Maria: “I am so going to dominate all the coming covers.”
Happy Easter!
While Christians all over the world celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Doughnut Gunso is still living in Hell, although in a sense this is a Hell that I have chosen.
The thing is, I have a 5,000-word essay for school due 13 April, while we are very fortunate to have a 5-day Easter holiday. My plan is to finish my first draft of the essay over the holidays, and then to review it over the week. While I can spread my workload over all 5 days, a part of me was thinking that if I could finish the job in 3 days, I would have 2 whole days to play and relax. As such, I have been working on the essay around the clock.
In a sense I am on schedule as I have already written 3,500 words, so unless I am to become lazy (or preoccupied; sometimes you never know), I should be able to finish the whole essay by today (Sunday). It seems like a good time to take a break; Chelsea vs. Stoke is underway and I am burned out for the essay already, so instead of working on my essay while watching the football game, I have decided to work on Chapter Review instead.
How many chapters do you think we need to reach this flashforward?
At the beginning of the Review, allow me to say that it is an understatement to suggest that Hata loves flashforwards. Anime Season one had flashforwards for Himegami and Kirika. Ch. 268 had a flashforward for the Comisun saga. HIAPOE had flashforwards for Kayura and the Comiket saga. CTMEOY on the whole had flashforwards for Kurotsubaki, Kananiwa and… you know who I am talking about, while Episode 1 actually started with a flashforward. Now, Ch. 487 also begins with a flashforward.
At least she finds her new enemy.
In the current flashforward, Nagi is once again seen in trouble on her own – somehow Hayate is not around her. The narrator remarks that it is 27 hours 35 minutes into School Trip Level 5 and the current time is 6:35 pm (date not given), meaning that the official starting time of the trip was 3:00 pm on the previous day. The interesting thing is that Nagi is cursing “that girl”. Unfortunately, as this series if so full of girls, there is no way to tell for sure just whom she is cursing.
Then we go back to 11:58 am on 18 September, when Captain Obvious Nagi suggests on the school bus that as the “only rule” to win the 150 million yen is too simple, there must be something more to this game. Sure enough that “something more” is soon revealed, as the Completers start flashing numbers. As Kananiwa has explained, the upper numbers stand for remaining time, while the lower number stands for the number of remaining players.
This is so 24…
I was at first in awe of the quickness for Nagi and Hinagiku to figure out the time limit, but a moment later I realised that the math is simple: 216 hours (24 x 9) later would be noon on the 10th day; add 4 hours and we have 4 pm. These statistics do not really say anything about the official starting time of the trip, but we can be sure that the trip doesn’t really last 240 hours unless we are to accept the trip actually started on 4 pm on 17 September.
Now we know the time limit and the rule that no electronic devices would be allowed (except the Completer, of course), but there are still too many unknowns about the trip, including the location. What has been too simple remains too simple. No wonder Chiharu and Kayura are not entirely convinced by Kananiwa’s speech.
Strangely enough, Nagi could only tell that they are in New Zealand after their private jet has landed. I guess this means the jet does not give any information of the flight details. The mystery for me here is that it has taken 21 hours for the students to arrive at their hotel: the flight might have taken 10 hours, but where’s the other 11 hours? In any case, the cover of Ch. 485 with Hinagiku in her skiing equipment suddenly makes sense.
Don’t tell me you didn’t expect me to post this picture.
As the content of the first day of the trip is perfectly Ayumu normal, I am happy to see that everyone is enjoying the trip instead of thinking about each other’s Completer. Hayate and Hinagiku set out for a skiing race, and I would like to make two observations on Hayate. First, he seems to have finally figured out how to handle Hinagiku’s competitiveness: just take her challenge and dare her to bet something. Second, Hayate has for some reason decided to let Nagi struggle with skiing on her own, and on any account he is failing his job as butler.
Among the 54 participants there is a masked “student”, who is definitely Yukiji. I seem to have underestimated her will power to win the money, as I assumed that if teachers are not allowed to participate, she would give up and be nice at home. Honestly, I never thought that she would join the trip wearing a mask, but in hindsight I think I should have seen this coming.
Game: finish her sentence.
And then there she is: Tsugumi Ruri from CTMEOY – I do have seen this one coming after we saw Dolly returning as Kananiwa. If the way Hata handles Kananiwa is anything to go by, then Tsugumi will surely be given a new name, and perhaps with new characterisation. This could be a pity, as I have quite liked Tsugumi as a character and as a name. I still challenge anyone to say her name very quickly for 10 times.
At the end of this chapter, we are given another piece of information related to the time: the moment Nagi and Aika struggle with skiing is “23 hours in”. I don’t really know why, but I am getting very interesting into all the stuff with time, so I am putting down some conclusions which might or might not be helpful.
- Considering that 21 hours ago was noon in Japan, we can conclude that the official starting time of School Trip Level 5 was 10 am in Japan and 1 pm in New Zealand, on 18 September.
