ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Volume 03

***SPOILERS***

The slums come under attack as Kuroumaru and Touta are quickly overwhelmed by the werewolf Kaito. Karin is at the mercy of CHAO Xinxai, who’s about to have his way with her until she activates her god-like power to defeat him. Despite Touta being sealed by Kaito, he instinctively activates Magia Erebea, defeating Kaito. However, Touta forces Magia Erebea down ’cause “that’s not him” and has an arm wrestling match with Kaito. Nagumo is willing to retreat, but gets a call telling him not to. He literally sends Karin to the moon and has Touta defeated when Yukihime (Eva) rides in to the rescue along with a few other Numbers members of UQ Holder.

UQ Holder volume 03 covers chapters 18 through 28. If you want to read my original thoughts as I read the chapters, those can be found by clicking the chapter numbers — 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28.

As I read this volume, I was almost startled to see Karin again, since she’s not been in the current storyline in the manga (as of this posting), which means we haven’t seen her in months. I was again reminded of how much I like Karin as a character, and how much I wish we had some actual character development and background information on her. Sadly, all we got was the stuff Xinxai speculated about.

With Touta suddenly having Magia Erebea abilities and Akamatsu-sensei giving us a flashback to Negi (and Eva) working together to defeat the Mage of the Beginning, this volume of UQ Holder attempts to entice longtime fans of Negima to come in and stick around. Unfortunately, Touta’s not that interesting of a character here, and his suddenly using Magia Erebea is just out of left field. The fact that he wills it off of him I guess is supposed to have us going, “Oooo! Touta strong. Him more interesting ’cause he use ME, but ME not have control over Touta. Touta is master. He strong!”

As to seeing adult Negi in action, unfortunately it isn’t much more than a brief flashback, and that is harmed by the fact that Akamatsu-sensei refuses to draw Negi properly. Instead, one of his eyes isn’t drawn and the other is faintly drawn. I don’t understand the idea of trying to keep Negi like that, unless Akamatsu-sensei realizes that if he did draw Negi properly, just one tiny flashback of him would trump his entire work on UQ Holder.  After all, until it abruptly ended, Negima! was a really good, well written manga.

Regardless, reading this volume was a reminder to me of what could have been but sadly wasn’t.

On the Kodansha Comics side, this is the translation/adaptation that the Twins do for Crunchyroll. There is no translator notes section, but any margin notes the Twins made are there (I didn’t check to see if they all came through or not). The beginning of the manga has a couple of pages devoted to characters in the manga and another couple of pages of recap material to get readers up to speed. Beyond there, there are no other extras, which is how I believe the manga is done in Japan.

In the end, UQ Holder volume 03 is not the worst manga in the world or anything. It is more like a disappointment when compared to volume 03 of Negima!, which is when that series got really good. Here, UQ Holder is still trying to find itself and needs a lot of legacy help from Negima!