August 16th, 2010 
AstroNerdBoy 魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 33 Chapter 298 (manga)
Mahou Sensei Negima! Manga Chapter 298
Negima! Manga Vol 33 Ch 298 Review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Makie and Chisame are the only ones not effected by Zazie’s sister’s artifact and thus attempt to wake up Negi and Mana. Zazie’s sister says that those asleep are in a form of Cosmo Entelecheia. However, it is ineffective against “rea-juu,” which apparently Makie and Chisame have. Chisame has to explain to Makie that this is short for “Real Juujitsu” — people who are completely satisfied with their real lives. Chisame thinks about this a moment, then challenges the idea that she is a rea-juu considering her own shut in lifestyle. Zazie’s sister counters this by pointing out that Chisame is very satisfied with that lifestyle. This stuns Chisame, who finds herself on the same level as Makie, something she doesn’t like which Makie finds insulting.
Zazie’s sister extends her claws, causing Makie and Chisame to activate their pactio artifacts, though Chisame’s is worthless in combat. Makie reckons her artifact ribbon would come in handy but knows that they need Negi and yells at his sleeping figure to try to wake him up. Zazie’s sister notes that the deeper the darkness of one’s heart, the harder it is to break free and Negi’s darkness is the greatest. Chisame thinks Zazie’s sister is wrong considering how it was Negi who brought the very reluctant Chisame into the group.
To Zazie’s sister’s surprise, Negi awakens and at the speed of lightning is at her side. She finds this impossible as Negi greets her and then induces a massive amount of lightning to “return” everyone to the Gravekeeper’s Palace area. This is observed by Fate’s group and “chibi-mage” is stunned that Negi broke free. Negi tells Zazie’s sister that he still has to meet with Fate, something that triggers a smile from Fate. Zazie’s sister says she will stop Negi by force, citing the fact that even though she’s not a resident of Earth nor the Magic World, her research indicates that there is just under 10-years left for the Magic World to survive. After that, the survivors of the Magic World (Mars) will enter a long war with Earth.
Negi finds having nearly 10-years plenty of time and yells at Fate, whom he knows to be observing, telling Fate that he’ll battle him but that he has a plan to prevent the future described by Zazie’s sister. Negi’s words only anger Fate, who states he is disappointed.
Thoughts/Review: In my current rereading of Negima!, I’m at the point where the group is returning back from the future. As such, Chisame’s involvement with the group is growing though she’s still reluctant at this point. That’s what makes Zazie’s sister’s reveal that Chisame actually likes the life she leads at present humorous to me. There’s no doubt that she’s loved every minute of her life, especially after she got involved with Negi and became a member of Ala Alba. ^_^
Getting to the “good stuff,” I’m starting to laugh at how Ensis Exsequens is being used to “trim” hair. *lol* Eva gave the Headmaster a beard trim back during the festival and now Zazie’s sister gets a trim from Negi. *lol* Gotta love those multi-functional spells. ^_~
Chibi-mage seems like he could be another Fate but I suppose having this be Zecht isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Speaking of Fate, why would he get so angry with Negi’s words about having a plan to make things right?
The tradgedy of the future that Chao tried to change history and avoid is basically what Fate and company are trying to do — change history so that the Magic World residence end up in Cosmo Entelecheia paradise rather than suffer and fight a bloody, very long war.
I’ve no clue what Negi’s plan to save everything is, but the one thing that drums in my skull is the paradox factor. Negi is also talking about changing the future, meaning that there would be no reason for Chao to return to the past to try to change things to begin with. So, I’m very interested to see how Akamatsu-sensei deals with that issue.
Not a whole lot else for me to speculate or comment on at the moment. So I’ll just wait for the next chapter to come out instead. ^_^
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This Chapter was cool, we got to see a bit more of Zazie sisters powers with the fingers claws, make me wonder when Negi goes back to Mahora what he will talk to Zazie about and if zazie is like her what not, Fate is pissed lets hope he does more than stone pillars of Hades when they battle that seems to be his fav attack
So if Negi does change the future then what about Chao?
there is no way of knowing if this “War” was what chao was trying to stop. two words on zazie’s home, Demon relam.
A few items…
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Chisame thinks about this a moment, then challenges the idea that she is a rea-juu considering her own shut in lifestyle. Zazie’s sister counters this by pointing out that Chisame is very satisfied with that lifestyle.
