[Arabesque]

Originally Posted by Mentar

I'll probably run fairly solo in here, but I'll say it anyway: So far, I have difficulties caring about the whole Royal Garden substory. Which is a bad thing, because it's obviously supposed to be so central, but... I REALLY have difficulties dredging up curiosity about it. Because it feels so very much unrelated to the rest of the show.

For a dozen tankoubons, the story in HnG develops around a core of characters. And all of a sudden - unrelated to essentially everything else - the End of the World arc begins with an entirely new character Athena, with only Hayate as known character. Feels very much like an alternate universe kind of substory.

Even now, when Hata tries to interweave this Arc with the rest of the story, but the connection to the core cast (Nagi, Maria, Hina, Ayumu, Sakuya, Isumi) is essentially nonexistent. I suspect that first there needs to be a bigger explanation for me why I should care...

*shrugs shoulders sadly*

You know, I had the same view about the EotW when it finished. On its own, it was a very nice story with a really heart-breaking ending and some really interesting mysteries and several inserted hints and subtly details to add to the intrigue of it. It helped add layers to the story and expanded on the background of characters, as well as introducing Athena and Hayate's brother. But the way it was introduced can only be described as ''forced''. The story didn't appear out of the outcome of previous events, but simply because Hayate all of the sudden remembered something -> Cut to the past -> Return to the main story. Now Hata is by no means a great writer, but at least he shows when he does put in effort to think about the characters (as seen in the volume comments) and how they reveal that information. The way the EotW arc just pops ups was really not that thought-out as it should have been.

Now the current arc had a better set up from the get go, and had more interactions from the other characters (Hina, Nagi and Isumi had the most prominence in this arc as Used Can pointed out, while the rest of the cast always had the supporting characters label ably to their foreheads for a long time now (unfortunately)).

What I think Hata is trying to do is that he is gradually tying the Royal Garden sub-plot with the main plot with thin threads every step of the way, which seems to work fine thus far (ofc we have to gloss over the inconstancy that this arc gave us, but I want to wait to see how will all of this will wrap up before I bring that up) Whether he succeeds in doing so remains to be seen. Right now, I personally think that the arc on its own has been very enjoyable and may just earn a solid ''7'' from me if it manages to end right.

Originally Posted by zodanhko

Anyway, the original title of HnG is the "Royal Garden." Nagi character was made from Athena, and they were planned to be the same character until some problems occurred with the age differences which made Hata introduced Athena as a whole new character. Rather than a sub-story, it's more like the main story of HnG.

While all of this is interesting trivia, it really has little relevance to what is the current story is right now. Plans change all the time, and many authors (from all mediums) talk about how they create characters from other characters or how they had different plans for the storyline, but at the end of the day what matters is what actually happened, and now the main story is about how a butler in dept serving an underage girl who happens to have a crush on him, all the while they face all the mambo jumbo and wacky situations they encounter with their friends.

Originally Posted by zodanhko

Yes, that's a harsh and another way to put it. Those last few hundred of chapters did have relationship build-up and comedic genre of the story.

I think the waiting has to do with the right time for Athena's introduction, and it was done beautifully. The story about Royal Garden was planned from the beginning.
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Edit: Rather than said the main story, maybe I should have said the main plot of the story?

It could just be me, but all I see is the silhouette of the Royal Palace. That doesn't mean he planed to insert them into the story later on. He could've wanted to throw it in as trivia.

And the plot isn't going to change. All of the Royal Garden storyline going to do is introduce Hayate's brother and give additional back story. It isn't going to hijack the plot.