Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus 1

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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.

Sunshine Sketch Volume 5

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By Ume Aoki. Released in Japan as “Hidamari Sketch” by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara Carat. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Wow, has it really been 18 months since the last Sunshine Sketch? This is what happens when you catch up with Japan, kids. Especially for a series like this, where there’s only 8 pages a month anyway. Thankfully, the volume proves to be worth the wait, provided you like the sort of thing it delivers.

It bears repeating: if you don’t like 4-koma strips starring cute girls who don’t really do anything, this isn’t the series for you. There is some plot and character advancement here if you’re looking deeply for it, but otherwise you’d barely notice it. It’s situation normal otherwise, as we get the wacky adventures of students at a high school with a track devoted to art. Unlike GA: Art Design Class, this series is not all that interested in teaching readers anything about art itself, so we mostly just see it in the context of Yuno sketching, or Miyako making giant clay hands. The comedic situations come mostly from the cast and their apartment life.

Vague things happen here: Yuno visits her parents in her hometown; Sae and Hiro go on a class trip (and talk about getting ready for entrance exams); we meet Yoshinoya’s brother and nephew, and learn that she’s just as flaky outside of classes (not that this comes as a surprise). And the new cast members from last volume are integrated slowly into the main cast, so we find out about Nori’s kansai dialect (that she conceals most of the time) and Nazuna’s ability to be homesick even when this is her actual hometown.

It’s hard to write a Sunshine Sketch review without mentioning the yuri tease, which is still present and correct here. The new girls are fascinated with the size of Miyako’s breasts (and Yuno tries to join in, but holds back at the last minute). Meanwhile, Sae and Hiro are still the perfect couple who aren’t, with Sae saying things like “We’ll always be together” and saying that she’ll get a license so that she can drive Hiro everywhere. It’s fairly clear from these episodes that Hiro seems to be more aware of her feelings than clueless Sae, and is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sadly, it’s not happening anytime soon. In the meantime, we must content ourselves with Miyako imagining Sae (in a suit!) and Hiro as a couple, crying at Yuno’s future wedding.

Sunshine Sketch continues to be a very niche series, mostly for people who like seeing cute girls do cute things and don’t mind the fact that it has no plot and little forward movement at all. This particular series also has the hurdle of the art, as Ume Aoki’s super-deformed style takes some getting used to, to say the least. Of course, given the massive success of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which she did character designs for, perhaps it will get more popular!

Library Wars: Love & War Volume 5

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By Kiiro Yumi, based on the novel by Hiro Arikawa. Released in Japan as “Toshokan Sensou: Love & War” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Viz.

It can sometimes be difficult in reviews of this title not to get political. I try not to let my own views come out too much on this blog, but sometimes you read things like Love & War 5 and it becomes impossible not to take sides. In fact, part of the reason for this is that the government forces in the manga are such cartoon bad guys. While I appreciate the fact that we’re showing a dystopian future where the ruling party violently censures its own citizens, the sheer malice of everything can sometimes lead one to think that subtlety is completely out the window. I hope in future volumes we see, if not a balanced argument (hard to do when you’re making a point like this), at least a bone or two thrown in that direction.

This volume starts with the wrapup of Iku’s parents coming to visit from the previous volume. It’s the weak point of the volume, and nothing happens here that we couldn’t have predicted after reading the start. Iku’s father clearly is aware of her real occupation, and just as clearly is not going to let on that he knows. Luckily, the next arc is another serious one, this time focusing on Komaki, Dojo’s smiling friend who’s the sensible, advice-giving character (male side). We are introduced to Marie, a girl who knew Komaki from when he was in high school and she elementary school. She is now both a high-school student and deaf, and the choice of books that he offers her to cheer up, along with her feelings for him (and his repressed feelings for her) end up causing big problems.

The romance itself reads a little awkwardly – Japan loves its February/May romances far more than the West, and so we have another girl in love with someone 10 years older than she is. It’s handled fairly reasonably here, though, and I was amused at Iku’s shoujo romance guessing of Marie’s feelings actually being right on the money. We don’t genuinely get into Komaki’s head here, but it’s made clear from flashbacks and what he goes through under torture what his feelings for Marie are. But strong point of the arc is with Iku and Dojo, though, as always. Dojo insists that she not get Marie involved, because Komaki wouldn’t want her caught up in this. Which is true, but also leads to an analysis of what it’s like to be on the other side of that equation. After the situation is resolved, Iku is rather upset to realize that if she and Dojo were in the same situation, he too would have demanded she not be told, and that he suffer alone rather than ‘hurt’ her.

This chapter, by the way, does have the funniest gag of the volume, regarding the excuse Iku uses when she leaves the library to go get Marie. Her blunt reply to Dojo had me in stitches.

There’;s two side stories here as well, the first involving grumpy Tezuka and Iku’s efforts to take a picture of him smiling for her friends who crush on him (and failing miserably), and the second regarding a fancy dress party where Iku and Dojo are being bodyguards. She catches a suspect, but ruins her bodyguard-type suit in the process, so the household staff (who are very grateful, and also clearly want to play ‘dress up’) but her in a gorgeous ballgown and send her back out there. Iku, being your standard shoujo tomboy, has no idea how gorgeous she is, and finds the whole thing very awkward. Dojo, meanwhile, is poleaxed at her looks, and also now having to deal with other men hitting on her.

There’s no real plot advancement here, as is typical in an open-ended shoujo manga that will clearly end with a declaration of love, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. As always, we get politically-tinged action and repressed romance in a nice little package. (Oh yes, and check out that picture on the back cover – rrowr!)