September 6th, 2013 
AstroNerdBoy UQ Holder Chapter 2 Review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Yukihime does a practice battle with Touta, that he loses. She senses that he’d be good at martial arts and suggests teaching him things like the shundo (shundou) “instant move” maneuver, but he’s not interested since he only trained to fight in order to defeat Yukihime and go to the tower. Instead, he has a different dream, but after talking around it, he won’t actually tell Yukihime what it is, annoying her.
Touta asks if he’ll be able to return to school. She reminds him he’ll be stuck in a 12 year old’s body, but school isn’t impossible. He asks about his voice changing and is horrified when he learns that won’t happen. He starts asking about other aspects of aging — going bald, getting fat, gray hair, etc., and is devastated because it means his dream seems impossible.
After fleeing down the road, he comes upon a village, where on the outskirts, some kids are at a broken down street car, picking on another kid. Touta sees the kid is working on an old moped. The kid isn’t impressed, more so when Touta admits to not being a mechanic. However, Touta does know how to fix the bike because he had a mechanic friend.
The other kids from the village are spying on Touta and the kid as Eva shows up with them. When Touta learns that the kid is aiming for the tower like he is, he praises the kid, leaving the kid to address him as “senpai.” Touta fixes the moped, which is a flying moped, and it words. Touta knows the other kids are nearby, so he calls them out. The kid takes the moped and shows off impressive skills with it.
Touta learns the kid’s name is YUUKI Shinobu, who’s dream is to participate in the Solar System Olympics held at the top of the tower, specifically the Grand Race. Touta reveals that his friend’s dream is to be a singer and sing at the top of the tower, and Touta’s dream is to be a backup singer for his friend. The kids find Touta’s dream more impossible than Shinobu’s, but Shinobu believes that dreams should be followed.
There was a person known to Shinobu, who would tell Shinobu stories. This cargo pilot encouraged Shinobu to not give up on the dream of getting to the top of the tower. Shinobu hasn’t heard from him in ages. The kids scream for Touta to sing, so after he blabs for a while on never giving up, he agrees to sing. He sings and Shinobu is impressed, but he flubs it in the end, causing the kids to tease him. He says he’ll get better, but then remembers his voice won’t change.
One of the kids accidentally starts the moped, and somehow, Shinobu instantly arrives on the bike. Shinobu flings the kid off and goes off the cliff, so Touta catches Shinobu, allowing the bike to crash into a rock. The fall should have killed them, but Touta kept them alive and realizes that being immortal isn’t all bad. Shinobu recognized the song Touta sang earlier, and the two agree to meet at the top of the tower.
Eva drops in, telling Touta that if it weren’t for his immortality, he’d be dead. Touta doesn’t recognize Eva at first, then he’s shocked that this is his Yukihime. Eva uses one of her age-changing pills to resume her Yukihime form, teasing him because she saw everything.
Later, after saying goodbye to Shinobu, Touta and Yukihime leave. As they continue their journey, they have a discussion about Touta’s dream, where Yukihime says that he’s an idiot.
Thoughts/Review:
And so loli-Eva returns, along with Shinobu from Love Hina. ^_~
Touta’s dream is rather silly, but it is fun seeing how Eva deals with this. Plus, I love the idea that Touta isn’t interested in getting stronger, unlike Negi from Negima. I also loved Touta’s looking at certain negative aspects of being immortal, something most folks would never consider.
I’ve no idea if Akamatsu-sensei making Shinobu look like Shinobu from Love Hina, right down to using “senpai” (and “Touta-senpai”) to address Touta, is more than a tribute or not. I find it interesting the Shinobu is NOT assigned a gender in this chapter (unlike what you may have seen in the first unofficial release of the chapter). Shinobu may be a girl, but I’d laugh it Shinobu turned out to be a boy. Shinobu is being set up to return later, so we may learn more then.
Eva’s return as her regular self was cool. The raging debates I read earlier in the week had me laughing my butt off. I’m really puzzled by the hatred of Eva’s current look. So, she lost the bangs and is attempting to not look like the wanted little girl or young 20-something woman, choosing to look like someone older, more mature. Frankly, I like Eva’s look, and she hasn’t lost a step either. The ambush from last week was just that — an ambush.
It is also interesting that Eva had not revealed her true self to Touta yet. It was a good opportunity for her to do so in this chapter as it gave her a chance to openly observe Touta and allow him to be himself without realizing he was being watched by Yukihime. I wonder if Touta will try her age-changing pills down the road.
Despite clocking in at 42 total pages (with the two 2 page spreads), I find there’s not a whole lot to talk about. Then again, I am out of time and need to get this ready for posting. The chapter being mostly filler with some humor and discussions of Touta’s dreams don’t leave a lot to analyze.
Posted in 
Tags: 
So, she lost the bangs and is attempting to not look like the wanted little girl or young 20-something woman, choosing to look like someone older, more mature.
