魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 27 Chapter 241 (manga)
Mahou Sensei Negima! Manga Chapter 241
Negima! Manga Vol 27 (Ch 241)

Summary/Synopsis:

The fight between Team Negi (as “Nagi”) and Kotaro against Jack Rakan and Kagetarou begins with Negi activating his pactio artifact. Negi begins incanting the Thousand Bolts spell and as Jack ponders what exactly Negi’s artifact will do, Kagetarou attacks to prevent Negi from completing the incantation. Kotaro deflects the attack to protect Negi while Jack summons a massive halberd. Kagetarou attacks again with his “shadow streamers” (for lack of a better term), forming them into a giant spear. Kotaro deflects the attack with his fist, which he’d transformed to beast form.

Jack has powered up and tells Negi that he’s going all out. He launches his energized halberd at Negi and Kotaro, but Negi doesn’t move to avoid the attack but instead moves forward to shield Kotaro. The resulting explosion is so massive, an emergency barrier has to be activated to contain it and while it doesn’t kill anyone or really injure anyone, it still caused some damage and causes the Knights on patrol to suspect terrorism until their mother ship tells them otherwise. Princess Theodora had been knocked down by the explosion and as she receives reports from her aide, she’s angry and grabs a mic and screams at Jack for not thinking — if there’d been the slightest thing go wrong, people would have died.

While Jack laughs this off, inside he’s a bit worried that he may have killed Negi. Seeing Negi and Kotaro emerge unscathed impresses him and shocks Kagetarou. However, Jack is surprised to see Negi holding the Hama no Tsurugi sword artifact that belongs to Asuna. Jack uses his own artifact to summon a large number of swords to attack, but Negi destroys them all with his sword. Jack summons a large sword and a giant hammer, but Negi destroys both of them as well. That proves that Negi actually has the Hama no Tsurugi but Negi has another surprise. He dispells the Hama no Tsurugi and summons Setsuna’s artifact, surrounding Jack’s head with Japanese daggers (tantou?).

Jack now understands that Negi has a super-rare artifact that allows Negi to uses his ministra’s (or if he had them, ministers) artifacts. Further, Jack understands whom Negi made a pactio with — Theodora. Jack chews on two of the daggers and teases Negi about drawing power from a girl. Negi is a bit embarrassed but says that he needs all the advantages he can get against Jack. With Negi’s artifact, he can successfully counter Jack’s massive blasts and artifact. So Negi proposes shifting the fight with fists. This pleases Jack, who reminds Negi that Jack is pretty good at unarmed combat.

Thoughts/Review:

So the strategy of Negi becomes clear — remove the flash and fight with fists. Kotaro seems able to handle Kagetarou OK, so will Negi be able to handle Jack with mere fists? I actually think that the old Thousand Bolts spell will come back into play. Jack is not a mage but if Negi has mastered delayed spells (using his time in the scroll), then that could come into play with the Thousand Bolts. I believe that’s why Negi started by incanting the spell immediately. Kotaro buys Negi time and by the time Jack acts, Negi has the spell “stored” and then uses Asuna’s artifact.

I liked that we got to see Kotaro use his beast form again, even if in a limited fashion. When he used it on Negi, it was already too late for the most part. When he tried to use it against Al in the Mahora Budokai, he was already defeated and again too late.

We already knew that Jack had these insane, DBZ-like abilities, however for Kagetarou to even be surprised by Jack’s ultimate technique initially puzzled me. Then I realized that while Kagetarou may know how powerful Jack is, sometimes these things have to be seen and experienced to fully be appreciated.

I chuckled at Theodora going off on Jack going all out like that. Whatever Jack’s plan is, taking Negi out is not part of the plan. The idea that Negi might skip out on the fight troubled Jack somewhat and the idea that he may have killed Negi also troubled him. I think that while Jack is a mercenary, Jack needs Negi alive for whatever reasons (beyond the “this is Nagi’s son”). I may be over thinking this but I just am not sure what Jack is up to since clearly he’s not interested in purely helping Negi in the traditional sense.

I don’t expect the fight to go beyond a couple more chapters but we’ll see what happens.