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.

First off, let’s get the translation thing out of the way before we get to reviewing the actual content. As I’ve noted before, when Del Rey licensed Negima, they hired famous comics and SF writer Peter David to do the adaptation, which he did through Volume 5. It is known for being notoriously loose, with a ton of dialogue simply being rewritten entirely. Now, sometimes I’m OK with this (I’m an Excel Saga fan, after all, and I’m fairly sure Excel doesn’t quote the Geto Boys in the original Japanese), but in the case of Negima, it actually alters the personality of many of the characters. Konoka calling Asuna a cheesehead draws attention to the adaptation, which isn’t something you want to do. After Peter David left, Trish Ledoux (known for her work on Ranma) started to adapt, and many things got smoothed out, but then she left about 6 volumes later, and we got a new team, etc. Now, this is not uncommon for long-running manga series here in North America. Unfortunately, Del Rey had no editors (or at least bad ones), so there was little to no continuity between volumes. (I’ve yelled at them about this before as well, in my Zetsubou-sensei reviews.)

Now Kodansha decided to re-release Negima (still their best-selling series here) as an omnibus. They’d actually done this before for Barnes & Noble bookstores only several years ago, but it was the old Peter David adaptation, so there was no need for fans to get it. By now someone there had heard about fan derision of the early volumes, so hired the Nibley twins (the series’ current translator/adaptors) to clean up a few of the more egregious moments in the series. On starting this project, the twins realized it would be a lot less aggravating to simply re-translate and adapt EVERYTHING, which they then did. And it was well-worth it, because this is definitely a re-release fans of Negima should get. The dialogue reads far more realistically and in character, nothing seems to jar (there is one ‘Southern Master’ in Asuna’s dialogue, but I’m pretty sure that was left in as a joke), and it doesn’t call attention to itself. We can now read Negima (mostly) as it was meant to be, and I thank Kodansha and the Nibleys for that.

Now, as for the manga itself. I went into it with my opinion that the first three volumes sucked, and that the series only started to get really good with the Kyoto arc starting in Volume 4. I am now prepared to revise that opinion. Volumes 2 and 3 turned out to be better than I expected, with 2 in particular giving us some nice character development and building up the campus as being more than simply a really big private school. Volume 1, though, actually managed to be WORSE than I remember, and for those people who cannot power through bad writing to get to the good beyond it, well, I’m sorry, you’re never going to get into Negima.

I have also mentioned before the story of how Negima came to be what it is. After finishing the love comedies A.I. Love You and Love Hina, Akamatsu was somewhat weary of harem manga and decided to do a shonen fighting series with a young male protagonist. Kodansha’s editors at Shonen Magazine, however, has no confidence in his ability to write action-filled battles, and told him they wanted him to write more of what sold like hotcakes – lots of girls, lots of fanservice, and lots of wacky situations. So we get Negima, where 10-year-old magical school graduate Negi Springfield is sent to a huge private school in Japan to teach a class full of thirty-one 14-15 year old girls. On his first day, he runs into Asuna Kagurazaka, a fiery girl with a short fuse and a fierce temper, who is not Naru from Love Hina at all, except yes, she is.

Negi’s specialty is wind magic, and being 10 years old, he has not completely mastered self-control of this. This means that when he sneezes, clothing tends to fly off of the nearest females, including Asuna. If this sounds incredibly lame, that’s because it is. Luckily, after a volume or two, it stops being every single chapter, and starts to be used in the obvious ‘comedy’ chapters, or as a balance to an overly serious battle. Here, however, Volume 1 seems to consist of endless pages of Asuna being humiliated, stripped, and broken. And because Negi’s ten years old, she doesn’t even get to beat him up the way Naru could hit Keitaro. More to the point, these early characterizations of Negi and Asuna are off enough to be irritating as well. Negi, known in later volumes for being ‘overly mature and serious’ for his age, if naive, is far more bratty and child-like here. As for Asuna, I have grown to like her character a lot, but there’s a reason that people kept comparing her to Naru in Love Hina at first. All she does is yell and scream.

Luckily, things do not stay this way. Negima is far more of an ensemble cast than Love Hina, and we begin to see Negi interacting with the other girls. We meet Nodoka, the shy librarian whose life he saves on the first day, and who promptly falls for him. We see the ‘Baka Rangers’, five girls who get the worst grades in class for various reasons. We meet grumpy hacker Chisame, whose job it is to lampshade how ridiculous this class is. And, in Volume 3, we get our first major villain in Evangeline A.K. McDowell, a centuries-old vampire who is currently trapped at the school and in the body of a 10-year-old girl. The relationship between Negi and Asuna also mellows here, and once she starts to see Negi as more of a little brother (don’t start, shippers) than a bratty kid out to ruin her life, her own character becomes much more of a ‘big-sister’ type and we begin to like her much better.

