Mahou Sensei Negima!

I watched the anime before and got bored. I've been reading UQ Holder a bit, and while it's not super great, it seems good enough. I read that Negima is better and the anime was just really bad. The UQ Holder anime was also horrendous. So now I'm thinking it's time I really read this manga.

 

Hopefully I really enjoy it. If I can ask, is it one of those that start of slow and then get really good? If so around what arc/chapter should I really expect it to hit its stride? I think I've heard something about a tournament arc?

90 Chapters in, UQ Holder is a wreck. I don't know how Negima fans can defend it at this point.
1. None of the characters are likable or sympathetic. They feel so incredibly forced and awkward and just there to throw cliche interactions with Touta in. Motivations and characters are so nebulous they might as well be non-existent. Meanwhile, I think everyone would find at least most of the girls of 2A charming in their own way, with all the major characters having well established characters and motivations. Negi > Touta. Negi wasn't your typical idiot indecisive shounen hero. He had a solid, believable history and character development that firmly established his motivations and pattern of thought. He was smart but at the same time, he had a tendency to overthink, he was mature in many ways for his age, but you could still see that he was just a 10 year old kid sometimes. How many other series have had a protagonist as well developed and alive as Negi was? Meanwhile, Touta is just a walking plot black box. I have never read a series with a worse idiot hero than UQ Holder.
2. In Negima now, we are right in the middle of the Mahora festival arc, possibly the best arc in the whole story, and the turning point where Negima changed from a romcom with battles to battles with romcom as it was always meant to be. Meanwhile UQ Holder is a mess of cliches and random characters being introduced, random training from hell, and nonsensical timeskips and plots being introduced left and right and dropped with no consequence.
3. In Negima, you could easily see just how much effort and research went into creating or recreating the world, the magic system, and the martial arts used, and achieving a balance of power with natural progression. Meanwhile in UQ Holder, Akamatsu-sensei seems to have decided he was sick of all the work put into Negima and just makes random stuff up as plot demands. new powers, new spells, new devices, new characters, the integrity of the plot and timeline be damned.
4. Evangeline has been ruined. Her character and all that time travel bullshit in UQ Holder is basically a giant slap in the face of anyone who liked how she fit with 2A and her character development and backstory in Negima.
 
UQ holder is a giant trainwreck plastered over with pictures of Evangeline in new hats, with new readers who watch the trainwreck because they don't know any better, and old readers keeping an eye out in concern hoping that they don't see their beloved characters from Negima killed in the trainwreck.

My friend, I never even bothered. I was out chapter 1. Guy took two tries to get Nejima off the ground, and soon as he's done with it he goes back in? No no no, cut the umbilical cord, move on, do something new.

and we finally, FINALLY know who won the Negi Bowl, after 5 freaking years!!

Rereading this again, still thinking that the best part of this serie was the fight between Negi&Koji and Rakan&Kage.

That was one of the most epic fight I've ever read, kinda wish it was animated [by any studio beside Shaft, Gainax would be good for that]

Edit #2: It was a great ride, I really enjoyed this manga a lot. It had its ups and downs, but it had so many things I wish more manga had. Truly a great manga. /edit

 

So I decided to read this whole manga for the first time approx. three weeks ago, after reading UQ Holder first (because people told me I don't need to read Negima beforehand).

 

Edit: Nevermind what I wrote afterwards, my question was answered on the next page.. *facepalm*

 

I'm now at chapter 257, page 13 and really confused:

Rofl I love how people are comparing two series rather than thinking that Negima and Uq holder are cooperative not competitive. They are different stories, but it is a continuation of the universe so I'm looking forward to the end game.

90 Chapters in, UQ Holder is a wreck. I don't know how Negima fans can defend it at this point.

1. None of the characters are likable or sympathetic. They feel so incredibly forced and awkward and just there to throw cliche interactions with Touta in. Motivations and characters are so nebulous they might as well be non-existent. Meanwhile, I think everyone would find at least most of the girls of 2A charming in their own way, with all the major characters having well established characters and motivations. Negi > Touta. Negi wasn't your typical idiot indecisive shounen hero. He had a solid, believable history and character development that firmly established his motivations and pattern of thought. He was smart but at the same time, he had a tendency to overthink, he was mature in many ways for his age, but you could still see that he was just a 10 year old kid sometimes. How many other series have had a protagonist as well developed and alive as Negi was? Meanwhile, Touta is just a walking plot black box. I have never read a series with a worse idiot hero than UQ Holder.

