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For many years I had been recommended this show by a variety of friends and it looked very promising. A lot of comedy, some romance, and Queen Tsundere, Rie Kugimiya . Kugimiya also voiced other popular characters such as Louise in Zero no Tsukaima , Taiga in Toradora , and Shana in Shakugan no Shana (among with a variety of others). I personally have seen all of those except Shana and I'm a huge fan of her voice so this show was an easy pick with her playing the young, rich, spoiled, shut-in otaku tsundere Nagi.

But moving past characters let's actually talk about the show.

The ... show started off pretty strong. It was about poor Hayate who is thrown into a world of debt after his parents gamble him away and in a last ditch effort to make money he thinks about kidnapping young Nagi in the hopes for a ransom only to back out the last second and end up saving her. So for the first few episodes we follow this narrative and the introduction of characters and settings. I want to say about the first 10 episodes are focused. However it's what happens after that changes everything...

Any sense of focus or story is thrown to the side. In a 52 episode series, there's less than 10-20% of episodes with some significance. Is this necessarily a bad thing to drift away from the story? Of course not! It's good to get a break. But when there are this many episodes it quickly gets tiring. Each episode basically pits some ridiculous situation and stems a large amount of jokes on anime references and the such. Again, all things that aren't that bad, but when you go 20 some episodes like this it quickly gets old. I remember falling asleep during so many episodes (which is VERY rare for me) just because I failed to keep interest. I would literally let the video run on the side and work on something else only looking over on occasion for the subtitles and things that catch my eye. I stopped watching the show a few years back with less than 7 episodes left to go and a couple months ago watched 4 or 5 and stopped again. I only NOW gained the motivation to finish the show more so I could take it off my list...

Now in counter-point apparently the manga is a little more focused and different but I only read a few chapters to start. Also the voice acting is great and some jokes hit here and there but it's forgetful. The show also does the horrible crime of suddenly remembering there was a plot in the last 2 EPISODES and decides to make a mention to it like "oh yeah remember that? Yeah, we're not gonna resolve it but just wanted to remind you that it did exist once".
In conclusion Hayate is a show that would've served fine with simply being shorter and having a few more episodes to develop the plot. At most I would've given it 26 episodes and that's stretching it. The fact that there's a 2nd season baffles me in the sense of how much more junk could they figure up to fill up the gaps. I'm sure I might just be taking the series a bit too seriously but I'm the kind of person that overlook things in the hopes of taking things lightly, this just pushes it too far. If you really wanna check it out watch the first few episodes and maybe a few more. Nothing ever gets resolved anyway so don't worry about finishing it. If you want, catch a few episodes here and there just to meet some new characters but it won't matter too much. The whole show basically revolves around the characters you meet at first.

Final rating? Stream it on crunchyroll, DON'T put any money into it. You could go without watching it though it is a somewhat referenced in anime fandoms so you might be out of the loop on some things. Also Kugimiya is an awesome voice to hear.