Today’s post is less of a review than a story of how a chance encounter changed my life. ^_^
In the early 2000s, a reader of Okazu, touko_no_doriru_san was kind enough to gift me the very first issue of a series that would take up a lot of space in my brain for the next almost 20 years. Hayate x Blade (はやて×ブレード) was a gonzo battle/school manga series by someone whose art I already loved as the doujinshi circle JESUS DRUG, Hayashiya Shizuru.
The original story was as follows: Kurogane Hayate, an energetic doofus enters Tenchi Academy (under, it turns out, false pretenses) in order to compete for money to wipe out the debt at the orphanage that took care of her and her twin sister, Nagi. To win, Hayate must find a partner to combat other teams with. Hayate ends up partnering with Mudo Ayana, a girl whose breakup with her last partner has traumatized her and made her swear off fighting.
This all sounds very heavy – and, honestly, it is! There is a ton of deep, dark stuff here, but also so much more crazy, goofy nonsense and high-powered swordfighting action and quite a lot of violence. Gouting blood is a thing, but so are banana peel gags and the chairwoman of the school fighting to a song made famous by a real-world roller-blading boy band. The action was good, but what made this series shine was the characters. There are too many amazing characters to name – by 2015, there were 40 main characters in this series. Honestly, I was going to list out just a few, but in the end, I really can’t. ^_^
The series went through a lot of changes. A publisher shift in Japan meant that we only got the first 6 volumes in English. The series initially ended in 2013, with Hayate clearing the orphanage’s debt. In 2014, it began anew as Hayate x Blade 2 (Nyan), in which the school chairwoman Amachi Hitsugi creates an even nuttier battle royale, pitching all the students at the school, including an outsider group determined to take the school down completely, against one another. Students were split into “Heaven” and “Earth” teams and given dangerous and weirdly bizarre scenarios in order to fight one another. There was never any doubt who would win.
There were also 9(!) Drama CDs which live in my head rent-free, as masterworks of writing and voice-acting.
In 2018, we said good-bye to Hayate x Blade. As I said at the time, statistically speaking, one volume should have been less good than the others, but none of them were anything other than fantastic. The story ended, I was very happy with where and how it ended, which was on a gag that made me snort my drink out my nose. A perfect ending for this series.
But, selfishly, I want more. ^_^ I love epilogues in manga. I especially adore 10-years-later epilogues, to see what became of these people. I wanted that for this series.
Well last year, I got it. As part of the Habu Core, (Hayate x Buraydo Collection), Hayashiya-sensei put together a doujinshi of commission art of the HxB characters (squee) and a series of 10 years later sketches of all 40 (plus 1) of the main characters, plus some high-school-era comics for those pairs. And once again, it ends on a gag so utterly out of the pale, but completely in character for Amachi Hitsugi, that I choked on my drink.
Habu Core F is the perfect epilogue to the perfect manga series.
I’ll never forget this series. At least in part because when Hayashiya-sensei was dissolving her backlog of manuscript pages, I purchased some of the panels for myself and plan on having them framed and added to my art gallery in my office this year. ^_^
Once again, we say good bye to Hayate x Blade. I’m glad that Sid and Nancy seem pretty happy with their choices. ^_^
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