By Shizuru Hayashiya. Originally released in Japan as Vols. 1-3 separately by ASCII Media Works, serialized in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Currently released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ultra Jump. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

First off, unlike Seven Seas’ Strawberry Panic omnibus, which printed 2 ‘magazine only’ chapters at the end as extra content, you aren’t gaining anything new here. In fact, you lose something, as the translation notes explaining some of the more obscure Japanese references are not included in this omnibus. So if you already have Seven Seas’ first three volumes, you aren’t missing anything.

If you haven’t picked this series up yet, however, I do recommend it. It’s just fun. Insane antics at an all-female private academy, featuring an insane School President who has girls fight in pairs with swords at random times, with financial rewards (and suggestion of more) for the winners. Into this comes our heroine, Hayate Kurogane, a simply and naive yet nimble girl, who enters the academy under a pretense – her twin sister Nagi is ill, and Hayate is there to take her place till she can recover and enter the school. Sadly, pretense and Hayate don’t go together well, and this is discovered almost immediately. Luckily, the president will let anything happen as long as it interests or amuses her, so Hayate is allowed to stay at the Academy as well.

As the series goes on, we get introduced to more and more young girls with swords – in fact, it can get very difficult to keep track of them all without reference guides – and you gradually come to realize that they’re all nuts in some way, shape or form. Every time you meet someone who’s a supposed ‘tsukkomi’ or straight woman, they do something incredibly stupid to show off their boke side. You can argue Ayana comes closest, but this is a girl who keeps ‘Mr. Nailbat’ by her bedside and threatens loan sharks while wearing a plastic bag over her head. And this doesn’t even get into the girls who are *supposed* to be funny all the time.

Seven Seas has talked up the yuri in this manga series, and it’s certainly there if you want to look for it, but especially in the early volumes I think people who go into this expecting lots of Girls’ Love are going to be disappointed. Even Jun, the resident pervert in the manga (who is also a kickass ninja – it’s that kind of manga) is fairly sedate in these early volumes. That said, any series in an all-girls school with women teamed up as partners with swords is going to have yuri subtext, and there’s some nice bits here.

I also note that Seven Seas used the cover art with Hitsugi and Shizuku for this omnibus, which makes sense. Even the most casual reader of the series tends to read through it looking for ‘Hitsugi moments’. She is the aforementioned School President, and manages to be one of the funniest characters n the series, as well as easily the most badass. She is the personification of this series taken to eleven, as is her partner Shizuku, who once again appears to be the serious-minded straight woman until you see her trying to get over a cold WITH GREAT JUSTICE! They’re my favorite couple in the manga.

As I noted, if you have this already you don’t have to buy it again. But if you haven’t checked it out, do so. Tons of strong women with swords doing funny things while having well-drawn battles. It needs more love.

By Shizuru Hayashiya. Originally released in Japan by ASCII Media Works, serialized in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Currently released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ultra Jump. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

This is, above all else, a very funny manga. I can think of dozens of places in this volume where I laughed, mostly as the humor can come from any character. There’s a lot of Osaka-style boke and tsukkomi humor (in fact, literally in one chapter – Riona and Ouka perform a theatrical Osaka routine, complete with bow ties), but the beauty of this series is that anyone can be funny at any time. There are no straight men in HxB – just different levels of comedian. Even Akira, she of the huge fan club devoted to worshipping her, can get away with one of the best punchlines in the volume just by taking off her coat.

Of course, it helps that the characters are all very likeable and interesting. We want to follow them, want to laugh at their predicaments. Even if there’s more and more of them with every volume. (I will admit I do think a drawback of the series is that it introduces too many people too quickly – there’s a lot of named characters, all of whom wander in and out of the action continuously – and that you have to consult past volumes to jog your brain.) There was a lovely bit in one chapter where Yuho, Jun’s partner from previous volumes who is still battling illness, spends most of the time cringing at Jun’s antics and sweatdropping at all the stupidity going on around her. Yet when Jun’s dad asks about her friends, Jun smiles brightly, and notes she can’t wait to come back here.

This being Hayate x Blade, there is also lots of swordfighting. The first half continues the comedic effect, as to try to keep things ‘balanced’, Hitsugi has the good swordfighters fight with… ladles. Even so, it’s 80 bad fighters with swords vs. eight fantastic fighters with ladles, so you know what’s going to happen. (Great joke where Ayana is far more confident when it’s 80 vs. 2. After it becomes 80 vs. 8, the odds are much WORSE for a miracle.) The end of the volume is deadly serious, though, as Ayana’s old partner Yukari and her current partner Maki take on the violent and evil (respectively) Ensuu and Meiko. (Well, OK, no one in HxB is genuinely evil. Ensuu is more of a crazed animal than anything else. Meiko does come off as a callous jerk so far, though.) The fight is well-choreographed, and goes beyond the rules pretty quickly – Maki gets her wrist broken. Things end on a cliffhanger, unfortunately.

Sadly, it may be a cliffhanger we never see resolved. When Seven Seas announced they had bought the rights to Hayate x Blade, they noted they had the rights to the first 6 volumes, with an option for more. This is very typical licensing for series over here, especially ones that are ongoing. Right after this, Hayashiya left ASCII Media Works and took Hayate x Blade to Shueisha, where it began serialization in their seinen title Ultra Jump. Shueisha has reprinted Vol. 1-8 in Japan, and now has 3 more volumes to add to that.

Now, I’m pretty sure that Mediaworks still has the rights to their own Vol. 7 & 8, and it may theoretically be possible to license the last two Mediaworks volumes to come out here. I’m not sure, though. HxB doesn’t sell well (I’m guessing at this, but it was one of the titles dropped by Diamond Comics as it didn’t hit their ‘sales threshhold’), and it is unlikely in the extreme that Shueisha would work with Seven Seas to get out future volumes. Nor is it likely that this is a series that will move to Viz. So, Hayate x Blade is stuck in a particularly nasty form of licensing hell, one due to various factors.

If this is the final volume in North America, it’s ended at a poor place. But I’m very happy that Seven Seas did put out the first six. It’s a fun, funny title with lots of great fights, and dozens of strong, kickass female characters. I highly recommend catching up to it, mostly as if it sells a little better Seven Seas might try to option the final two Mediaworks volumes.