UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03 (The Immortal Club)

ユーキューホルダー! 魔法先生 ネギま!2 Anime Review
UQ Holder! Mahou Sensei Negima 2
UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03
UQ Holder Episode 03

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03Karin expresses her displeasure with Touta to Yukihime while Touta is all excited at their arrival at the UQ Holder Senkyoukan, which not only functions as an inn, but as an onsen as well. Gengorou and Ikku introduce themselves and explain that they were going to test Touta and Kuroumaru by sending them under the island to defeat magical monsters. However, Yukihime decided that all the pair needed was to get one strike on a UQ Holder member. Karin decides to be Touta’s opponent while Kuroumaru is tasked with Gengorou. Neither Touta nor Kuroumaru can land strikes on on their opponents, but they still have seven days to get the job done.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03Kuroumaru and Touta meet Shinobu, a normal human working at the Senkyoukan. Touta decides they should help Shinobu, so they do. When Kuroumaru and Touta take boxes to what is supposed to be a storeroom, they end up in a massive, underground cavern. There’s also a large building nearby, so Kuroumaru and Touta head to it. There, they discover another UQ Holder member named Jinbee. He shows Touta a black sword in a stone and says it can be Touta’s if he can pull it from the stone. Touta can’t, but while Jinbee mocks Touta, the sword (Kurobo) quietly tells Touta how to remove it from the stone.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03Now armed with a sword, Kuroumaru and Touta train. On the seventh day, Kuroumaru challenges Gengorou again. She has no success until she thinks like Touta, allowing her arm to be severed and using the severed arm to land a blow on Gengorou, removing one of his lives. Elsewhere, Touta battles Karin, eventually getting the best of her. However, when Shinobu screams, Touta doesn’t land his blow on Karin and races to Shinobu’s side. There, he discovers she’s under attack by monsters. Karin joins him, becoming bait so that Touta can rescue Shinobu.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03Once Shinobu is freed, Touta comes to Karin’s aid. Using Kurobo’s 50,000 gravity setting, he’s able to destroy all the monsters and destroy part of Karin’s uniform as well. Although he technically didn’t land a strike on Karin, she passes him because of the state of her uniform. Yukihime explains that the monsters got out through a hole Touta made in the underground cavern. As such, she sends Kuroumaru and Touta down a trapdoor into the cavern to kill all the monsters. She sends Jinbee down as well since she discovered he’d stolen her special sake.

Thoughts/Review:

I knew there would be changes to the original manga story in UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03. However, the changes made were kinda silly, just to help link the series more with Negima!

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

Shinobu Appears

While I’m glad to see Shinobu in the UQ Holder anime, I had to laugh at her introduction. The reason for my laughter is that Shinobu had no explanation to explain why she, as a normal human, would be working at an onsen-inn with a bunch of immortals and youkai. Basically, the explanation is, “Things happened and the coincidence of all this led me here.” And in normal Japanese storytelling procedures, we are supposed to let this go and move on.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

We are already seeing signs of Shinobu being attracted to Touta and Kuroumaru being jealous of this. Beyond that, Shinobu served little purpose other than to be the damsel in distress to prevent Touta from defeating Karin. Shinobu’s only other presence in the manga is to do her pod racer thing. We’ll see if that gets incorporated.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

One Strike Membership Change

In the UQ Holder manga, Touta and Kuroumaru were literally dropped into the caverns under the island that houses the Senkyoukan as a membership test. With UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03, we get a reference to that test, but it is changed so that it can be linked with Eva’s test for Negi in Negima!  I don’t have my old Negima! anime DVDs any more, but I don’t remember that test being there. I do remember it from the manga though. Clearly, Akamatsu-sensei is keen on more closely linking Negima! with UQ Holder, which is not unexpected. I just didn’t expect it here.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

The underground cavern stuff is then shown in brief by having Kuroumaru and Touta take stairs down there. The abbreviated nature of these scenes pretty much makes Super Touta even more Super Touta ’cause we don’t see how he learns to master Kurobo. Granted, he mastered the sword rather quickly in the manga, but here, it is less than seven days.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

That said, Kuroumaru’s test fight with Gengorou allows us to see a bit more about his immortality, which hasn’t been seen in the UQ Holder manga yet (the life counter). Karin’s fight with Touta gets her an early start on the Touta harem path, aided by the change to how Eva attempts to pair Karin with Touta as the last people on Earth.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

My plans to speed things along still don’t always go according to plan. Nevertheless, I think I better wrap up my review of UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03 so I can move on to the next anime review.

  • While I’m glad the Japanese honorifics are now retained in the official subtitles, watching these episodes do make me appreciate the Nibley Twins being in charge of the UQ Holder manga. After all, for me, Senkyoukan > Fairyland Hall, which just sounds stupid. Also, having the “gangster” UQ Holder folks say “Ane-san” instead of “ma’am” is much better to me.
  • On the other hand, the official anime subs do have one thing that trumps the Nibley Twins; shocking, I know. The anime subtitles use Touta’s sword proper name of Kurobo rather than Sidestick.
  • Eva certainly has more of a presence in the anime. In the manga, after Touta and Kuroumaru were “flushed” to the underground caverns, we didn’t see Eva again for a long while.

UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 - 03

In the end, UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03 greatly compresses the arc where Touta and Kuroumaru train underground. The forced linkage to Negima! isn’t horrible, but at this point, I didn’t find it that necessary.

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19 Responses to “UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 03 (The Immortal Club)”

  1. NullApostle says:

    Is it just me or do Karin’s and Shinobu’s faces look really odd, animation-wise?

  2. OverMaster says:

    No mention of the horrible and laughable CGI? I thought that was more striking in this case than the honoriffic nitpicking, even if I know that’s something you’ll never let go of.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      Haha! Actually, I had planned to, which is why I had that one image of Karin with the monsters. However, with work being so busy all the time, when I finally got some time to finish it, I didn’t think about the remarks until I was putting the images in. But by that point, I was wasted and desperately in need of sleep, so I let it ride. ^_^;;;;

  3. Mattcgw says:

    I wish people, would stop complaining about, the monste CGI, it’s competent in its purpose and could be far worse ala Ajin or have all of the anime be CGI. Also stop complaining about the shortcuts, people don’t complain about such in compilation films (unless the compilation I suppose to be new content for a franchise).

    In far far more, integrating news. MVM (UK distributor, of fate and the one True berserk fame)
    Have licenced UQ Holder!!?!!, this is the first ‘exiled’ anime series to have any kind of Western physical Media announcement. (this is also a strike title in the US) Oni-Hei, rage of Bahamut season two, and Netflix hostages, haven’t had any.
    I’m going strongly assume, that this is Akamatsu-Sensei’s doing, if he’s seen any of the (rightfully) Hysteria, related to it. It’s good way to provide some light, of these reaching western shores.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      I wish people, would stop complaining about, the monste CGI

      The monsters do look out of place.

      In far far more, integrating news. MVM (UK distributor, of fate and the one True berserk fame)
      Have licenced UQ Holder!!?!!,

      Are they going to use Sentai’s subtitles?

  4. Sian says:

    I’d be willing to give the terrible CGI a pass simply because they managed to nail ‘Hilariously bad’ instead of ‘ugly/poor bad’

    Also willing to give the condensing a pass (even if it does raise the ‘OP/Super Protagonist’, but that’s a near universal problem with the genre, so it seems slightly disingenuous to bash it too hard), specially since I actually feel that it makes more internal logical sense that this is how they qualify instead of getting tossed down into a cavernous basement where Nr.2 has been sitting for several years without anyone paying mind or even apparently recognizing that he were missing.

    Shinobu’s appearence is IMHO quite a bit better than the Manga in that initially she appeared to be a chapter-long Shout-out to Love Hina, and then happily forgotten for 90-some chapters where she drops in from no-where…

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      Shinobu’s appearence is IMHO quite a bit better than the Manga in that initially she appeared to be a chapter-long Shout-out to Love Hina, and then happily forgotten for 90-some chapters where she drops in from no-where…

      That’s true. I was in the camp that thought we’d never see her again.

  5. Yue Ayase says:

    Episode 4 is quite a bit better. Though I’d have to go back and read they nailed the major points of the manga I’m pretty sure… Except for the stupid censorship.

  6. Rob C. says:

    Has anyone noticed the very end credits? At the very end you have scrolling black background credits of the characters and voice actors who plays them. Many of them not yet aired on the show and many Negi era one.

    Very end it’s promoting there many more Negmia characters on their way… I saw this at end of the 4th episode. Very strange place to plug Negi related stuff.

    • Sianistic says:

      To be specific, the credits lists:
      Negi
      Sayo
      Yue
      Asuna
      Chachamaru
      Makie
      Mana
      Nodoka
      Ayaka
      Fate
      Jack
      Ku:nel
      (and undefined others from Negima)

      … But no Santa

      • Rob C. says:

        Interesting…maybe he’s grouped with other “many other characters” part.

        Then again, Santa’s part was arguably the darkest and stand alone arc. One side, you go back to the academy. The other, you get magical zombie/ghost apocalypse that’s self contain and pretty nasty. Its entirely possible “IF” the UQ Holder anime is popular enough. They could end up making stand alone OVA type special covering it. They’re likely going re-do the Academy thing, since it was gate way to meet Mana Tatsumiya and get into the tournament that leads to Touta’s training and fighting his grandpoppy in a impropt fight.

        From what little we’ve seen of the series future, we can tell Mizore is wearing her skimpy bathing suit in the intro. Suggesting the contest between her and Yuuki for a date with Touta.

        I don’t get why Makie being shown. She should be dead by now or very old lady.

        • AstroNerdBoy says:

          Outside of that arc, Santa has had little screen time. So I’m guessing that is how Akamatsu-sensei scraps him from the anime, though as you said, it is possible an OAD could be done for his arc…or a movie.

      • AstroNerdBoy says:

        That sucks, but in some ways, unsurprising.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      I just finished watching episode 3, and they are desperately racing to the Negima stuff.

  7. Risdiyan says:

    Debat about what? ?

  8. Siti Nur Amalia says:

    I have not watch this yet..

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