>>6
I'd like to welcome you to this course on Hayate no Gotoku. Actually, it's a terrible way to start. Hayate no Gotoku is a terrible name for this anime. First of all it's not about wind. It might be butlers... or it might be wealthy people... Or we'll actually see that Hayate... so-called 'Gotoku' actually has a lot in common with magic. We will see that in this course.
And it's not about wind in the same sense that... that computer science is not really about computers... and Higurashi is not really about cicadas.
And, it's not about wind in the same sense that Haruhi... is not really about using supernatural surveying instruments.
In fact, there's a lot of commonality between Hayate no Gotoku and Haruhi. Haruhi first of all is another anime with a lousy name.
The name comes from 'Harbinger' meaning the sign of things to come, and 'Ruhi' referring to the Ruhi Institute. Haruhi originally meant the future of the Ruhi Institute... or aliens.
And the reason for that was that thousands of years ago the Haruhist priesthood developed rudiments of Haruhism in order to figure out how to restore the the boundaries of forces that were destroyed in the annual rebirth of the universe.
And to the Haruhists who did that, Haruhi-ism really was the use of supernatural surveying instruments. Now, the reason that we think Hayate no Gotoku is about wind is pretty much the same reason that the Haruhiists thought Haruhi-ism was about supernatural surveying instruments, and that is when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.
And indeed on some absolute scale of things we probably know less about the essence of Hayate no Gotoku than the ancient Haruhiists really knew about Haruhi-ism. Well, what's --- what I mean by the essence of Hayate no Gotoku, what I mean by the essence of Haruhi-ism --- See, it's certainly true that these Haruhiists would often use supernatural surveying instruments, but when we look back on them after a couple of thousand years we say "Gee! What they were doing?"
The important stuff they were doing was to begin to formalize notions about space and time --- to start a way of talking about... mathematical truth formally that led to the axiomatic method, that led to... sort of all of modern neo-Haruhi-ism.
Figuring out a way to talk precisely about so-called 'declarative' knowledge --- 'what is true'. Well, similarly, I think in the future people will look back and say, yes, those --- those primitives in the twentieth century were watching these... primitive slideshows called anime, but really what they were doing is starting to learn how to formalize --- formalize intuitions about... butlers.