By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

With this second omnibus of Negima, Ken Akamatsu is starting to make his move. He’s obeyed his corporate masters and written in a giant harem cast, with tons of fanservice and blushing tsundere heroine, just like his last title. Indeed, this omnibus contains a mini-arc where the cast fight a battle to get a kiss from Negi. However, bigger things are afoot, and this omnibus is also where Akamatsu lets us know that there will be adventure and pure shonen fighting here as well – and that eventually it will be the main thrust of the plotline.

The most obvious thing we get out of this re-read of Volumes 4-6 is we see another of the main cast introduced – Setsuna Sakurazaki. Just as Asuna bears similarity to Naru from Love Hina, and Nodoka is like Shinobu, Setsuna is clearly meant to be the Motoko of this series, right down to the flustered panicking whenever love is mentioned. (Indeed, the connection to the Aoyama family is later made explicit, about 20-odd volumes later). Setsuna is briefly introduced as a potential villain, but that doesn’t last long, and soon we’re finding out about her loyalty to her friends, her amazing sword powers, her yokai heritage, and of course her repressed yearnings for her Konoka-ojosama, which manages to be played for laughs *and* taken seriously at the same time.

The other thing I noticed here was how casually we’re introduced to two of the major villains of the entire work. Fate and Tsukuyomi both appear as supposed ‘mid-level bosses’ of the villain of this arc, Chigusa. However, Chigusa proves to be mostly useless (Akamatsu lampshades this by having her defeated by Chachazero, Evangeline’s two-foot-tall puppet creature), so Fate quickly takes over, and proves to be more than a match for Negi, who is powerful but inexperienced. Fate is mostly drawn as a blank here, though I did like some of his dry humor when he muses about the water spells he’s using on Asuna, and how they interact with her magic cancel abilities. And Tsukuyomi is cute and adorable, and only wants to fight her sempai in a sword battle! Except for one panel, she is not at all the terrifying lunatic we will see later on.

Akamatsu is still feeling around how to work in all 31 girls in his plot without making the whole thing too unwieldy – he never did quite master that, though he got close. The popularity poll included at the end shows that Makie is the most popular of all the girls for two polls running, so perhaps she is the character that is most disappointing – despite a late run, Ken hasn’t really worked out her potential. On the other hand, he’s also realizing which girls *do* work well as a main cast member. Setsuna arrives and is immediately one of the crew, as I mentioned, and Nodoka is the second girl to get a pactio with Negi (and oh what a pactio it is). As for Evangeline, let’s just say I think her skyrocketing popularity caused both Shonen Magazine and Akamatsu to go “Whoah,” and after being casually disposed of by Negi in the first omnibus, she’s back to full strength here, going toe to toe with Fate, taking out huge building-sized ancient demons, and laughing all the while.

The translation here is new, as with the first one, with the Nibley twins replacing the work of Peter David (Vols. 4-5) and Trish Ledoux (Vol. 6). A replacement of David’s very loose adaptation was quite welcome. The extras have the preliminary sketches included at the end, but lack the ‘character bios’ and cover art sketches we get with individual releases.

Overall, if you’re going to be getting into Negima, this is likely where you’ll hop on. Vol. 5-6 have a great arc that shows the series finally escaping its harem roots, and even though there will always be fanservice, it’s a gamechanger. Fans want magical battles, and Akamatsu is here to provide them.

By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

When I reviewed the previous volume of Negima, I noted that our heroes would start kicking ass in this next one. Which is true, but we do have about 50 pages before that happens. And in that 50 pages, a whole lot more sympathetic characters get killed off by our suddenly body-count happy author.

Of course, this is a shonen romantic comedy manga, despite occasional drama, and the people killed off are being turned into magical feathers and dissipated, not having huge bloody chunks cut out of them. Thus, it is not particularly a surprise when, just a few chapters later, it’s revealed we may be able to get all of them back. Still, for the chapters where it’s happening, it’s horrible to see. Yue’s rival Emily, Jerk with a Heart of Gold Tosaka, and even the giant Teddy Bear woman all get taken out. Least surprising but most devastating of all, Fate takes out Jack Rakan, who manages to briefly resurrect himself from the dead (because he’s just that awesome – no, really, that’s the canon explanation) and give our heroes a brief pep talk. Even Chisame ends up in tears.

Of course, not everyone takes this lying down. Yue’s reaction to Emily’s death is to turn into MAGICAL PSYCHO BERSERKER, and it works for about 10 seconds till Mana talks her down. Then there’s Nodoka. Remember a few months ago, when I posted my top 10 Negima moments, and hinted more would be in future books? This is the one I was thinking of. Nodoka, having seen two of her companions killed in front of her, snaps out of her funk and proceeds to kick the bad guy’s ass with her pactio powers, cleverness, and a few magical dodging skills she picked up in case stuff like this happened. Afterwards, the entire cast’s jaw drops when they hear about it. Normally when an author has the characters lampshade how awesome something was, it seems self-serving, but here, it’s more acknowledgement.