Apparently, they are also raging about the fact that her “tsurime” eyes turned into “tareme” ones, though
a) I do see an eye change (which I thought came with the slight art change), but not a significant difference. In fact, I think it would fit because she mellowed out.
and b) What’s all the fuss about? It’s not like they have seen this before. It happened with Setsuna, too and I didn’t hear too many complaints.
What I noticed is that Touta mentions a lot that he will meet his friends from Chapter 1 again. Now that I look at the color spread again, I do think we will see a timeskip and we seem to see older versions of his friends in the color spread.
http://mangafox.me/manga/uq_holder/c001/14.html
http://mangafox.me/manga/uq_holder/c001/80.html
In detail, the one with the glasses (I can’t read his name) could be… the glasses guy. Mitsu-whatever (the one on the far right) is the guy with the long hair and bangs. Shiraishi is the Fate clone (is he the one who wants to sing with Touta? lol, that would fit, since Fate is a great singer) and Tanaka (the fat guy)… well, I’ll just guess he is the android because he shares his name with Chao’s Tanaka robots, lol.
That could also explain why some of them are wearing swords because Touta and his friends all trained with swords.
Anyway, this was mostly a character establishing chapter for Touta I guess. So he shares his philosophy with Gandhi, huh? I will wait how his character develops. He seems too generic for now, but we have only seen two chapters so far.
I guess he will want to learn techniques, once some serious plot starts. Like what exactly killed his parents or perhaps the war for independence on Mars.
Oh and about Mangastream’s translation… well, they fixed some errors like the “Mrs Yukihime” or the “Pillar of Heaven” thing that was left untranslated in Chapter 1, but I’ve seen other faux pas in Chapter 2 like uh… the “sempai” stuff. I wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t mentioned it, lol.
It’s not like they have seen this before.
Not. A “not” is missing.
That could also explain why some of them are carrying swords because Touta and his friends all trained with swords.
Fix.
The chapter being mostly filler with some humor and discussions of Touta’s dreams don’t leave a lot to analyze.
What I want to add: Touta doesn’t really stand out to me right now because his dreams are rather shallow (“become famous by doing something huge”) and not really selfish. He just wants to support his friends and have fun.
In my view, it looks like he has no true dream of his own right now – only a borrowed one. (Fortunately, it’s not as extreme as Shirou’s dream from Fate/stay night though, which was to live the rest of his life, as an Ally of Justice, to fight for others, but not for himself.)
Does that have something to do with the fact that he suffers from memory loss and thus has no true purpose? Or maybe something else…?
>I do see an eye change (which I thought came with the slight art change), but not a significant difference. In fact, I think it would fit because she mellowed out.
Agreed. After all, if you look at Eva (and the others) in the early Negima chapters, she looks different than she does by the end of the series due to Akamatsu-sensei’s mild shift in character designs. And like you said, she’s mellowed out.
>What’s all the fuss about? It’s not like they have seen this before. It happened with Setsuna, too and I didn’t hear too many complaints.
“Ah, but this is a NEW manga, so clearly, Akamatsu-sensei is trying to screw Eva over.” *_*
>I do think we will see a timeskip and we seem to see older versions of his friends in the color spread.
A lot of folks think that there will be a time skip in this manga. I’m OK with that, but if that does happen, I want Eva’s background explored first with Touta.
>Oh and about Mangastream’s translation… well, they fixed some errors like the “Mrs Yukihime” or the “Pillar of Heaven” thing that was left untranslated in Chapter 1, but I’ve seen other faux pas in Chapter 2 like uh… the “sempai” stuff. I wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t mentioned it, lol.
I hadn’t looked at MS again since I heard RHS is going to do this.
As to the “senpai” stuff, I tune into that. I checked the raws to see and it made sense that Akamatsu-sensei would have this Shinobu use “senpai” as much as the Love Hina Shinobu.
>What I want to add: Touta doesn’t really stand out to me right now because his dreams are rather shallow…
Well, there’s that, but as a character, he’s just not that interesting right now. He could become interesting, but he’s so easily rolling with the punches of Yukihime being a vampire, getting hacked to bits, changing body forms, etc. So there’s no real “human” element here beyond is dopey dream.
>Does that have something to do with the fact that he suffers from memory loss and thus has no true purpose? Or maybe something else…?
And that question might be the key to make Touta interesting.
If the new Shinobu is a dude, I’ll kill Akamatsu-sensei xD
If Jesus said, then there is no hope for Akamatsu-sensei. XD
I think no chance for Shinobu to be a dude. But If I think about the colour pages, we cannot see her for next chapters/volumes… Maybe the others will come step by step so the first one or two volumes is about the “gathering”?
