January 2nd, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy Negima! Manga Vol 26 (Ch 236) *SPOILERS*
魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 26 Chapter 236 (manga)
Mahou Sensei Negima! Manga Chapter 236
Summary/Synopsis:
Inside of Kaede’s artifact, Paru, Asakura, and Ku are in their normal form, served tea by Chachamaru (who’s still in child form) in the (tea?) house. Paru gives Ku a hard time for not making a pactio with Negi and she reminds Paru that Sayo and Chachamaru haven’t made one with Negi either. Sayo chimes in that she’s a ghost and Chachamaru that she’s a robot as a means of an excuse for not having a pactio with Negi. Kaede sends Asakura a telepathic message they they are needed and from her battered cape artifact, all five girls emerge to join Kaede and Setsuna at their destination — the old capital of Ostia. Chachamaru remarks that she does sense a slight signal from an Ala Alba badge and wonders about the two signals that she keeps detecting, stating that signals can be blocked, such as if the badge were within a military facility. With that, Asakura dispatches her artifact drones with Sayo to begin a search.
Meanwhile in Ostia above, the girls are in their “neko child” form when they are met by Yuuna and Makie. Yuuna can’t get over their change in appearance so Nodoka gives them some of Eva’s age-altering candy so they turn into little girls themselves. Nodoka explains that this illusion magic is so good, even the magic police can’t detect it. However, Makie isn’t listening, being pleased that the large-chested Yuuna is now flat upstairs. Chisame remarks that she’s impressed that Makie and Yuuna made it this far without the aid of magic or even knowing about magic until they arrived. They in turn tease Chisame for having changed a lot in personality so that she’ll even speak with them now.
Makie wonders when they’ll see Negi, worried that he’s made with them. Konoka almost lets the beans spill that “Nagi-san” is Negi but Makie and Yuuna are assured that they will see Negi and he’s not angry. Elsewhere, Ako and Akira are working hard as the matches play, including “Nagi-san’s” match.
Down in the arena, Kotaro (in older teen form) stands on the top of a pillar a safe distance away from the action while Negi (as Nagi-san) takes on both opponents single-handedly, easily dispatching them to the amazement of the crowd and announcers with his levels of power. Kotaro is also impressed, knowing that Fate is driving Negi to get better and better. Kotaro also wants to catch up to Negi strength-wise.
The match is being watched by Jack, who’s the “shadow investor” of the tournament. Hellas Third Princess Theodora arrives with her ladies in waiting and they are shocked when Jack greets Theodora rudely. The princess dismisses her servants and once they are gone, drops the serious act to become kid-like in nature, jumping on the “muscle freak’s” shoulders. He teases her about being 30, which she reminds him is 10 in human years. They are joined by former Ala Rubra ally leaders Ricardo (Megalomesembria Authorized Legislative Council member) and Headmaster Seras (Ariadne General Secretary of the Order of Magical Knights; she runs Yue’s school), which disappoints Theodora who’d wanted to have some fun alone with Jack.
They’ve set up a special barrier to prevent the meeting from becoming known and talk about this “Nagi-san” who looks so much like the real Nagi. Jack reveals that this is in fact Nagi’s son which stuns the other three, especially since Jack had reported that Nagi’s son was only 10-years old. Ricardo is amazed by the illusion magic being used, especially since it comes from “Dark Evangel.” Theodora is less impressed with “Nagi-san” now, figuring he’s sure to win now. Jack reveals that he’s become interested in the brat and so may make an early entrance into the tournament.
Thoughts/Review:
There’s a lot of good stuff to cover here, so much so that I’m sacrificing sleep to analyze it (it is after midnight as I write this). *lol*
For starters, there’s Kaede’s artifact. I had said that for her to have a house hidden in that tattered cloak, she could hide all of Ala Alba in there once they arrived at a destination and thus have a perfect, instant base. What I didn’t count on is that the weaker members of Ala Alba could be stashed in the cloak and “carried” as Kaede traveled. THAT makes her artifact even more impressive. Now, she can use her ninja techniques to safely get the entire Ala Alba troop and allies to a destination and then pull them out like literal ace’s in the hole. I can envision a scenario where Kaede and Setsuna are seemingly outnumbered, but WHOA! Here comes the reinforcements.
