NKDS

Hayate no Gotoku S2 Ep 12: The moment I’ve been waiting for.

Julius_Firefocht | June 22, 2009

Meer Hina is nice too.

Here it is. The moment I’ve patiently waited for, the single reason why I bothered with HnG S2 even though I’ve read the manga since some time back. May I present Hina’s performance of Cruel Angel’s Theses and damn, it was worth the 12 episodes it took to get here.

It’s funny, but I actually found myself more moved by JC Staff’s animation of this scene as compared to KyoAni’s handling of K-On’s last episode. Perhaps it had something to do with the song itself. Cruel Angel’s Theses still had the power to make me pump my fist in the air and sing along to it, even after all these years. Combine that with Hina herself and excellent animation, and the package is complete. Not that K-On episode 12 was bad in anyway… but Cruel Angel’s Theses is just too powerful a song and Hina too moe a character.

At this point, it would be disrespectful of me if I did not mention Itou Shizuka. She handled the song superbly, singing the song in her Hina voice while managing to make the entire scene sound like an actual live session rather than a prerecording. Impressed, I then listened to Hina’s character single which included a properly recorded version of Cruel Angel Theses. Suffice to say I preferred it to Takahashi Yoko’s 2009 rendition, though I am fully aware who the original singer was.

Overall, the transition from manga to anime was very well done for this important scene, and I have to take my hat off to JC Staff for actually making it happen. I thought it could not be done after reading that chapter in the manga, but it happened and it ended up better than the manga could ever be. Its just incredibly well done.

I am done raving about Hina, and yes, I realized I wrote an entire post for an anime sequence that lasted for no more than 1.5 minutes at the most. But hey, its the animation of a manga scene that I had looked forward to for a long time, so its worth it. I am not even sure if I will watch episode 13, but since I got this far I might as well finish it.

This is Julius Firefocht, signing off.