Books: Hayate the Combat Butler Vol. #5

A title like Hayate the Combat Butler just drips with promise, I tell you. I had images in my mind of a mustachioed, veddy British fellow with a tie and tails, fending off four-armed monsters when they have the temerity to come crashing through the walls and disturb tea-time. What we get is not quite that gloriously demented — it’s more the sort of thing you chuckle at continuously without ever really guffawing out loud — and is enjoyable but miles away from anything I’d call a must-read.

Let’s start with Hayate and how he ended up with the charming appellation of “Combat Butler.” This kid, now in his teens, has been running around since the tender age of nine, cleaning up the mess left behind by his compulsive-gambler parents. Fact is, they racked up so much debt, the only way they had left to absolve it was to put their own son in hock to the mob. After a series of events entirely too complicated to relate here, he winds up becoming a butler to a wealthy young lady named Nagi. Nagi has a bad tendency to land into trouble — the kind of trouble that Hayate can only bail her out of by living up to his title of combat butler.

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