—————
Your writing suggests that the implication is Chisame is satisfied being a shut-in, but I think that the intent is the exact opposite. Chisame is instead enjoying being out and about having adventures and keeping an eye on Negi despite her constant complaints otherwise (one of the scenes back in volume 21 has Chisame insisting that she help remove a feverish Negi’s pants because Chachamaru has “ulterior motives”, only for Chisame’s artifact assistants to note that Chisame herself has “ulterior motives” as well…). In short, what Chisame really wants is exactly the situation that she finds herself in, and no matter how much she denies it she’s still aware of it on some level (which is why she keeps allowing herself to get involved instead of taking a more passive role).
I would hazard a guess that it’s tied into why she’s remained the most level-headed and “down to earth” member of the group during all of the misadventures.
I think we’re still missing some information on Fate. Based on earlier comments (most particularly, things such as when he calls himself a “wooden doll”), I suspect that he’s really a puppet dancing to someone else’s tune – someone who created him, and gave him a purpose. I suspect that either his brain is hard-wired to violently reject any alternatives, or else he may find it difficult to adopt a new course of action even if his old path is shown to be the wrong one. Either or those alternatives might explain why he had such a violent reaction to Negi’s suggestion.
Time Paradoxes and Chao –
This time paradox is easy enough to work around. Merely leave instructions for one of Negi’s descendents to visit Mahora Academy at a particular date, set in motion a plan to reveal magic to the world, and then claim that it was all to avoid a great catastrophe in the future! Even if the catastrophe never took place in the time traveller’s past, the people living in the past have no way of knowing that!
In short, Chao can show up at Mahora even if Negi manages to avert the disaster – in essence creating a more or less stable time loop.
This time paradox is easy enough to work around.
Yeah, what you say works. As long as the circle is complete. Rereading the Del Rey releases (and trying to take into account any insertions on the part of the adapter), I believe that Mana said that Chao’s purpose wasn’t a specific event but a general one.
Still, I have always wondered how a time traveler like Chao would travel to a specific point in time to have maximum effect on changing the past and be fooled by the World Tree doing its thing a year early.
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Still, I have always wondered how a time traveler like Chao would travel to a specific point in time to have maximum effect on changing the past and be fooled by the World Tree doing its thing a year early.
————–
Some fairly easy options here –
– The records were bad. They knew that it was on a 22 year cycle and managed to get one of the older dates, but didn’t know about the tree lighting early either due to the tree correcting its cycle later on (and thereafter only lighting up on the correct years) or due to the tree being destroyed before it lit up again.
– Something Chao did might have inadvertently made the tree go off a year early.
– The whole thing was a set-up from the beginning (see my earlier “Chao wanted Negi to win” theory; or alternately assume that the time loop I suggested already exists) and Chao was intentionally sent back with the wrong instructions “because that’s what Chao thought originally”.
There’s also the possibility that Chao isn’t the only time traveler. Negi’s personal CE seemed to suggest that the tree lighting a year early was somehow connected to Nagi only earning a partial victory against the bad guys (since in that pocket universe, the tree didn’t light early). It’s possible that the Cosmo Entechelia organization is also composed of time travelers – albeit I would suspect a group that isn’t linked to Chao (since, for one thing, they don’t seem to have any issues with killing Chao’s ancestor). If so, that organization’s mucking about may have been what caused Chao to have bad information about the year that the tree would light.
There is another way to solve the time paradox effect.
By having multiple aspect of the futures reality which changes based on different dimension or timeline.
If i remember right even “Dragon Ball” series also used this system in its story.
In one timeline, Trunks came from the future in which Goku was dead, but him coming to the past & saving Goku’s life created a new future (but the future for that Trucks didn’t change when he returned back to his own future since there was a dimension effect created for some reason).
Then there was also the time of Cell coming from future. He killed Trunks in one timeline of the future & used his machine to travel back to the past. The same effect again happened in the future in a different timeline, but this time Trunks killed Cell before it could kill him.
Besides possibility of another Fate and Zect himself there is possibility of another Zect. If Zect was one of direct creations of the Lifemakers then making another version like he did with Fates is not out of possibility.
There is already a time paradox in Negima which has had zero effect on the story.
Negi and the gang use information from the week in the future to defeat Chao despite that future ceasing to exist the moment that they got back to the last day of the festival.
We can only assume that traveling in time for more than 24 hours allows you to change the past with impunity and still retain memories of the non-existent future. Therefore changing the future to prevent the war isn’t really an issue.
Speaking of Fate, why would he get so angry with Negi’s words about having a plan to make things right?
If Negi is right, that would mean that all Fate has done, in this and his 2 previous incarnations, all his lives in essence, have been wasted.
