Mahou Sensei Negima! ~ Shiroki Tsubasa~ ALA ALBA

I love the Negima! manga. Akamatsu-sensei has crafted a well-written story with interesting characters and fun to boot. So when an anime adaptation was announced, I was happy. However, the Negima! adaptation ended up falling well short of the mark for a whole slew of reasons. Then SHAFT got involved and made up their own version of Negima! with Negima!?. I accepted that for what it was but it really wasn’t what I wanted — I wanted a faithful adaptation of the Negima! manga. With this thee-episode OAD/OVA series, we get just that.

The anime starts with the tail-end of the Mahora Festival main arc before moving onto the creation of Negima-dan (soon to be Ala Alba), which is around Volume 19, chapter 176 and continues to chapter 177, which has Eva’s test of Ala Alba at the summer festival. It is a shame that the Mahora Festival arc from the manga is skipped, but that would likely take an entire season’s worth of anime episodes to properly produce. So the anime writers skip this AND they skip the very important Asuna Training mini-arc. Oh well, at least we have something.

Episode 2 basically covers chapters 178-180 (volume 20) which is the Anya introduction mini-arc. Things pretty much play like the manga, but seeing things come to life made the episode enjoyable just the same. I couldn’t help but laugh again at some of Anya’s antics and her rivalry with Ayaka. The episode having a brief glimpse at Asuna’s training reminded me of how I would have liked to have seen that as an episode.

Episode 3 basically covers chapters 175, 183, then 181 – 182. This is mostly the little shorts Akamatsu-sensei did as well as the final preparations for the trip to Wales by Ala Alba. The good is seeing all this in anime form. Plus, the anime team added one story about Misora, Cocone, and Satsuki. I loved seeing Cocone finally animated. The negatives here were that one Sayo story showing her getting her mini doll to possess is dropped and the episode has a distinct feeling of Negima!?, which was a bit unnerving.

There are weaknesses in art and animation which are mostly corrected by episode 3, but then that also helped give that episode its Negima!? feel. However, this focus on fun over substance may harm the next OAD/OVA series, which is supposed to be 4-episodes in length and take place after Ala Alba gets to the Magic World. So all the important stuff about Asuna, Ako, etc. are all missing. However, this is where the Japanese fall back to their standard position in such cases — this anime is designed for fans of the manga and therefore we expect them to fill in the blanks for the stuff we skip. That’s truly unfortunate but there’s nothing we can do about it. For those who’ve yet to read the manga, just do that. ^_^;;;

In the end though, I think Negima! manga fans got what they wanted — a fairly faithful adaptation of some more low-key anime chapters that focus more on fun than on substance. After two failed TV series (in manga fan’s mind at least) as well as two blah OVA’s, this OAD series is a breath of fresh air. As such, I’d give it a 4 out of 5, but only for fans of the manga. If you haven’t read the manga, at best you might get a 3 out of 5 for this.