Hayate the Combat Butler!

On a fateful Christmas Eve night, Hayate meets Nagi Sanzen’in, the sole heir to the vast Sanzenin fortune and through a misunderstood confession and bizarre turn of events, Hayate is hired as Nagi’s butler to work off his debt. Hayate quickly learns that the truly rich don’t live the same way as normal people.

16-year-old Hayate is really down on his luck. Because his unemployed parents are good-for-nothings who waste what money they have on gambling, Hayate had to start working at a young age to help out his family. Although such experience has made him inhumanly fast and tough and skilled at things boys aren’t normally skilled at, it has also left him in an awkward position, as his parents have racked up such a huge gambling debt that they have sold Hayate to the yakuza for the value of his organs. In a desperate attempt to avoid that fate, Hayate decides to become a “bad guy” and kidnap someone to be held for ransom, but his efforts to do so are mistaken as a confession of love by the girl he targets. When he helps save the (as it turns out) ultra-wealthy 13-year-old Nagi from real kidnappers, she takes him in and gives him a job as her new personal butler (and love interest) until he can pay off his debt. But Hayate is more attracted to Nagi’s beautiful teenage maid Maria, and head butler Klaus is initially disapproving of a boy with such a poor look. And then there’s Nagi’s pet Tama, who is also a force to be reckoned with.

When Hayate was young, Santa appeared in a dream and told him that if he worked hard, he’d be rewarded. Thus, with an unbreakable will, the unfortunate Hayate has struggled through life holding onto that belief. In the present, his parents are lazy and unemployed, forcing Hayate to work several jobs to pay the bills. As if things couldn’t get worse, Hayate’s parents then run away, leaving him with an enormous debt and loan sharks on his tail! Naturally, the best solution to find money fast is… to kidnap someone?! A girl named Nagi is the target, but due to an unfortunate miscommunication, she believes Hayate has proposed to her and falls for him hard. After Nagi paid off his debt, Hayate must now work as her butler in order to repay her; but first, he must adapt to her wacky world!