That’s something I hadn’t considered, Hugh. Works for me. ^_^
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If Negi is right, that would mean that all Fate has done, in this and his 2 previous incarnations, all his lives in essence, have been wasted.
——————
That thought had occurred to me, but Fate’s anger seems much more personal. And it’s been building for a while now. I think the “Negi managed to hit him twice” thing is tied up into it somehow as well, though I’m not really certain just how it does.
Why not just assume that if Negi does change the future and avoids the Chao time catastrophe that it only affects the current “future.” The future where tragedy happens that made Chao go back in time has already “happened” and anything done to directly change this would end up splitting the timeline in two.
Such as: Chao from future ‘a’ where bad things happened travels back in time to past ‘a’ in order to let people know and try to avoid future ‘a’. She then travels back to future ‘a’ while people in past ‘a’ actively try to avoid having future ‘a’ happen. Which in turn would change the course of past ‘a’ into past ‘b’. Now, lets say that Negi succeeds and stops future ‘a’ from happening, in turn creating future ‘b’.
So, past ‘a’ becomes past ‘b’ which is a different past from what Chao knows of. And future ‘a’ becomes future ‘b’ for Negi and current timeline people, where the catastrophe never happens. Since the events of past ‘a’ have already happened in future ‘a’ nothing will have changed in Chao’s future. She has already gone back in time to past ‘a’ so there is no sort of paradox. More of a splitting of the time lines leading to the possibilities of the future.
Hey Astro i was wondering if you were interested in seeing a mini negima project i am doing just for fun. i am gonna be making “star wars negima crawls” basically a 2 minute opening to negima via corresponding arcs.
I say Akamatsu-sensei is just gonna ignore time paradoxes… again. Think back to Mahorafest. Negi and co. get sent to the future where Chao’s plan succeeds then they go back into the past/present to stop her plan. But if they went back to their original time period and Stopped Chao’s plan then there would be no future where she succeeded. If there was no such future then what would be the cause of them making that last time jump backwards?
XD Time travel is complicated!
My money’s on this: After all’s said and done Chao comes back to their time and says something like: “Good job Negi-Bouzu! I never would’ve thought of that! The future’s safe now! Say hi to great-grandma-Yue for me! kthnxbai”
^_^
Actually, from everyone who knows of it all believe that it is unavoidable so they are all doing they’re own thing to work around it. It’s possibly due to magical theory says that it must happen, with no-one, even the creator of the world being able to stop such a thing. And all of a sudden a 10 year old comes out and states that he has figured out how to stop it?
To them it would be like someone coming out and revealing all modern science and religion is a lie and they can prove. How would you react to such a thing?
I didn’t have much doubt before, but now I’m sure Akamatsu-sensei plays with ideas from Western sources for fun.
My apologies if someone’s brought this up before, but it seems quite possible that Code of the Lifemaker (which I just saw mentioned in this thread) inspired some of the current storyline.
Yes, they did get sent to the future to where she succeeded. But… they then went back to the past and stopped her. From there, did they ever go back to their ‘original’ future? No, they did not. Of course, that would mean that the timeline where Chao succeeded is minus quite a few people, but it is not a paradox at all. They are just living through a different future than what happened in their original timeline.
So, (I am only going to use the Chao sending them to the future in here)
Past ‘A’ Chao sends NegiCo. to future ‘A’. NegiCo. does not like future ‘A’, so they go back to past ‘A'(being that it was the time that they were originally from there would be no duplicates of NegiCo here, if they arrive at a time slightly after they were sent to the future, in short, ultimately only one Negi Co. will exist in past ‘A’) and stop Chao from doing her thing, thereby, creating future ‘B’. Everything that happened to NegiCo from that point on would take place in the newly created future ‘B’. To build on this, Future ‘A’ still exists and time is still flowing in it, but now NegiCo. is missing from that timeline alltogether. Since the original NegiCo that inhabited future ‘A’ are now residing in future ‘B’.
I cannot think of anything in this manga that would disprove this handling of the time travel.
There is already a time paradox in Negima which has had zero effect on the story.
Negi and the gang use information from the week in the future to defeat Chao despite that future ceasing to exist the moment that they got back to the last day of the festival.
I don’t remember anything saying that the future ceased to exist the moment they left. It ceased to exist to the one’s who went back in time, but only because they prevented it and stayed in the prevented time.
We can only assume that traveling in time for more than 24 hours allows you to change the past with impunity and still retain memories of the non-existent future. Therefore changing the future to prevent the war isn’t really an issue.
