魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 26
Negima! Manga Volume 26 Review

Negima! Magister Negi Magi Volume 26 is now included in Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus Volume 8. It is out of print as an individual volume.

–> Purchase Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus Vol. 9 from RAKUTEN.COM (formerly BUY.COM)
–> Purchase Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus Vol. 9 from BARNES & NOBLE
–> Purchase Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus Vol. 9 from RIGHTSTUF!

For detailed chapter summaries of Negima! Volume 26 with chapter reviews, look below.

• Chapter 232
• Chapter 233
• Chapter 234
• Chapter 235
• Chapter 236
• Chapter 237
• Chapter 238
• Chapter 239
• Chapter 240

The flashback to Ala Rubra concludes with Rakan rushing the end. I don’t remember off hand if I noticed this in volume 25 or not, but I was struck by Nagi’s use of “Your Worship” when addressing Arika. This smacked very much of Star Wars to me. For fun, I consulted the Japanese tankoubon and discovered that Nagi is addressing Arika as “Hime-san.” That is a rather flippant way to address a princess since it would normally be “Ohime-sama.” As such, I’m guessing that the Nibley twins decided to try to reflect this flippant attitude of Nagi’s by having him use Han Solo’s “Your Worship” term. Doesn’t bother me, but I do wish there’d been a translator note about that (I should go back to the previous volume and see if there was one there).

On the other hand, I found I rather liked them using “Himeko-chan” to refer to Asuna. ^_^

I also liked the use of the honorific “senshu,” which was retained here. As Athena and Alethea explain, it made for a nice way to distinguish between discussions of Negi’s father Nagi and Negi as the contestant Nagi.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m always amused to go back and reread chapters when they’ve been compiled in book form. I mention this because when following the chapters on a week-to-week basis (sometimes longer with breaks by Akamatsu-sensei), there is time given to speculate on things. In this case, there was some doubt in the fan community (both in and out of Japan) as to whether or not the Asuna that joined Negi during his encounter with Fate was in fact the real one or not. As such, there were many weeks of waiting for confirmation whereas in book form, Asuna was kidnapped last volume. *lol*

One of the great things Akamatsu-sensei did is find a way for Negi to plausibly “power up” within the time frame given. Having already established the magical diorama spheres during Negi’s training with Eva (know as her “resort” back then), we already had the time distortion established as well as “pocket realities.” This time, Akamatsu-sensei extends that time distortion and even allows Negi to train within Eva’s scroll.

Still, that wasn’t enough to make Negi plausibly powerful enough to face Jack in the tournament. Therefore, having Theo form a short-term pactio with Negi is just the final element needed to cause me to think, “OK, I can see that Negi might be able to pull this off with a combination of his insane skills and magic combined with whatever pactio artifact he scored from Theo.”

During the training phase, Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t waste a lot of time, which is a good thing. That said, enough time is spent to allow us to see training is progressing and to show how Theo, Ricardo, and Seras work with Negi and Kotaro.

This volume made me chuckle in that Akamatsu-sensei got to draw more of the girls as little girls. He went all out on that.

Kaede finally scored a pactio and that’s cool. If I had to guess, I’d say that initially Akamatsu-sensei may have intended for her pactio artifact to be that giant shuriken. I base this on the fact that it was present in her card, which was created around the time of volume 3. However, the story did not present an opportunity to have Negi pactio with Kaede as he did with Setsuna during the Kyoto arc and so she had this powerful artifact which was then passed off as a ninja one. So it was interesting to see what her artifact actually would be and the use of a cloak with its own pocket dimension is a clever one. It allows Kaede to move a large force in secret, keeping her own presence secret due to ninja techniques.

This volume is notorious in that Akamatsu-sensei decided to have an fanservice orgy chapter in a large bath house (’cause naturally, the people of the Magic World would have the Japanese sensibilities to appreciate these ^_~). I got to say that I was floored that the “boobies” member (Paio Zi) of big bounty hunter group Negi defeated was in fact a young girl (at least in appearance). I could have done without all that fanservice but considering that Akamatsu-sensei hadn’t been able to indulge himself in a while, I understand why he felt the need to put that in. *_*

On the adaptation side, one editorial decision I wish Del Rey would make is to have Chachamaru use a modified font as she does in the Japanese manga. This came to life with me recently after Dark Horse did this for Chobits. Del Rey has never done this but after seeing how it was done in Chobits, combined with seeing it in the Japanese tankoubons, I wish that Del Rey had done that to reflect Chachamaru’s style of speak. They didn’t from the start and at this point, I don’t think they ever will.

Another editorial decision I wish Del Rey had made with this volume is the display of the contestant names to be left as they were. In the Japanese, the display revealing the finalist for the tournament had some names in Japanese (Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana) and some were in English. That reflected the aspect that the Magic World contains elements of English and Japanese as well as Latin and Greek (as seen in the spells). It is a small point but I think still an important one.

So as usual, more goodness from the world of Negima! and Akamatsu-sensei.