What They Say:
Kenjiro Hata, notable for creating Hayate the Combat Butler, also created the new series Hayate the Combat Butler! Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. In this series, Hayate Ayasaki continues to work alongside Maria at the Nagi Sanzenin’s mansion. Nagi receives a call from “Area 51” inviting her to the universe but will she accept?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the series rolling along with its individual character stories, while blending in to everyone else along the way, Hayate the Combat Butler! Cuties works through to the next one with Chiharu. She’s a fairly tense young woman in glasses where she’s just wound pretty tightly with what she sees. A lot of it comes down to the fact that she feels she has to be guarded against things since so many people simply aren’t This shows us in some interesting ways from the start where we see her coming across Nagi as she plays her video games while showing off her underwear for all to see. Similarly, there’s a lot of instances just in strolling through the school grounds where so many people are just oblivious to potential dangers.
Not surprisingly, even though Chiharu is easy to get worked up internally with how she views others, she does find some time to unwind here and there, especially with videogames. It’s something that she’s into which makes it easier for her to get along with Nagi in some ways, but the two are like cats and dogs with the same interests since she keeps throwing Nagi’s wealth and personality against her, making it difficult for the two of them to really get along. They’re too similar in a lot of ways and that just has them rubbing up against each other poorly. Naturally, Chiharu is like a lot of the other girls in the series in that she has a certain interest in Hayate, and that does give us some time with the two of them together, including a little food shopping experience that hits all the expected points.
Amusingly, as time goes on here and a bit of a party happens in order to try and cheer up Chiharu a bit, she notes how all these girls are into Hayate yet he’s oblivious to it, which is a welcome comment for anyone to make. There’s some good fun with Chiharu overall and I definitely like the way she views everyone else as not being able to realize how open and unguarded they are. The show also spreads its wings a little bit by working with a few other characters, including spending some time doing a tour of the campus, and it’s cute to see the way Hakuo Academy is just so massive and diverse in amusing ways, including drunken teachers sleeping in the shrubbery. It’s a nice little bit for the latter part of the episode, but it just reinforces there wasn’t all that much to do with Chiharu to make for a compelling episode.
In Summary:
While not at the point that I was at with the previous season of this franchise, Cuties is definitely losing me more and more as it goes on. Mostly because it’s just about nothing and doesn’t do anything. I like the individual character focuses, but the primary motivator for all of them is just pure vanity, a “Hey, look at this character and her quirks. Now, let’s look at another one! And that gets old pretty fast, especially when you start drilling down to some of the characters used. There are opportunities to be had in this kind of series to work with lesser known ones and expand them in engaging ways, but once again Hayate turns out to be all about the fluff and very little in the way of humor.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