2. In Negima now, we are right in the middle of the Mahora festival arc, possibly the best arc in the whole story, and the turning point where Negima changed from a romcom with battles to battles with romcom as it was always meant to be. Meanwhile UQ Holder is a mess of cliches and random characters being introduced, random training from hell, and nonsensical timeskips and plots being introduced left and right and dropped with no consequence.

3. In Negima, you could easily see just how much effort and research went into creating or recreating the world, the magic system, and the martial arts used, and achieving a balance of power with natural progression. Meanwhile in UQ Holder, Akamatsu-sensei seems to have decided he was sick of all the work put into Negima and just makes random stuff up as plot demands. new powers, new spells, new devices, new characters, the integrity of the plot and timeline be damned.

4. Evangeline has been ruined. Her character and all that time travel bullshit in UQ Holder is basically a giant slap in the face of anyone who liked how she fit with 2A and her character development and backstory in Negima.

 

UQ holder is a giant trainwreck plastered over with pictures of Evangeline in new hats, with new readers who watch the trainwreck because they don't know any better, and old readers keeping an eye out in concern hoping that they don't see their beloved characters from Negima killed in the trainwreck.

 

 

uq holder never had too big or drastic timeskips. you talk about characters that are lifeless and have no point, but the first thing negima did was establish that we where gonna have to learn to like all the 30+ in the classroom and many more to come. its like he threw placeholders everywhere like a machine gun grenade launcher, and decided that he would just think up a decent personality latter. uq holder presented a decent yukihime that felt and acted like she had been around for 700 hundred years, mentoring and shaping the world in small and big ways alike. Not like some stubborn fool, trying to deceive herself into thinking that she "wants" to fit in with freaking middle schoolers, she is not trying to be a young girl and fall in love and crap, she took the mentor position that befits her real character from the very beggining, and not a deplorable "fake" inocent girl that "wants to believe". negima feels like crap and a chore to go trough, i read love hina 2 times in 2 days each, and it felt like a decent story that made me familiar with the setting and locations presented. i felt like i actually had spent that time with the characters and the story, and it felt good. negima is a parade of cliches from the very beggining, to the panty shots, to the tsundere main girl, that refuses to open up at first, but gives a chance to the nice and easy going main character that has to learn to give himself a chance and try his best. it was love hina all over again, except in middle school, with a main character that was a "cute", innocent kid that never gave any reason to be yelled at like in love hina. With an extra cast composed of way too many people, that watered down how meaningfull the character development in the series, if you could call exposition that. No character development really happens in the beggining, just some exposition on what all those girls can and want to do. it takes until chapter 50 for the story to get interesting, and it still feels like a chore.

    I question if you are not just riding on nostalgia-mobil, and refuse to accept that yukihime would change this much. I will concede that the time slips and meetings between "kitty" and totta seem very forced and convenient, but the autor was never a steven king or shakspeare to begin with. he never had great works, just very enjoyable stories and characters, that we could chill and watch(exept negima, because it was a chore to give a crapp about all those characterts, pluss a plott magic organizations and all that)

Dude, Negima has like, 200+ more chapters than UQ Holder at the moment. Of fucking course it's better right now.

 

Hell, if you're just going off the plot we can see at the beginning, Negima's just a typical romcom.

i am trying to read negima, i tried many times to read it and watch it. never managed somehow. now after i started reading and enjoying uq holder, i am forcing myself to drudge trough it. its hard, it took me 2 months to get to chapter 50, and i skiped a lot.

90 Chapters in, UQ Holder is a wreck. I don't know how Negima fans can defend it at this point.

1. None of the characters are likable or sympathetic. They feel so incredibly forced and awkward and just there to throw cliche interactions with Touta in. Motivations and characters are so nebulous they might as well be non-existent. Meanwhile, I think everyone would find at least most of the girls of 2A charming in their own way, with all the major characters having well established characters and motivations. Negi > Touta. Negi wasn't your typical idiot indecisive shounen hero. He had a solid, believable history and character development that firmly established his motivations and pattern of thought. He was smart but at the same time, he had a tendency to overthink, he was mature in many ways for his age, but you could still see that he was just a 10 year old kid sometimes. How many other series have had a protagonist as well developed and alive as Negi was? Meanwhile, Touta is just a walking plot black box. I have never read a series with a worse idiot hero than UQ Holder.