Also, while we haven’t seen but a tiny bit of the house within the “subspace” area (for lack of a better term) of Kaede’s artifact, I believe that since we saw a bit of a yard and even the start of a bridge into a Japanese garden, Kaede’s artifact space would be much like Eva’s resorts, only without the time distortions and the 1-day stay restriction. As such, there should be plenty of room for all of Ala Alba and all they’d need is to have it stocked with supplies (unless that is another aspect of the artifact we haven’t seen).
Next — pactios. Both Sayo and Chachamaru state that they don’t have a pactio with Negi because they are a ghost and robot respectively. This has drawn a school of thought which states that neither will get a pactio because Akamatsu-sensei had the characters give an excuse to not have a pactio. I disagree with that. For starters, Eva has a pactio with a non-human, non-living (in the traditional sense) character — Chachazero. While we’ve never seen Chachazero’s pactio card, we have seen her artifact and she is the perfect partner for Eva (though I want to know how a puppet gained a personality or even a soul). Some are beginning to ask if that is a true artifact that Chachazero wields or not. I would suggest that it is because there’d be no reason for Eva to fake an artifact weapon for Chachazero and having a true pactio with Chachazero gives her autonomy from Eva’s normal puppet master ability (IMO).
The other thing this brief scene does is make AstroNerdBoy correct. I’ve long argued that Chachamaru did not have a pactio with Eva and that as such, she’s not Eva’s “partner” in the magical sense. She is Eva’s partner in a more traditional sense in that she watches Eva’s back, as seen in volume 3. However, we never once saw Chachamaru use an artifact weapon, nor did we see Eva pull a pactio card in her fight with Negi. As such, I concluded ages ago (after learning of Del Rey’s huge mistake in naming Chachazero as “Chachamaru” in volume 3) that Chachazero has always been the true partner with Eva and that Chachamaru is just a bodyguard since Chachazero is powerless without Eva’s powers, which are sealed on the school grounds.
With this in mind, I would say that Chachamaru simply assumes that she can’t have a pactio with Negi since Eva never made one with her (though to be fair, Eva couldn’t make a pactio due to the curse) and Sayo would easily assume that her being a ghost would prevent her from scoring a pactio. I say that if Eva has a pactio with a puppet (and possible an ensouled puppet), then Negi should have no problems making a pactio with a robot or a ghost, especially if Sayo is possessing her cute little doll. We’ll see how things play out over time, but that’s my guess at least.
Speaking of Chachamaru, why the heck is she still in child form? Apparently, Akamatsu-sensei has stated that she has one of Eva’s pills in her mouth (not consuming it) and that’s enough for her access the magic of the pill, thus changing her appearance. One would think that now that she and her group are in the old ruined capital, she’d want to be in her adult form for the extra firepower. I can’t figure out a reason for her to stay small unless it is to conserve the magic pills.
And speaking of the magic pills, we may have a slight continuity issue, or at least appear to have one. One would presume that everyone is using Eva’s age-altering pills, which we know are based on very strong illusion magic so that not only does the user appear a different age to everyone else (even passing scans to detect such magic), it also changes their clothing. Now, thinking back to it, Eva can use this kind of magic at will, as seen in volume 3. Placing it into candy form wouldn’t be difficult for her and her obvious excellent alchemy skills.
However, where I have a small problem is that while it can change everyone’s clothing appearance as well as their physical appearance, Negi didn’t use a pill to return to normal size when he went to train with Jack. Also, when he returned from adult size to kid size, he had to change clothes. I suppose that could be explained away as Negi having purchased older teen-sized clothing for his teen form, which then would not be altered when he returned to his 10-year old form. One would think that he would have bought clothing to fit his 10-year old form, then used the age-altering magic to make it fit his older form.
It is a minor thing and the more I think about it, the more I think it may not be as big an issue as I originally thought.
Nodoka wins the “cute” award of all the “neko-girl” disguises. 😄
Somehow, I’m beginning to think that Kaede and company will find Asuna and Anya and have a battle though Fate won’t be there. We’ll see if that happens or not.