- The total time allowed for School Trip Level 5 is 222 hours.
- There are still 199 hours left in the trip.
- The time at the end of this chapter is 9 am in Japan, and 12 noon in New Zealand, on 19 September.
- Nagi is 4 hours 35 minutes away from her flashforward.
- The time limit of the trip is 7 pm in New Zealand. I have a feeling that somebody will get screwed because of the time difference.
I guess I found out why I have been so interested about the time…
Hayate Report 
I assume Hayate jumped right into snowboarding because it’s “free.”
Oh yea, that could be it.
It seems Nagi’s cursing Not-Ruri-Tsugumi-For-Now at the start of the chapter… at least that’s the impression the chapter seems to give.
With that said, I wonder if this school trip has more hidden rules to be announced as it goes on? It seems quite likely.
Also, I don’t find Kananiwa to be similar to Dolly in any way except for her appearance. She’s giving off “I’m a villain” vibes, but she hasn’t done anything too “villainy” just yet.
The resemblance we do see between Dolly and Kananiwa is only the appearance. The “villain” part of Kananiwa remains pure guess without anything to do with Dolly, but I guess we have reasons for the guess.
TSUGUMI!!! 😀 😀
So far, like in the start of CTMEOY, she starts off looking very villainous and is implied to be responsible for endangering Nagi’s life in some way. Based on the start of this chapter, unlike in CTMEOY, Nagi is implied to be fully aware that Tsugumi is responsible for her perilous predicament. This has me worried as Tsugumi would be earning even more animosity from Nagi than she ever did in CTMEOY.
Still, if this Tsugumi is anything like CTMEOY Tsugumi then every time she does something bad, she is rewarded with misfortune but if she does something good, she is rewarded with something good… or just more misfortune. CTMEOY Tsugumi earned most of the fans sympathy because even from the beginning, she was quickly treated like crap by the rest of the characters, intentionally or unintentionally. Her constant misfortunes combined with her unwillingness to give up despite being about as fragile as any other child of her size made her a very endearing character.
Hayate and Hinagiku were snowboarding, by the way. Snowboarding is a lot more “cool” looking so it was a perfect way to show off, or rather, remind us of Hinagiku and Hayate’s ability to be good at almost everything while looking good at the same time. Still, when did the both of them ever learn how to snowboard?!
Oh, my bad, bad English!
Speaking of their skills, Hinagiku has been adopted by a wealthy family so they might have travelled for some skiing/snowboarding in the past. I don’t know about Hayate, though.
The most fearful suggestion could be that they learned the skills from the instruction class on spot…
Thought you would put this image too http://puu.sh/h2tlf/88304252da.jpg to be honest, hehehe.
I’m not big on Tsugumi, and *insert rambling about lack of male characters*, but I’m happy to see that we got to the point where Hata cuts on fillers and begins to deliver the development. The more I read about this new arc, the more I like it. This manga still wants to show how various it can be.
This flashforward seems a bit useless to me, though. For… welp, every reason for why a flashforward can be useless.
That image looks less impressive for me, to be honest. 😀
With regards to your “He’s not acting like a good butler” statement.
Nagi has in the past told him “You’re on vacation too” and told him to relax and even remove his butler outfit. They’ve been on numerous vacations together now and I seem to recall each and every time Nagi has tried to get Hayate to relax and enjoy himself.
Aika did the same with her Butler when they went on vacation recently. And when he didn’t, we got the chapter of her telling off Hayate and how he should have relaxed and been more personal and/or intimate with her.
I think that maybe it just didn’t show the scene of Nagi saying “Hayate relax and take a break from butlering” due to it being prevalent enough in past vacations.
Or it could be that he was just too interested in spending quality time with Hinagiku that he did brush off Nagi. Either of those would make me happy as A: Nagi realizes that Hayate is human and needs to have moments of relaxation, or B: Hayate likes Hinagiku more than he realizes and it shows to others as it often has in the past. Numerous characters have noted (to themselves and others) that Hayate does treat Hinagiku differently.
Btw. regarding the theory that Nagi wants to win the competition so Hayate won’t get his debt repaid, I don’t think it stacks up.
A) Hayate was not intending to participate in the competition.
B) Nagi does not know of Hinagiku’s desire to help Hayate.
C) There is no particular motive for Nagi to fear any potential winner giving Hayate 150 million. Her desire to enter the competition appears to be a direct response to seeing Hayate uncertain as to whether he would leave her if he won the prize.
So from this we can assume that Nagi has one of two motives that together dominate other more far-flung possibilities; either that she fears Hayate would join on his own and win, or that she intends to win it herself and give it to him as a show of love, like she did when she broke the stone.
Given that Nagi could simply have changed her mind and gone to Bora Bora instead and asked Hayate to come with her, thus ensuring he would not get the money, the latter is very likely her true motive (along with some stuff about being a dragon).