2. In Negima now, we are right in the middle of the Mahora festival arc, possibly the best arc in the whole story, and the turning point where Negima changed from a romcom with battles to battles with romcom as it was always meant to be. Meanwhile UQ Holder is a mess of cliches and random characters being introduced, random training from hell, and nonsensical timeskips and plots being introduced left and right and dropped with no consequence.

3. In Negima, you could easily see just how much effort and research went into creating or recreating the world, the magic system, and the martial arts used, and achieving a balance of power with natural progression. Meanwhile in UQ Holder, Akamatsu-sensei seems to have decided he was sick of all the work put into Negima and just makes random stuff up as plot demands. new powers, new spells, new devices, new characters, the integrity of the plot and timeline be damned.

4. Evangeline has been ruined. Her character and all that time travel bullshit in UQ Holder is basically a giant slap in the face of anyone who liked how she fit with 2A and her character development and backstory in Negima.

 

UQ holder is a giant trainwreck plastered over with pictures of Evangeline in new hats, with new readers who watch the trainwreck because they don't know any better, and old readers keeping an eye out in concern hoping that they don't see their beloved characters from Negima killed in the trainwreck.

Fk UQ Holder I want Negima back. Honestly Negima has the much better story, plot, and characters

Dude, Negima has like, 200+ more chapters than UQ Holder at the moment. Of fucking course it's better right now.

 

Hell, if you're just going off the plot we can see at the beginning, Negima's just a typical romcom.

Eh, I don't know. UQ Holder seems to be rushing headlong into Negima mode. Currently you're expected to have read all of Negima in order to make sense of the plot. As soon as Fate arrived and curb-stomped UQ Holder it effectively became a true sequel.

Fk UQ Holder I want Negima back. Honestly Negima has the much better story, plot, and characters

I have mixed feelings about this one....Perhaps it's because I binged on it and read the whole thing pretty quickly, I never really stopped to appreciate most of the dialogue, the backgrounds, the scenes which transpire....But on the other hand, I never felt like I really should've, or I had to. Most of the manga was just your common-place, generic, rambling, incoherent series of events for the sake of fanservice, slapstick comedy and some very odd romance.
I still have no idea why every single girl loves / likes Negi. Not even one girl changed her opinion of him after finding out just how much pain in the ass he is.
Negima is probably the very definition of Shounen. So much text about things you don't care about, I skipped about 30% of the overall text and I am sure I missed absolutely nothing (5% of them being incantations in Latin), so many moments of "serious" dialogues which were treated insincerely by abolishing them with slapstick and or tits.
Most of the manga reads out as casually as it is to flip through the pages, as such I am not quite surprised I felt like nothing really mattered in this manga. Not that anything of substance really makes sense in this manga.
That being said, it was still an enjoyable read. It was cute and amusing, and I never expected from someone whom wrote Love Hina to actually make a proper shounen. I honestly expected less, and what I got was your generic shounen, but with more thought put into it than most. The mature undertones of thinking about one's mortality or existence in its purest metaphysical form is not something you see everyday, or even think a bunch of 15-16 years old peeps would ever stop to consider. Too bad for the romantic bullcrap that makes absolutely no sense. For an instance, why are all of these girls so ready to sacrifice themselves for Negi? The whole magic-world arc? H-o-l-y s-h-i-t. Thank god nothing happened to them, we might've had a serious moment otherwise! We can't have that!
Well, I ranted long enough...But I do want to add : I actually don't care with whom Negi ended up with. I think it's swell it ended that way, but the ending is still pretty darn rushed, and that's obvious.
Ah, whatever. I can scratch one "classic" off my list.

I can see why people would feel this way towards this series expecially with the way it ended. The sequel uq holder really helped to appreciate it way more. I guess the reason why allot of the events happened was for uq holder to take place. It seems as though he originally wanted to make a series more like uq rather than negima but he had to slowly move away from his roots or his readers would be shocked and popularity would drop.

Overall I appreciate what he did with negima but I see it more as a stepping stone for what he wants to write in the future. He has created his own universe which makes writing a coherent and interesting story way easier, as he can move past the big lumps of texts.

I have mixed feelings about this one....Perhaps it's because I binged on it and read the whole thing pretty quickly, I never really stopped to appreciate most of the dialogue, the backgrounds, the scenes which transpire....But on the other hand, I never felt like I really should've, or I had to. Most of the manga was just your common-place, generic, rambling, incoherent series of events for the sake of fanservice, slapstick comedy and some very odd romance.
I still have no idea why every single girl loves / likes Negi. Not even one girl changed her opinion of him after finding out just how much pain in the ass he is.