>If the new Shinobu is a dude, I’ll kill Akamatsu-sensei xD
IT’S A TRAP! *lol*
>I think no chance for Shinobu to be a dude. But If I think about the colour pages, we cannot see her for next chapters/volumes… Maybe the others will come step by step so the first one or two volumes is about the “gathering”?
I think you are right about “the gathering” bit. Not sure about whether we are going to have traps or not. Traps are seemingly VERY popular in Japan at the moment, at least in otaku circles. *_*
You know what would be interesting? If the Shinobu here was actually the descendent of the original Shinobu from Love Hina. I think I read somewhere (although my memory is faulty and this is the internet, so take what I have to say with a load of salt) that Akamatsu sensei was considering making this his last work. Now, we’ve seen before that Akamatsu sensei’s previous works all seem to take place in the same universe. So how cool would it be, if this is his last work, to have a series where all his previous characters (or descendants of his previous characters) exist for one final story. I think that would be really cool. But it’s probably not happening (thought if it does, I’m totally calling it!).
>You know what would be interesting? If the Shinobu here was actually the descendent of the original Shinobu from Love Hina.
I wouldn’t mind that. ^_^
> I think I read somewhere (although my memory is faulty and this is the internet, so take what I have to say with a load of salt) that Akamatsu sensei was considering making this his last work.
Yeah, he has stated that he may retire after this manga.
>So how cool would it be, if this is his last work, to have a series where all his previous characters (or descendants of his previous characters) exist for one final story. I think that would be really cool. But it’s probably not happening (thought if it does, I’m totally calling it!).
And feel free to come back and proclaim it. ^_~
It would be nifty to have descendant connections though.
I don’t find Touta interesting at all. I know how jaded I sound saying something like this and I hate that I feel this way, especially towards one of Akamatsu-sensei’s works but I just can’t help it. I’ll spare the details since we’re only two chapters in. I just hope something pops up that actually justifies this series being so closely tied to Negima.
I’m actually loving Eva so far though. When she grabbed Touta in that headlock it reminded me so much of her grappling Setsuna in of the final chapters of Negima.
> I just hope something pops up that actually justifies this series being so closely tied to Negima.
For me, Eva is all the justification I need. ^_^ Seriously, Eva was one of the more interesting characters in Negima, and there were so many tantalizing elements to her, starting with her being turned into a shinso vampire to her time with Ala Rubra, to her gaining a bounty, to Nagi’s decision to not turn her in for a bounty, but rather to give her to Mahora.
>I’m actually loving Eva so far though. When she grabbed Touta in that headlock it reminded me so much of her grappling Setsuna in of the final chapters of Negima.
Yeppers. ^_^
I don’t see Eva as a justification. That’s just more to my point. As much as I enjoy her in the series, I still see no reason why she or anyone else from Negima has to be such a big part of it.
If Eva is the only reason this should exist then just make her the main character.
Just imagine how great it would’ve been if the story was completely focused on Eva. A slight change in writing would make that happen since all the elements are there for it. Dealing with bounty hunters, watching over Negi and Nagi’s descendants. Or maybe even continue with her plan from the end of Negima and have her spend her time hopping dimensions.
>If Eva is the only reason this should exist then just make her the main character.
Well, she is a main character. However, if in addition to telling Eva’s story, Akamatsu-sensei wants to explore the curse of immortality, then having Touta do this is the more logical way since he’s going through it for the first time. Granted, at the moment, he’s rolling with it rather easily, but at some point he may have to deal with it on a more negative basis.
Still, you have a good point.
Did anyone else notice the Mahora Academy Trolley?
I’m really interested into where this story is moving towards. It’s weird experiencing a universe that, for the most part, really familiar with, and seeing how it has “aged”
I also would love a chapter or two of Eva opening up about her past and what was it like to watch her friends pass away.
[RANDOM THOUGHT: IF Eva’s curse wasn’t broken- What if items from Mahora Academy was spread around the region (or the world even) “extending” the Academy grounds and allowing Eva to travel]
>Did anyone else notice the Mahora Academy Trolley?
I wasn’t sure if it was the same trolly or not. I didn’t look too closely though.
>I’m really interested into where this story is moving towards. It’s weird experiencing a universe that, for the most part, really familiar with, and seeing how it has “aged”
I agree.
>[RANDOM THOUGHT: IF Eva’s curse wasn’t broken- What if items from Mahora Academy was spread around the region (or the world even) “extending” the Academy grounds and allowing Eva to travel]
Well, if that was the Mahora trolley, then I suppose that’s possible. I don’t think this will be the case though. After all, even if Nagi didn’t life the curse, there was still a way for it to be lifted by Negi.
Are you sure that’s Shinobu from Love Hina?
No one said it’s Shinobu from Love Hina. Astro even thinks this Shinobu could be male.
Yeah, I was just noting how this Shinobu and the Love Hina Shinobu are very much alike in more than visual terms. ^_^