So, if you travel in time less than 24 hours you would lose memories and can only change certain thing? The festival begs to differ.
I say Akamatsu-sensei is just gonna ignore time paradoxes… again. Think back to Mahorafest. Negi and co. get sent to the future where Chao’s plan succeeds then they go back into the past/present to stop her plan. But if they went back to their original time period and Stopped Chao’s plan then there would be no future where she succeeded. If there was no such future then what would be the cause of them making that last time jump backwards?
Relative time. The future where they failed to stop Chao happened, there is no way to change this, it happened and they were sent forward into it. See above for my explanation.
@Justin
One big flaw, Chao says she came back to their time period to change hers. That can only mean there is one timeline. She didn’t say “That future is a lost cause, let’s start fresh.” She also talks about jumping to different periods of time to take care of any political/military problems that happen because of her revolution. And judging by her “let’s make world peace for a day if I lose” move, I don’t think Chao was the kind of person who would make countless chaotic timelines for the sake of making one that she found acceptable.
Another problem with that is that even if there were several different timelines, how would they know which one to travel to? Or better yet, how would they travel to them? The only method of control we can see on the time machine is the little knob on top; set the time and activate with magic. There’s no “enter timeline # here” setting.
So yeah. One line, two/three futures, one paradox.
Just throwing out my two cents on the Festival timeline:
1) Their jump forward (which had already occurred at the time they got back to) was not caused by the failure or success of Chao’s plan. It was caused by a trap she set long before the eventual success or failure of her plan occurred.
2) Chao’s plan is not foiled by the fact of them jumping back. It was foiled by the actions they took after that.
What puzzles me is what happens when the past Negi-tachi arrive a week after the Festival again. They’ll still arrive, because their arrival wasn’t caused by Chao’s plan succeeding or failing. But they won’t have any reason to jump back.
This might be a little too late. Nobody might even be reading this post anymore. You guys are forgetting about something important when dealing with time travel. There are many alternate timelines, but only one of them is the prime timeline. Meaning if you change the future by altering the past, you will cause the new future to become the dominant timeline. For example, Back to the Future 2. There is no way to jump between the different timelines. Using this theory, what you get is this result.
Original timeline (Chao’s timeline):
Magic world broke down. Chao traveled back in time. Take note, in this timeline, Chao did not exist in Mahora Academy in 2003.
Timeline 2 (Chao’s success):
Chao came back in time. Tried to change the future. Succeeded by sending Negi 1 week into the future. Chao traveled back to her own time period. Negi arrvied 1 week later, then traveled back by 1 week.
However, when Chao reaches her own time period after the fight with Negi, she will realise there’s already an alternate Chao there, who will not have any intention of traveling to the past.
Timeline 3 (Negi’s success/current timeline):
After Chao has sent Negi into the future, Negi came back. Suceeded in stopping Chao. Chao traveled back to her time period. Negi went to Magic World. Now trying to stop Fate and change the future so that future Chao will not need to travel back in time.
However, when Chao reaches her own time period after the fight with Negi, she will realise there’s already an Alternate Chao there, who will not have any intention of traveling to the past.
So as you can see, each time someone travels back in time, they change the future. Using Chao as an example, the moment she arrived in the past, she would have already changed the future. There is no paradox because the timeline has changed, meaning Chao is a resident of another timeline, and is an independent ingredient in the equation, because she has been cut off from her own past. Even if the Alternate Chao doesn’t travel back in time, the Original Chao would still exist. Only one thing to take note; the Alternate Chao is now Prime Chao, while Orignal Chao is now Alternate Chao.
One last thing. As soon as Chao returned to the future, everything would have already been over. Negi would have either succeeded or failed. Meaning that since nobody from the future has traveled back in time ever since the festival, we can probably deduce that either Negi will succeed in saving both worlds, or they will be coming back between now and before the Magic World breaks down.
There’s no guarantee that Akamatsu-sensei will follow the Back to the Future model. As such, any time travel could simply complete the circle. Indeed, Akamatsu-sensei has already shown this to happen during the Mahora Festival when Negi, Kotaro, Chisame, and Chachamaru ran into themselves before completing the circle on the other side. Negi did it previously when he encountered Yue on a time-trip back. Everything Negi did in each trip back simply completed the circle, which is why at the wrap party, he was able to do all those things for all the girls in his class even though when they were thanking him, he hadn’t done any of it yet.
