When we last got caught up with Hayate, Father Radiostar and Isumi discovered a coffin in a space in the attic. Is related to that happening this volume? No!

Volume 35 is a lot more character development focused. For starters, we open Ruka asking Hamster if Hayate would date her if she told him how she felt, and Hamster basically trying to talk her out of it – through deception with an undercurrent of the truth.

The rest of it is stand-alone vignettes before we shift gears to the start of a short arc – namely Ruka has a problem with working herself sick, literally, Hayate and Ruka are undergoing an enforced vacation – together.

So, tonally – this volume feels weighted more towards episodic material with a seasoning of character development more than anything else. Now, I don’t mind – Shonen Sunday is a weekly magazine. If you’re putting a comedy manga out in that form, it makes sense to do a lot of this kind of material.

That said, it definitely shows the weakness of getting the manga in a Tankobon format like this (at least if you’re getting it legally), as opposed to getting it a chapter at a time digitally, through something like the Shonen Jump app. With the app, you can pace yourself a chapter at a time during the slower portions of the story, before binging your way through heftier arcs, like what this volume wraps partway through.

Unfortunately, there isn’t really any Shonen Sunday material on Viz’s Shonen Jump app, which means, for now, we’re stuck with the fairly slow pace of existing Hayate releases. Specifically – Vol. 36 has yet to get an English release date yet. I’m assuming it’s going to get an English release because I’d prefer to support the creator, but it’s still frustrating – particularly since the manga’s finished in Japan already.

Well, if you want to pick up Vol. 35 – it’s available physically and now (at last) digitally from Amazon, along with a physical edition from RightStuf. Buying anything through those links helps to support the site.