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.
This was a pretty great volume of Negima for those who like shonen manga. There’s a huge fight that takes up 2/3 of the volume, with lots of attacks and counterattacks and evil psycho lesbians and things going boom. We also start to finally get some background on Negi’s father, courtesy Jack Rakan, and meet a new character, Princess Arika.
Generally I find it hard to describe fights, so I’ll just note that all of our heroes and heroines get a brief chance to show off their skills – and Nodoka really looks impressive, showing how far she’s come since getting to this world and how much she learned from her “treasure hunting” friends. While still remaining, of course, Shinobu from Love Hina with a slightly different look.
Negi and Setsuna have a much tougher time. Negi proves to be tougher than Fate expected, but Fate still pretty much manages to wipe the floor with him. Meanwhile, Tsukuyomi takes Setsuna apart, having apparently now gone from “I have an obsessive crush on you” to “making you bleed causes me to orgasm”. This volume shows how completely over the edge she’s gone (she even licks her blade, in the time-honored cliche), and she accuses Setsuna of being too close to her friends and too human to ever defeat her. Something we’ve heard Setsuna accused of before, by Evangeline. Of course, this is Setsuna, Mistress of Angst, so…
In the end, though, it seems like only a minor defeat, as all our heroes are alive and they get some useful intel on the enemy. I say seems, of course, as it turns out this was a DISASTROUS defeat for our heroes, but it’s only suggested here – we won’t really know why till Volume 26.
And of course there’s humor and fanservice, the other things Negima is known for. The service is much lower than it used to be in the early days of this manga, but it’s still there, mostly in the scenes where Jack Rakan defeats two of Fate’s minions by flipping their skirts, stealing their panties, and sexually harassing them till they surrender. Negi and Yue briefly meet, and she has a flicker of recognition, causing her to let him get away and sacrifice herself. (Emily’s ‘we will avenge your death!’ when people are not dead seems to be a running gag.) Jack Rakan’s film of the backstory is hysterical, especially when he notes Konoka’s dad’s similarities to Setsuna. And Nagi and Arika’s initial meeting – and subsequent dislike of each other – reminds me of the stereotypical Takahashi couple. Hrm, foreshadowing? (Yes – and obvious foreshadowing at that, but hey.)
Oh, and the copious notes regarding the spells being used here are really above and beyond – great details on the part of Akamatsu (and Del Rey’s translators, the Nibley twins).
If you can’t stand nudity and ‘boobies!’ type fanservice, this is not the title for you. But if you can get over that (and the protagonist’s age), this has become one of the most exciting shonen manga being released over here.
Terrorism: Bad! Definitely!