Oh, if by circle you mean the existence of an alternate Negi even before he traveled back in time, then that is easily explained by the fact that that Negi is from another timeline. Using your examples:
When Negi-A met Negi-B while searching for Ako, it gave him the reason to later travel back in time. As such, there was always the possibility that Negi-A influence Negi-B, causing him to seeks another solution and decide not to travel back in time. But in this case, we’ll focus on what actually happened in the book.
Negi-B traveled back in time with Ako, and then later met “Negi-C”. This is the important part. Negi-A has taken Negi-B’s place in timeline B, while Negi-B has left timeline B for timeline C.
I’m sure you are confused at this point, so I’ll try to clear up a few points where you might find unclear. The reason I cited Back to the Future 2 is because, even though we didn’t see an alternate Marty Mcfly in Back to the Future 1, he might actually be there already. The only problem is that it was a movie that was not created with a sequel in mind. So we’ll never be able to say for certain if the movie uses the same theory as Negi’s situation (as in the “circle” you were talking about).
The only reason why I’m certain each time Negi travels back in time, he cannot return to his own timeline and instead creates a new timeline is because of paradoxes. In the third movie, they changed the future by saving the teacher, which would of course invalidate the circle theory because in their history books, the teacher died. So right at that point, there are already multiple timelines created, but only the final timeline is the Prime timeline. Same with Negi’s situation. It might look like Negi kept traveling back in time to the same timeline, but when you look at it by not overlaying all his movements, you should see that there is no rule to bind him to that particular timeline. It would be easier to draw this out for you, but I hope that this will suffice.
—————————————-> Round 1
(Negi 1 exists) |
——————(Negi 1 goes back)
|
—————————————-> Round 2
(Negi 1&2 exist) | (Negi 1 exist)
———————(Negi 2 goes back)
|
————————> Round 3
(Negi 2&3 exist)
The above would solve all paradoxes and still maintain a circle/chain.
To sum it up, I appreciate the opportunity your blog has given me to chat about time travel. I used to have the same opinion as you regarding the circle theory, but as my interest got deeper and I studied harder, I realised that isn’t very possible. But of course, I respect Akamatsu-sensei’s opinions a lot, just like his views on magic, so I will never be a jerk about it, no matter which theory on time travel he uses in Negima.
It was cool of you to entertain my thoughts, thanks a lot.
Oh, if by circle you mean the existence of an alternate Negi even before he traveled back in time, then that is easily explained by the fact that that Negi is from another timeline. Using your examples:
When Negi-A met Negi-B while searching for Ako, it gave him the reason to later travel back in time. As such, there was always the possibility that Negi-A influence Negi-B, causing him to seeks another solution and decide not to travel back in time. But in this case, we’ll focus on what actually happened in the book.
Negi-B traveled back in time with Ako, and then later met “Negi-C”. This is the important part. Negi-A has taken Negi-B’s place in timeline B, while Negi-B has left timeline B for timeline C.
I’m sure you are confused at this point, so I’ll try to clear up a few points. The reason I cited Back to the Future 2 is because, even though we didn’t see an alternate Marty Mcfly in the first movie, he might actually be there already. The only problem is that it was a movie that was not created with a sequel in mind. So we’ll never be able to say for certain if the movie uses the same theory as Negi’s situation (as in the “circle”).
The only reason why I’m certain each time Negi travels back, he cannot return to his own timeline and instead creates a new timeline is because of paradoxes. In the third movie, they changed the future by saving the teacher, which would of course invalidate the circle theory because in the history books, the teacher died. So at that point, there are already multiple timelines created, but only the final timeline is the Prime timeline. Same with Negi’s situation. It might look like Negi kept traveling back in time to the same timeline, but when you look at it by not overlaying all his movements, you should see that there is no rule to bind him to that particular timeline. It would be easier to draw this out, but I hope this will suffice.
——————–> Round 1
(Negi 1 exists)|
——————(Negi1 goes back)
|
——————–> Round 2
(Negi 1&2 exist)|
——————(Negi 2 goes back)
|
———————> Round 3
(Negi 2&3 exist)
The above would solve all paradoxes and still maintain a circle/chain.
To sum it up, I appreciate the opportunity your blog has given me to chat about time travel. I used to have the same opinion as you regarding the circle theory, but as my interest got deeper, I realised that isn’t very possible. But of course, I respect Akamatsu-sensei’s opinion a lot, like his views on magic, so I will never be a jerk about it, no matter which theory on time travel he uses in Negima.
It was cool of you to entertain my thoughts, thanks a lot.