Jack. Well, looks like he’s going to kick Negi’s butt in the arena now. Someone told me that Jack’s discussion in this chapter killed my theory about Negi in fact being Nagi in disguise but there was no evidence of that. So until Akamatsu-sensei shows otherwise, I’m going to stick to my guns, just like I did with Chachamaru and was shown right. 😉
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Nice analysis but I think you are wrong on a couple things. If Sayo and Chachamaru say they cant have pactios, they can’t. If there was an excuse (like Chachamaru was embarrassed), we would have see them blush or clearly lie. Also, how can Negi be Nagi in disguise when Rakan even states Negi is Nagi’s son and who would have saved Negi 6 years ago.
What you fail you realize is that Chachamaru and Chachazero aren’t the same. One is a robot while the other is a magical puppet (which could be MADE to be able to have pactios). Maybe Sayo and Chachamaru will be upgraded to have pactios…
Sayo and Chachamaru may simply assume they cannot form a pactio because of what they are. Since Yue is not in the battle harem with her artifact of knowledge, at this point there’s no way to learn 100% for sure that in fact Sayo and Chachamaru cannot pactio.
As for my Negi is actually Nagi in disguise, all Jack would know is what he was told — Negi is Nagi’s son.
I keep saying I am going to write my piece on this theory because while Akamatsu-sensei teases audiences with things here and there (like Arika), he keeps producing more elements that would make Nagi hiding out as Negi perfectly possible — time travel, the appearance of age change that is undetectable, memory suppression, etc.
It’s starting to look like Rakan’s only reason for helping Negi become strong was that he wanted to fight him.
If Rakan is the secret financier of the tournament wouldn’t that make him the legal holder of the three slave girls contracts, meaning Negi has no way of backing out.
I don’t see how Jack could be the legal owner of the slaves. They are owned by that Teddy Bear woman (can’t remember her name right off the top of my head) as I understand it. Negi got into the tournament to earn enough money to pay off their debt. I may need to re-read the chapters where the issue of the three girls being slaves is discussed.
That said, you are right in that Negi would have to defeat Jack to win the money and thus free the three girls, so there would be no backing out. It will be interesting to read Negi’s actual words when he discovers he’ll fight Jack. ^_^
At the mention of time travel earlier, I feel the need to let off some steam about no one realizing Chao’s Ultimate Weapon (the family tree) had to have been a bluff. See, time travel (as I know it) has all sorts of paradoxes unless you adopt the many worlds theory, which Negima does not use. Negima instead uses the single-world theory, which can be metaphored to mean time is like a movie reel which you go foward on, and back, with time-travel technology. You can understand this when Chao needs to protect Negi, saying “I can’t let my ancestor die.” meaning, if Negi died, she would cease to exist, meaning Negi would live because he wouldn’t be in that situation, meaning Chao would live and put him in that situation, so Negi would die… and so on. A paradox. How this all relates is that by showing Negi his future wife, and if it happened to be Yue, Yue might have a reaction (i.e. rejecting Negi or something like that) or someone like Ayaka would have a reaction (i.e. prevent NegixYue from happening) which would cause a paradox similar to the aforementioned. Chao would know this, and would have to take an incredible gamble based on “nobody, not even Nodoka, Yue, or Negi (who are all heavy readers and I’m sure have read at least one time-travel book) know how this would make a paradox.” meaning the book would have to include a fake name, or just be an outright fake such not listing a name at all, or explaining in person or through the book that by telling someone the future, you render that future null, because they will either actively or unconciously change the way they would normally act because otherwise Chao would make a paradox by causing herself to never exist. Okay, got that off my chest. thanks for listening!
Chao’s ultimate weapon, bluffing, and changing history. *lol* Well, Chao may well have been bluffing about using that book but the paradox issue is there by Chao’s attempt to change history at all. Indeed, Chao said that she had to move her plans up a year because of the World Tree. So either her historical records are inaccurate or things somehow changed unexpectedly as she went back in time.
