魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 25 Chapter 225 (manga)
Mahou Sensei Negima! Manga Chapter 225

Summary/Synopsis: Fate continues to present his case to get Negi to leave him and his people alone, using Negi’s own fears of causing harm to his students and the fact that Fate is in essence holding everyone nearby hostage. Negi has reluctantly come to the conclusion that even if it is a trap, he has to go along with Fate. Fate sees this and insists that Negi take an oath to that effect, repeating the words that Fate said. Negi starts to do this, but finds himself punched by Asuna, who then whacks Fate with her harisen before hitting Negi on the head again when he starts to protest. As she turns her harisen into blade form and points it at Fate, she angrily reminds Negi that they’ve all received all kinds of help from the locals and that they cannot turn their backs on the people of this world just to save themselves. Negi protests that they have no choice as Fate will kill the people around them as well as Asuna. To everyone’s surprise, Asuna is OK with that fact.

Fate laughs at Asuna’s words, which Asuna finds weird since his eyes do not reflect laughter. Negi remembers a lesson Eva had taught him and realizes there is no perfect, correct answer here. With new found courage, Negi forcefully declines Fate’s offer. In response, Fate sends one of his earth-based stone-spike attacks at Setsuna. Fate is surprised that Setsuna is unharmed, she having used her blade to slice the stone spike that would have hit her. She then activates her artifact (Sica Shishikushiro) to counter-attack Fate with multiple blades that he manages to defect. However, this also causes a small statue of a large bird (buzzard?) with stone bundles on each wing to fly out and land nearby. Setsuna realizes that this is what Fate is after and that the artifact is an extremely powerful, magical device.

Fate gets up from his chair, remarking to Asuna that she’s always interfering in his plans but that he’s glad that this crude plan to trap Negi and his group failed. This means that Fate’s wish to fight Negi over the magic world has been granted. Fate recognizes the Magia Erebea as Negi attacks with his fist and Fate easily avoids the blow. Fate rises into the sky where several massive, black stone octagon-shaped pillars appear around Fate at Fate’s incantation, using the same spell he used to destroy the gate port facility. Negi has begun his own incantation as he races up the side of one of the pillars, which Fate realizes is not Rakan’s ability but rather that of High Daylight Walker Dark Evangel (Eva). Fate is surprised that Negi has learned this, but untroubled, avoiding Negi’s punch and sending him crashing to the ground, destroying one of the pillars.

Negi realizes Fate’s technique is the Hakkeshou martial art (a real, Chinese martial art) and races up the next pillar in the air where Fate is, the later easily defending against Negi’s physical attacks. As Negi presses the attack, Fate comments to him that the Magia Erebea is little more that “doping” (actual term in the Japanese text) to increase Negi’s power. However, no matter how powerful Negi’s attacks are, they aren’t any good if Negi can’t connect. Fate expresses his disappointment in how the battle is going but then finds himself stunned when Negi lands a powerful blow to Fate’s mid-section, a trail of energy come from the impact as Fate is sent up the side of the pillar. A dark Negi asks Fate if he doesn’t need to train some more.

Thoughts/Review: Akamatsu-sensei has now shown us why he had Negi decide to learn Chinese martial arts from Ku Fei. How many volumes ago was that when Negi first decided that in addition to training with Eva, he should physically train with Ku Fei? It has been a while. However, that is Akamatsu-sensei’s writing style. He sometimes sets the table years in advance of actually sitting down there and to me, that’s the reason that Negima! is my favorite manga. While one can sense Akamatsu-sensei has made some course corrections here and there (I think that Makie, Ayaka, and Kaede were slated to receive pactios early on but he ended up not going that route though he did have Kaede in Negi’s “battle harem”), for the most part, his writing reflects great planning and consideration. That’s why I really wish Del Rey would re-release all of the early volumes that Peter David adapted and give then a completely new adaptation from someone not interested in rewrites.

Back to the story, as Setsuna suspected, Fate had intended to bind Negi with a pledge, likely one similar to what Eva had planned to use on Negi to force him to go on a date with her during the Mahora Festival arc.

I was surprised that Asuna managed to land a blow on Fate (or even two) but he didn’t react to them. The weird thing is Asuna’s sword. Her control over it to whack Fate with the harisen form before turning it into a blade is impressive enough, but the blade seemed different when she pointed it at Fate. The way Akamatsu-sensei drew one of the panels, it looked like her blade may have turned into a simple long sword, but then I realized that we were looking at Asuna’s massive weapon from the blade-edge.

Setsuna being able to defend against Fate’s earth-based stone-spike spell is impressive. I recall in volume six when Negi accidently caused Eva to get hit with it, but her being a vampire kinda caused that spell to fail. For Setsuna to not only react to a stone spike suddenly coming out of the ground but slice it off as well is pretty cool.

Negi’s fight with Fate would almost seem to indicate that Akamatsu-sensei is heading right for a finale of the Magic World arc. Some fans have speculated that this wouldn’t be the case, and they may yet be right. Fate could decide he doesn’t have time to fight Negi to make his plans succeed now that Negi has landed a blow, but that doesn’t seem to be were Akamatsu-sensei is going. If Akamatsu-sensei were thinking of extending the storyline, he could have Fate hurl the remaining stone pillars to attempt to kill the people below, but with Setsuna and especially Asuna down below, that doesn’t seem likely as the two girls could destroy the pillars. Then again, there’s Fate’s other “babe” who is MIA, though it seems unlikely that he would have her in reserve. Ah, but there is Tsukuyomi, who’d be keen on a rematch with “Setsuna-senpai.”

Considering Akamatsu-sensei’s table setting, if he does end things now, then it would make his having Mana, Takahata-sensei, Misora, Takane, and Mei on the world rather pointless. With that in mind, this could still be the final mini-arc, but things could go for many, many chapters. Plus, we still don’t know where Anya is and I find that interesting.

Well, nothing to do now but wait for Negima! chapter 226, eh? ^_~