Hayate the Combat Butler is a shonen comedy-action manga with romance-comedy thrown in at times. It is about the world's unluckiest boy, Hayate Ayasaki, who becomes the butler for the world's richest girl, Nagi Sanzen'in, after she pays off his debt. Being a butler for the Sanzen'in household isn't easy though, as there are constant kidnapping attempts, as well as daily chores, getting his Otaku master to do stuff like go to school, and all the while trying his best to pay back the debt, a debt which never seems to end because various misfortunes get in the way. This leaves Hayate with no time for typical school activities like clubs and romances. When something seems like it might go right, misfortune always strikes.

The manga often breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the readers or comments about stuff like censoring that takes place in post-production. The manga also spoofs a lot of other anime and other cultural references.

Volume 12 ends the hot spring's arc with the rest of the volume depicting various short stories, all of which are reseolves in a few chapters. Some of them are just gag chapters with no real plot while others do have more substance and even a few try to develop character relations more.

Hightlights:

Kenjiro Hata always has something in Hayate the Combat Butler I like and volume 12 is no exception. This one depicts the holiday White Day, which falls on March 14 and is a time guys give presents back to girls who gave them presents, usually chocolate, for Valentine's Day. Not all gifts exhanged are romantic as some may be obligatory, such as parents giving chocolate to their child or coworkers exchanging similar gifts with one another (I'm surprised the card/candy industries haven't tried to bring something like this over here yet). In the chapters dealing with this mini-arc Hayate's main goal is his attempt to give Ayumu Nishizawa, a former classmate who has a crush on him, some cookies in return for some chocolate she gave him for Valentine's Day and her help in aiding Nagi when she needed to be rescued. However, as he is the world's unluckiest boy, things conspire against him at crucial moments in ways that defy the laws of probability. However, the short story does have a happy ending as after all the hoops and hardships; Hayate is fnally able to give Ayumu some cookies he's made himself.

The other great highlight was the ending gag to chapter 151 with Wataru Tachibana. The chapter was about stories that seemed to be going somewhere, but ultimately had just an ordinary ending. Wataru's story wasn't really a story, but the idea of physics and how the universe is expanding at the edges faster than the speed of light, The way Hata is able to interject some science into a shonen manga and still make it entertaining is always a good thing.

Overview:

There really isn't that much action content in this volume compared to others, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, this volume focuses more on gag chapters and a romance-comedy. As always there are a lot of references to various other works, like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumeya as well in this volume a few more obscure references like Manjū kowai. I was a bit surprised at the lack of almost any action scenes in the volume though.

In spite of having many of the same gags rehashed, in this volume Hata seems to be able to make them seem fresh. His artwork is also quite good, focusing more detailed on the panels that require it and making those that don't clean and simple to read and understand without losing the basic elements of what make up the character.

All in all, Hata continues to make Hayate the Combat Butler a great read. If you really like the action-side of the series, you may be disappointed. However, I expect most readers out there will still find something to like. Volume 12 is defiantly a manga volume you should pick up.

ComicsOnline gives Hayate the Combat Butler 4.5 out of 5 White Day cookies.