Negima is probably the very definition of Shounen. So much text about things you don't care about, I skipped about 30% of the overall text and I am sure I missed absolutely nothing (5% of them being incantations in Latin), so many moments of "serious" dialogues which were treated insincerely by abolishing them with slapstick and or tits.
Most of the manga reads out as casually as it is to flip through the pages, as such I am not quite surprised I felt like nothing really mattered in this manga. Not that anything of substance really makes sense in this manga.

That being said, it was still an enjoyable read. It was cute and amusing, and I never expected from someone whom wrote Love Hina to actually make a proper shounen. I honestly expected less, and what I got was your generic shounen, but with more thought put into it than most. The mature undertones of thinking about one's mortality or existence in its purest metaphysical form is not something you see everyday, or even think a bunch of 15-16 years old peeps would ever stop to consider. Too bad for the romantic bullcrap that makes absolutely no sense. For an instance, why are all of these girls so ready to sacrifice themselves for Negi? The whole magic-world arc? H-o-l-y s-h-i-t. Thank god nothing happened to them, we might've had a serious moment otherwise! We can't have that!

Well, I ranted long enough...But I do want to add : I actually don't care with whom Negi ended up with. I think it's swell it ended that way, but the ending is still pretty darn rushed, and that's obvious.
Ah, whatever. I can scratch one "classic" off my list.

I'm rereading this (again) and whenever AAA is mentioned I can't help but think of the real AAA.

Am I misunderstanding something or is Asuna actually Negi's aunt? I mean, 10 years ago she is a princess of about 3-6 years of age, so she'd have to be the youngest sister of Arika who is Negi's mother, right? Can someone enlighten me please?

 

More like his great great grandaunt since her sister -the first Queen of Ostia- is Negi's ancestor. It was mentioned Asuna was hundreds of years old, but considering her mahora-personality she would be more like an onee-san. And again I'm confused with the grave master (ch314 page12). Could be the first Queen... or Nagi's ex-comrade.

Putting the last cover of the manga as the picture, gives a giant spoiler... Now i know who he ends with...

 

Just read chap 1 and all of the possible routes are now ruined... crap <:

That image is actually quite misleading, you haven't ruined it yet.

Putting the last cover of the manga as the picture, gives a giant spoiler... Now i know who he ends with...

 

Just read chap 1 and all of the possible routes are now ruined... crap <:

No he doesn't.

Putting the last cover of the manga as the picture, gives a giant spoiler... Now i know who he ends with...

 

Just read chap 1 and all of the possible routes are now ruined... crap <:

Am I misunderstanding something or is Asuna actually Negi's aunt? I mean, 10 years ago she is a princess of about 3-6 years of age, so she'd have to be the youngest sister of Arika who is Negi's mother, right? Can someone enlighten me please?

Ah negima! I remember reading this when the first volume came out in America. As a young teenager i have to say i loved this series for obvious reasons. As i grew up those reasons changed to it being a bad ass action manga with kick ass characters and story lines. From beginning to end i was on board for this and now i have moved onto UQ holder to follow the story further. Ken Akamatsu created my masterpiece manga. <3

If this gets animated (the one that follows the end), this would have so many voice actors.

so I'm currently up to ch 180 and just recently thought about the pactio cards. if the only way is through kissing then wouldn't that mean colonel sanders and negi's father did it as well?!

It's mentioned that 'kissing' isn't the only way. But that's kinda the 'most effective' way because Pactio was probably used for opposite sex only. It's mentioned that most of those who did Pactio will end up marrying or something.

Anyway, I guess that little white thing mentioned it before that 'kissing' isn't the only way to do Pactio.

so I'm currently up to ch 180 and just recently thought about the pactio cards. if the only way is through kissing then wouldn't that mean colonel sanders and negi's father did it as well?!

And about the ending.. Honestly, I thought Negi was going to marry Asuna. I was expecting a marriage scene. But heck, it turned out to be harem ending, and god knows who he's going to have sex with. But seriously, from the cover, I though there'll be a marriage scene, but then I realized the cover isn't actually showing their marriage. Ah man, whatever.

 

By the way, I wonder who Negi liked. There's this chapter where he whispered who he liked to Asuna, but I'm not sure who it is.