic, this is definitely one of the better looking animes recently. Hopefully it will continue to stay great through out the series. My only beefs were with when Hayate gets hit with a baseball and falls down stairs, I just found it unnecessary to implement the baseball when it worked just fine without it. I also didn’t like the scene where Hayate jumps on the car nearly as much, but I suppose that’s the best they could do without showing blood. All in all, I’m very excited for this series because of its very solid start. I also can’t wait for volume 11’s release next week~. Oh, and I loved all the great Nagi and Maria screens~ <3.
Taiyz says…
So, recently MSZ got me to watch the Mahoraba anime which featured Ryouko Shiraishi as the male lead. To my delight, she was voicing Hayate as well. I originally hoped for Tomokazu Seki to play Hayate, mostly because I’m obsessed with the guy, but I think that this is for the best, now. I agree with the baseball scene’s poor inclusion, but I can see why they did it. They wanted to emphasize Hayate’s rampant and generally bad luck, rather than make him appear to be a klutz. The problem is that it was utterly ridiculous and would never happen outside of a gag series.
As for my final comment about the episode: to all the fellow bloggers out there, please stop comparing Hayate to Laharl. Hayate has a shirt, and that’s an extremely important concept here.
Preview:
Tune in next week for more heart-pounding Hayate action! …And for Maria fanservice~ <3.