Hayate no Gotoku! Ch. 494

This counts as a bit of wildlife as well.

Hata’s account of the second orientation of School Trip Level 5 begins with yet another flashforward, which we are told to be 10 hours into the challenge, and another hour till the end of it. In other words, this is an 11-hour orientation – in the Amazon.

I am not entirely sure if it would become a pattern of the School Trip Level 5 saga to show us the flashforwards of every event, but I honestly hope not, because at this rate we are going to find out who the winner is before we even get to see the final challenge. From a certain point of view, this won’t be fun.

So what the heck is the current time?

We are not told the time anywhere in this chapter, but we can make some guesses. We can see that both the landing and the final hour of the trip are during daytime. Given that this is an 11-hour orientation, plus another hour of preparation, we are talking about a time span of 12 hours, all when the sun is up. As such, it is most likely that the plane lands at 6 am, and Hayate fights the… reptile at around 5 pm.

Remember that this is the time in South America, so let’s figure out our new time zone first. As 60% of the Amazon rainforest is contained within Brazil, let’s take Brasília time (UTC-3) as a reference of time zone. Time difference between Brasília time and New Zealand is 15 hours, so as the plane lands in Brazil (presumably), it is 9 pm in New Zealand. As the flight takes 14 hours,we can conclude that the participants boarded the plane at 7 am. For a school trip, this is not entirely unreasonable.

This is a very long trip…

Upon starting the trip in Japan at 11 am on the first day, the plane then landed in New Zealand at 12 noon; after departing New Zealand at 7 am, the plane landed in Brazil (presumably) at 6 am. We can see that the trip has been planned meticulously so that the travelling time is more or less the same as the time difference between destinations.

The funny thing is that it is very arguable whether this arrangement has “saved time” or not. While it is true that the travelling time is compensated by the actually time difference so that participants can still have a full day for orientations, the time spent on the plane has not been frozen, so there is no actual “time compensation” in this sense.

What kind of preparation can people make for this, anyway?

You see, it goes this way: the participants have departed New Zealand with 180 hours – 7 days 12 hours – left. The plane landed in Brazil (presumably) with 166 hours to go. The participants then have to spend another 12 hours to compete in the second orientation, so at 6 pm in Brazil (presumably) we are talking about having 154 hours – 6 days and 10 hours – remaining for the trip. It means that the participants have spent 26 hours – 1 day and 2 hours – before the second orientation is finished. In this sense, it is utter nonsense to suggest that the “meticulously’ planned trip has saved time at all.

Of course, if travelling time does not count as “trip time”, then we indeed are saving a lot of time. However, as the flight from Japan to New Zealand counted as trip time, this is unlikely to be the case.

Okay, I have spent a lot of time talking about time already, so let’s move on to the analysis of the second orientation. Once again I am not reciting the rules – go read the chapters by yourself please – but instead just highlighting some points I think worthy to note.

On the bright side, you can have wildlife for dinner…

It now becomes clear that the real challenge of School Trip Level 5 is not the orientations themselves, but the unbearable “hotels” the participants stay at night. In New Zealand the participants with no money had to endure the cold night and lack of proper dinner; in Brazil (presumably) they have to endure wildlife (whatever they are) and dangerous people, and (again) lack of proper dinner. In order to survive the nights, money is of utmost importance.

In order to earn money, the participants have to win in the orientations, which are dangerous enough that some participants may have to give up the competition for their own rescue. Now that everyone gets this point, nobody is passing the opportunity to win the money.

Odd enough, Risa is suggesting strategies.

The interesting thing is that this might not necessarily make this orientation more competitive than the last one. There were 12 units competing in the first orientation, and there are also 12 units (34 students divided into 11 teams of 3 plus Izumi), so from a certain point of view the competition is neither more nor less fierce. The only difference is that in the second orientation, only the top 5 units would get a prize, whereas the “prize” for the fourth and the fifth best… we might as well forget about it.

As of now, we only know that Hayate, Nagi and Kotetsu are in one team. Chiharu and Kayura apparently belong to another team with an unknown teammate. Izumi is a team on her own. This leaves Aika and Miki, and it is believed that they are both teammates with Hinagiku. As for Risa… although we have no idea why she is running around freely, spending Hinagiku’s money and talks about strategy, let’s not forget that she has already given up on the competition, so most likely she will not be on any teams.

They may not be good friends, but it is highly likely that Kotetsu can take wonderful photos of Hayate in action. Of course, the point about the orientation is to take photos of the most unusual animal in the rainforest, so it takes good eyes to spot the animals, and that’s where Nagi could come in. If they could all do their part in this orientation, I don’t see any reason why they cannot win.

Possibly the dark horse of this orientation?

Of course, as Izumi is cruelly left on her own, there is a chance that she would receive Hata’s blessing and come out winning. Who knows? Finding an unusual animal is mostly about luck, and in this respect Izumi is not necessarily at a disadvantage. Then again, before she could take a good photo to win this orientation, she has to keep herself alive first…

As a final note, Kananiwa seems to have a good idea of the students’ love life… even after they quit Hakuou.