It’s very strange seeing Evangeline at this stage in the manga. She’s certainly a threat, but there’s no sense that she’ll be impossible to defeat – indeed, once Negi and Asuna become battle partners, she’s almost easy to take down. I get the sense that the feedback Akamatsu got from readers and editors was HUGE for Evangeline, and so he may have decided that he needed to give her more to do. Certainly by Volume 6, when Evangeline next lets her powers loose, she’s one of the most formidable foes in the entire series.

I should mention the fanservice again, because it’s really, really a major part of this omnibus. If you crack open the book to a random page, there’s a good chance you will see a teenage girl in a state of undress. As I noted earlier, I think Akamatsu was trying to press the harem aspect really hard at the start of the series in order to get the series popular enough that he could start to do what he wanted to do. So you get tons of bath scenes, and school measurement days, and “Oh no, you’ve seen my panties now!” type humor. Given Negi is ten years old, this is a little discomfiting, but at this stage there’s little evidence that anyone is serious about things – Nodoka’s love for Negi is seen to be mostly a crush, and the one girl we worried about (Ayaka) is shown to be seeing Negi as more of a little brother replacement than anything else. So the fanservice tends to mostly be “look, I can draw all varieties of naked girls!” type service. As the series goes on, this gets less and less, but it never entirely goes away – these days, he tends to write normally for about a dozen chapters, then toss in a full chapter of nothing but nudity to counterbalance.

In the end, I am glad that we’re getting this re-release, and that it will apparently continue through at least Volume 9. Negima may have started out as nothing more than Harry Potter meets Love Hina, but Akamatsu has crafted quite the epic fantasy adventure, and though he has not quite fulfilled his promise of making all 31 girls important to the story, he’s come damn close. Negima fans, obviously, should get this. Folks curious about the series should as well, but just be aware – the first third of this omnibus is terrible. It gets much better.

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.

And so we come to the first of Kodansha’s release of the Negima series… which is exactly the same as Del Rey’s. And I am happy about that, as this is precisely what I wanted. No new translators, no new editors (not that Kodansha tells us who the editors are…), Just the same as before, giving us our cool shonen boy and his battle harem. Yes, one can argue they could bring us the limited edition covers that Japan gets, but as most of those tend to be ‘the regular cover only with fewer clothes’, I can see that it’s simply not worth it.

Given no one is going to be starting Negima with Volume 29, I’ll just type out a few thoughts instead of recapping what happens. We get three new pactios this chapter, and each one has its own point of interest. Ku Fei is still warring with her shyness, and so decides to whip out the standard female warrior cliche that she will only pactio with Negi if he defeats her. In general this can be an offensive cliche, but I think Akamatsu manages to deal with it here, because a) there’s a sense that Ku Fei is only doing it because of avoidance rather than any deep desire; b) It’s clearly shown that Negi needs to use his dark magic power in order to defeat her; c) there’s certainly no sense that Ku Fei is any weaker because of this, and in fact her pactio artifact seems to show that she’s only going to be powering up and getting stronger, and d) it’s a freaking arm wrestling match in the middle of a ballroom. I was very amused at Ku Fei joking that now that Negi has defeated her he’s required to marry her, as well as Chamo realizing how similar Chao and Ku Fei are – this has been a fan theory for some time, and Akamatsu loves to play around with those.

Meanwhile, not all 31 girls are gaga over Negi. Natsumi, the so-called ‘normal’ girl in the group, is dealing with her own insecurities, especially with Kotaro looking really sexy and her own age rather than in his actual form. I’ll give Akamatsu credit, he’s not backing away from the awkwardness that comes with a bunch of students falling in love with a ten-year-old or too. Most of the girls usually try to snap themselves out of it when reminded of such things, and indeed Natsumi refuses to pactio with the aged-up Kotaro, but rather his actual self – because this isn’t about love, but family. We get reminded of this when Natsumi asks what Kotaro thinks of the other girls he’s interacted with throughout the series, and he starts ranking them according to their battle potential. He’s a 10-year-old, and romance is barely registering on his radar. Instead, he notes that he feels that he wants to protect the girls he’s mentioned as they’re family to him. And that’s what allows Natsumi to pactio with him. (That said, there is a lot of romance here as well, and certainly I think Akamatsu is trying to have his cake and eat it too.)

As for Chachamaru, who we get reminded is actually 2 years old here, our favorite robot girl gets both the funniest and the most touching of the pactios. Chachamaru isn’t just dealing with romantic feelings for Negi – she’s worried she has no actual free will, being a robot. Evangeline has explained to Chachamaru that essentially she has free will if she believes she does – but this can be rather tricky, and self-doubt is starting to plague her. Enter Negi, who’s been primed by Asakura to wind her up… so to speak, and the connection between recharging Chachamaru and having sex with her has never been more blatant than it is here, as Negi’s ‘screwing’ her with full power drives her near the edge. And yet after this we get Chachamaru almost in hysterics, as she panics that if she pactios with Negi there will be no card – that she isn’t alive enough to deserve one. And in fact, as they begin the pactio, this is what seems to happen. Negi is a shonen hero, and through shonen determination – and awesome kissing power – manages to win the day.

