魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 22 Chapter 199

Summary: Negi (as Nagi) is rushed to the medical ward, his right arm having been cut off below the elbow. The arm is reattached magically and as Chisame is irritated with Negi’s recklessness, Tosaka (one of the people in charge of the slaves) actually praises Negi.

Negi awakens to find Ako sitting by his bedside in the medical ward. Because his only clothing are bandage wrappings, he tries to cover up, but the pain of his arm causes him to fall out of the bed and onto Ako, where he soon passes out. Natsumi comes in and seeing “Nagi” on top of Ako, she assumes the wrong thing and leaves with Ako protesting.

Back in bed, Negi apologizes to Ako, were we learn that he’s been asleep for two days. Negi reflects on his fight with Kagetarou when Ako tells him that “Nagi” is certainly Negi-kun’s cousin and that the look on “Nagi’s” face was the same as the one she’s seen on Negi’s face. She’s happy that “Nagi” is alive and begins to cry as she had been so worries about him, wondering what she would have done if he died. She feels terrible because he’s having to face all this danger because of her, Akira, and Natsumi.

Sometime later, Negi is walking outside (still as Nagi) as his arm has healed. He thinks of his comrades and on how Chachamaru is about to lead a search expedition out to try to find more of their comrades. He thinks back to the battle with Kagetarou and how Negi’s final attack had been thwarted, resulting in his arm being cut off. Negi announces he still has another arm and counters, injuring Kagetarou in the eye. The fight is ended when the stranger, looking like “Big Sword Dude” from Ala Rubra, stops it.

Thoughts: Poor Ako. I feel so badly for her since she still doesn’t know that “Nagi” is in fact Negi in teenaged form. She’s clearly head-over-heels for “Nagi” and I really wonder how she’ll take the news when she learns the truth. Considering that Ako was someone for whom Akamatsu-sensei created a pactio card long ago, maybe he’ll use this as a means to officially make Ako part of the battle harem.

While I’m thinking of it, how come the magic keeping Negi in older form didn’t wear off? I know he got these pills from Eva and in theory, they might be more powerful than the ones Negi had during the school festival, but one would think the mages who reattached Negi’s arm would have realized this wasn’t his real body, but a magical one. Weird.

Finally, there’s BSD. I think he was the one that Negi and company were to meet at the gate port, but the attack stopped that. I wonder if he was the one who warned Asuna about the incoming attack telepathically. Well, its about time for him to be seen since we’d seen nothing of him other than the one group shot of Ala Rubra.