Anyway, I doubt Chao’s history had her in it so something changed already, thus a paradox. And when Negi and company were time-jumping through the festival, they ran into themselves and caused a paradox. Indeed, theres’s a small scene where the two Chamo’s “tag” each other because things had gotten that nutty (and I’m amazed that Akamatsu-sensei even kept track of it all).
So while I agree that the family registry may well have been a bluff by Chao, the problem is that there’s already a paradox created as I see it. I think we haven’t seen the last of Chao though, but that’s just pure guess on my part and not based on any feeling from things Akamatsu-sensei as written.
Yo Astro, I love reading your reveiws for these chapters. My personal thoughts on this chapter, I think the whole pacto argument between Sayo and Chachamaru were just tring to change the direction of the conversation to avoid embarrasment. The whole thing with Rakan owning the girls (another commenter mentioned this) is quite possible though I have no solid backing for this. And Negi vs Rakan, if the preveiw images of this week’s chapter is right and Rakan’s partner is the guy that owned Negi back in chapter 198 then Negi and Kotaro have lost even with dark magic(thought we all know he won’t or maybe Mr.Akamatsu may surprice us.)
Good luck with more chapter reveiws and if you don’t mind, can you type that whole Negi is Nagi theory posted (or if it’s already type please reply with a link to it). I’m quite interested in reading it.
Your idea on Sayo and Chachamaru’s remarks avoiding embarrassment is also a good thought.
I’ve got the time so I may well end up writing out my theory about Negi and Nagi. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. If I’m right, I’ll be excited, but more from a writing perspective because Akamatsu-sensei’s writing is something I’ve been examining closely for my own interest.
Good review! I disagree with 2 ideas.
I slightly disagree with a statement about Chachamaru’s partner status — though it might be due to lack of information on my part. At the moment, I own the Del Rey versions and I read fan scanlations. The versions disagree about Ch20 p5 frame 5 where Chamo states something about partners regarding Eva and Chamo. The fan-scanlated version by Meow (which for Volumes 1-3 I almost take for granted is more accurate than Del Rey — later volumes are mostly close to being on par with scanlations from what I can tell) has Chamo say “I see … so that was why I felt the power of contract between those two …”. Couldn’t Chachamaru’s partner status with Eva have been “built” into her? This case would also be a situation where Chachamaru does not think she can be Negi’s pactio partner. I wouldn’t be surprised if a person can be a partner for two people; Setsuna is Negi’s partner and she and Konoka — once Setsuna gets over her “shyness” — are aiming for a pactio too. Of course, there’s also the possibility that she might have to give up her contract with Negi. You’re right about Eva not using any partner-specific techniques, which suggests that she might be just a bodyguard as opposed to a pactio partner.
Anyhow, I don’t think that this issue is one that is too critical to the series (unless there is a contradiction somewhere).
My other disagreement is about it being impossible that Jack is the legal owner of the 3 girls. From Ch 195, pages 12-13, it mentions that the owner of the girls is an influential person involved in the “battle”-industry (for lack of a better word). From this, I think that Teddy Bear lady (she might also be the owner, but from the work she does, I think it’s unlikely) is an employee (likely servant and probably a high-ranking one) of the owner of the 3 girls. I hadn’t thought of that possibility before reading this, but that could nicely resolve Negi freeing the girls without winning the tournament — he has Kotaro’s help, so maybe they can beat Rakan and his partner. The only option I thought of earlier was that other circumstances might allow Ako and company to be freed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a person can be a partner for two people
That would not surprise me either.
This case would also be a situation where Chachamaru does not think she can be Negi’s pactio partner
This is my belief — both Sayo and Chachamaru think they cannot have a pactio with Negi because of what they are. I still look at Chachazero as proof that they could but we’ll see what Akamatsu-sensei does.
From Ch 195, pages 12-13, it mentions that the owner of the girls is an influential person involved in the “battle”-industry (for lack of a better word). From this, I think that Teddy Bear lady (she might also be the owner, but from the work she does, I think it’s unlikely) is an employee (likely servant and probably a high-ranking one) of the owner of the 3 girls.
That would suggest Jack might be the actual owner and that would place an interesting twist on things.