Incidentally, Chachamaru’s ‘Hwa?’ is the funniest moment of the volume, bar none.

But with all that over with, we’re back to the plot, as Negi is called to bring three allies and meet up with Jerkass Senator Kurt Godel. He takes Nodoka and Asakura, presumably for their information-gathering abilities, and Chisame, because of their deep love. No wait, it’s because she’s there to slap some sense into him. It just SOUNDS like he’s saying it’s due to their deep love. As Chisame notes, he just can’t help sounding like a ‘natural-born gigolo’. As it turns out, though, bringing Chisame was a very bright thing to do, as Kurt is trying to goad Negi into a rage-fueled attack, by bringing up memories of the attack on his village years ago. Negi completely loses it, and while Nodoka’s tears are able to get him to turn aside for a bit, it’s Chisame’s slap and lecture that really does the trick. (By now, Chisame is a much better Asuna than Asuna ever was.) We also get to see Asakura really pissed off, which I believe is a first.

And so Kurt starts to explain things, which leads us into another flashback. This seems to be the second half of Rakan’s story from before, telling us what happened after Negi’s mother and father supposedly ‘won’ over the bad guys. Things are never quite that simple… and though we end on a cliffhanger, it’s becoming apparent that what’s really needed here is a scapegoat.

There’s a lot going on here, and I think if you’re a Negima fan you’ll love this to bits. It’s got fighting, plot exposition, fanservice, and of course a bit of kinda-romance. Recommended, but not till you’ve read the rest.

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 Del Rey.

Despite a minor battle in the middle of the volume, which is more of a reminder to Negi and his allies that they aren’t quite invincible yet, this is very much a catch up with the plot volume. Not much happens except little bits of revelation that slowly move the story forward, and setups for the next volume, which begins another huge arc.

That said, even if this volume isn’t the best, there’s still several moments that make me grin. The biggest has to be Setsuna and Konoka finally getting a Pactio. Setsuna’s feelings for Konoka started off as being crippling to her, but after the Kyoto arc in Volume 6 mostly turned into a running gag for several books. After getting her ass kicked by Tsukuyomi, however, Setsuna is once again starting to doubt herself and her abilities, and thinking it would be best if she gave up on being happy and worked on getting better at the sword.

Konoka, of course, sees Setsuna angsting and immediately knows what’s going on. She’s a terrific contrast to the swordsman, being fairly simple and light-hearted, and simply deciding after seeing what’s going on in the magical world to get as good as she possibly can. And she wants Setsuna by her side as her knight and protector. How can Setsuna possibly say no? So they decide to pactio… which Konoka gives a bit more ‘oomph’ to than we’re used to. This is the volume where I went from describing their relationship as “well, it’s mostly yuri tease and one-sided crush’ to ‘OK, no, they’re as close as this type of manga will get to being a couple’. It’s great to see.

As for the rest of the volume, there’s another of the ‘stupid perverse fanservice’ chapters that Akamatsu throws in every 12 chapters or so to pacify the audience that doesn’t care about shonen fighting mangas. What’s more, we now finally reunite Yue with the rest of the gang, though she still doesn’t have her memories, and her fellow Knights regard Negi and company with suspicion. We also can see Negi’s fallibility here – earlier, he notes 2 badges in one place that are meant to be Yue and Anya. But when Yue then shows up where he is, it doesn’t occur to him to wonder why there’s an extra badge. Negi, you’ve been infiltrated!

Said infiltrator drops the disguise briefly here, and we see how the ability not only makes the person disguised act and think like the person they’re replacing, but can also influence the original’s thoughts. Shiori, Fate’s mole, is starting to be affected by Negi’s basic shonen hero purity and niceness, and worries what might happen if she falls for him while disguised.

And then there’s Kurt Godel. He’s an absolute jerk, but so over-the-top about it that you know there must be more to him than that. He kicks Negi and Asuna’s ass, and is clearly trying to bait Negi – in fact, it almost reads like he’s trying to get Negi to kill him, which would be very odd indeed. And then he invites them all to a grand ball to discuss things, where everyone will be perfectly safe, of course. At least it allows the girls to dress up.

And then we get the last big revelation, which is from Natsumi of all people, who sees that the Magical World is actually laid over an alternate Mars from a different dimension. Most of the cast think that this is cool to hear about but utterly irrelevant, but Negi and Setsuna both realize what it also means – Chao’s descriptions of where she came from take on a whole new meaning. Akamatsu hasn’t quite hit One Piece levels of ‘you should have been paying attention’ back references, but he does very well for himself.

I could go on at length, but you get the idea. For a breather volume, this is just packed with plot and characterization. Good thing, too, as this is the last breather volume to date. Starting with 29, we go into the Magic World finale, and it’s still running in Japan. Sadly, due to the Del Rey/Kodansha/Random House shuffle, it may be a long time before we see Volume 29 here in the States. In fact, Negima may be finished in Japan before we do. Which is a shame, as it’s a bestseller, and better than it sounds.