And so, after Chachamaru takes care of the giant Chtulhu monster with her new pactio weapon, we pause to briefly run away and regroup. Which is good, as Rakan noted something else that our heroes are finally clued in on (even if the reader has known for some time): the Asuna they’re with is a fake, and the reason the villains are able to do all this damage is they’re using the real Asuna’s power. So it’s time to interrogate the false Asuna… which is a bit of a problem, as the fake doesn’t know she’s a fake. Luckily, Negi has his secret weapon. (cough) Hey, when all you have is a hammer…

As the volume ends, Luna is no longer Asuna, and tells them what she knows (which isn’t a lot), without even needing enhanced interrogation (kudos to the Nibleys for that phrase, by the way). So Negi needs to power up again, and must call on imaginary Evangeline once more to draw out his inner beast… which may not be able to be put down after all this is over. This is the trouble with siding with dark magic.

Much as I enjoyed the volume as a story, I would be remiss if I did not point out that it was even more riddled with typos than usual. In previous Kodansha/Del Rey reviews, I asked who was editing the books and if they knew what continuity was; in this one, I wonder if they even use editors at all anymore, or just have the translators edit their own work. “Nodoka56…” was particularly egregious. It also seems to be missing the character commentary on Asuna. I realize that there was a rush to get out Negima every 2 months to catch up after the hiatus, but come on, shoddy product does not help you at all, Kodansha.

That said, another great volume of Negima, and I do look forward to seeing how this battle continues to play out. Surely Akamatsu can’t introduce anything more surprising than what we’ve already had…

By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Everyone has heard of the phrase “it’s always darkest before the dawn”, and that proves to be true of Negima as well. Sadly, the dawn is not in this volume, which mostly brings our cast closer and closer to ‘the darkest’. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold…

When we left our heroes, we were in the middle of a big flashback telling the rest of the story of Negi’s mother and father. Having saved as many people as possible from a crushing death at the hands of the faceless bad guys, Arika is rewarded by being turned into a scapegoat and accused of the murder of her father and others in the name of ambition. It’s up to the others to rescue her… that is if she wants to be rescued. It has to be said that her rescue, and Nagi and Arika’s subsequent confessions, are one of the most heartwarming bits of the series, something which Akamatsu is clearly milking for all it’s worth, as he has several characters, including our current villain, tear up at it.

As a villain, Goedel’s not up to much. Sure, he can hold back Negi for a bit, but his crypticness just serves to annoy, and he reckons without the powers of Negi’s friends. Indeed, Chisame, Asakura and Nodoka all get great spotlights here, as we see that intelligent use of powers can get you far even if you aren’t a fighter. And, of course, we get the fighters as well, as Ku Fei shows up with her Monkey King Staff of Awesome.

And then the villains decide to attack… all of them. This means we have the palace guards coming to arrest Negi’s girls as conspirators (they don’t last long, especially once they start threatening Konoka in front of her protector…), as well as what appears to be Cthulhu. No, really, even Paru notes it. This proves much harder to battle as it starts ripping the palace into bits. So the new strategy is to get to the bottom of the palace and meet up there… but the goal is to avoid getting to the bottom the hard way.

Luckily, we have a few old friends showing up to help, who we knew were around but hadn’t actually seen for about 10 volumes. Takamichi manages to finish off the beatdown of Goedel, and notes that while he finds Negi’s desire to continue his father’s work dangerous, it also makes him quite happy. And then there’s Mana, who manages to be almost ludicrously good as she battles the random faceless Lovecraft monsters. Of course, that’s because fake!Asuna offers to pay her to do it… she had no interest in the innocents being killed otherwise (or so she says). Once again, Mana’s mercenary aspect is both amusing and disturbing. And Misora’s right, how DID she pull that bazooka from out of her cleavage? ^_-

Meanwhile, Negi Party are split further when a building cracks in half. Asakura almost falls to her death, but is saved by a surprisingly strong Nodoka… who’s then saved by her dungeon-crawling friends Craig and Aisha, who were worried about her and came back to help. (Asakura is quick to poke at Nodoka for attracting suitors, and also notes her new toughness.) So they’re safe! … for about 6 pages. Then The Lifemaker shows up. As with the rest of Fate’s team, he’s perfectly happy to fight any number of physically powerful types like Kaede or Setsuna, but wants Nodoka and her mind-reading removed from the board. So he attacks her, and Craig tries to defend… and gets vaporized into a spray of white feathers.

Now, given that he’s mysteriously vaporized into white feathers rather than, say, crushed into a pulpy mess, I suspect this is one of those many handy reversible deaths you seen in shonen all the time. Still, it’s plenty shocking given we haven’t really had ANY deaths in present-time Negima, and the last shot of the volume is Nodoka’s stunned face. After the relaxing kiss kiss carnival and political shenanigans of Volume 29, this one’s an action packed brawl, and it’s only going to get worse in Volume 31.

And there’s not even any fanservice this time! Well, not much…