November 8th, 2017 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! 魔法先生 ネギま！2 Manga Review
UQ Holder! Mahou Sensei Negima 2
UQ Holder!: Magister Negi Magi! 2 Chapter 142
UQ Holder Chapter 142
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Cutlass is easily able to “kill” Gengorou, then goes after Jinbee. She tries to put a killing blow on Jinbee, but Gengorou shows up again. He’s able to defend Jinbee for a bit before getting cut down by Cutlass. However, he returns with a large rotary cannon, emptying a massive barrel of ammo at Cutlass. He then tosses a large number of frag grenades at her before producing a rocket launcher with magic shield piercing warheads.
Jinbee thinks they’ve got her and wonders how they are going to clean up the mess when Cutlass puts the tail of her second form through Gengorou’s chest. Cutlass immediately goes after Jinbee, but Gengorou returns with a katana to try to defend Jinbee. Jinbee is forced to use his switch ability to teleport her to the underground caverns, foiling her killing blow. However, she had planted a teleportation ofuda on Jinbee, allowing her to to immediately return in a new form. She knocks Gengorou far away so she can battle Jinbee unmolested. She cuts off his head, but he’s not dead and uses his switching ability to remove her transformed arm.
Cutlass is both angered and concerned learning Jinbee had this skill and could have killed her at any time. She lashes out at him, but Gengorou is back and slices off another transformed arm. She kills him, then immediately lands a killing blow on his respawn, but this time, it is not effective. He informs her that he has three seconds of invincibility after he respawns. He cuts off more of her limbs, enraging her and causing her to transform again. Jinbee manages to knock her out. Cutlass’s backup brain activates and she plots the destruction of Jinbee and Gengorou. Jinbee gives her a sideways glare to let her know he’s aware that she’s conscious.
A teleportation madala shows up as Dana brings in Touta and company along with Chamo in humanoid form. Cutlass freaks upon seeing Dana and dispels her bult to return her to a small, loli form. However, as she leaps away, Dana violates every rule of science and nature to capture Cutlass without using magic. Cutlass tries to behead Touta, but fails. Gengorou shoots Cutlass, then puts a foot on her and empties a gun at her. Touta stops him since he doesn’t want her killed.
They put Touta in a special cell to nullify magic and chi. Gengorou puts Touta in charge of feeding her since he stopped Gengorou from killing Cutlass. They can communicate via a holographic monitor and send her food via a teleportation circle. Touta communicates with her, where she admits she wants to “save” the world. But before that happens, she wants to make people like Touta pay their dues. She smirks as she hints at bad things to come. On cue, a government alert goes up as in space, the elevator is attacked by an apparent satellite.
Thoughts/Review:
Sadly, there were no spoilers for UQ Holder Chapter 142, but I found the chapter to be pretty good, both in action and in giving Gengorou and Jinbee more screen time.
Gengorou and Jinbee
During their fight with Cutlass, we learned a number of things. As first revealed in the anime, Gengorou has a bank of lives at his disposal. Now we know that he increases his bank of lives by doing good deeds. We also have revealed that just like a video game, Gengorou has a brief period of invincibility after he respawns. And finally, like a video game, Gengorou can produce any number of weapons on the fly, as a gamer would do with hotkeys in a game like Doom. (Or any other shooter game, I imagine.)
For Jinbee, we learned a couple of things. His “switcheroo” ability can be used on body parts. Basically, he could remove someone’s heart if he wanted to. Baring that, he could certainly cause someone’s body to split in half and kill them. That’s pretty incredible, if you ask me.
We also learned that his immortality is not affected by the loss of his head. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that being stated before. Or maybe it was merely speculated that Jinbee might have lost his head. Regardless, he may not have Touta’s or Karin’s level of immortality, but he’s still pretty resilient.
Finally, we learned that Jinbee has some kind of knockout power. And he may have some kind of mental ability since he was able to sense that Cutlass was conscious.
Cutlass
We also learned a few things about Cutlass. For starters, she seems to have been created by an organization called Amater. She has a cyberbrain backup so that she can function even if she gets knocked out. While we already knew she could transform, she does have multiple transformations due to using Black of Venus. That would account for her mazoku appearance when she transforms, where she resembles Poyo somewhat.
We know she has an artifact, but it doesn’t appear to be from a pactio. She seems to store it within her body (the Horaria Porticus). I hope we can learn more about her in the future.
Hopefully, we’ll soon learn more about this Amater that built Cutlass. Because she’s a cyborg, I’d be willing to bet this is separate from the immortal project Negi was built from, but we’ll see. I’m guessing they may be the ones responsible for the attack on the space elevator.
And MAN does Cutlass have anger management issues. Rather like me. 😆
Dana and Company
As expected, Dana arrived with Touta and the others. Also as expected, Dana’s second presentation is put on hold. And considering how the chapter ended, we ain’t getting it anytime soon. I hate it when character say, “Hey, we have great information,” then don’t give it for whatever reasons.
I did get a chuckle out of Dana’s violation of the forced perspective rule. As a kid, I remember posing for pictures with a forced perspective so it looks like you are holding something large or that something large is small. And I imagined being able to do something like what Dana did when she plucked Cutlass from the air.
At least Touta and company didn’t save the day, as I feared they would. Outside of Dana preventing Cutlass from escaping, it was all Jinbee and Gengorou taking down Cutlass.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Time to wrap up my review of UQ Holder Chapter 142 so I can put the finishing touches on the latest anime episode (06 as I write).
- I’d be interested in seeing how this attack affected Eva’s mission to calm the government types.
- How did Touta deflect Cutlass’s blade from slicing off his neck? I don’t remember him studying anything to make himself invulnerable.
- Touta’s ability to show mercy is something that I think will play an important role in the future.
- Did Akamatsu-sensei just kill a cute little girl? Haha! I guess we’ve a month to find out.
In the end, UQ Holder Chapter 142 is a pretty decent chapter. It allowed us to learn a bit more about Jinbee, Gengorou, and Cutlass. It also appears to be setting up the next arc of the series.
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The name Amater has been popping up for some 16 chapters now and I’m curious who is behind it. Fate and Evangeline seem to have a hand in it considering they made Touta.
I’m also interested in how its written in Japanese, because it sounds eerily similar to Amateru, the Lifemaker’s daughter.
I don’t remember seeing the name before. Amaterasu, yes.
I’m positive that there is a chapter Touta focusing his chi and got no scratches from Kuro’s blade at all. *fingers crossed*
Haha! I’d have to look, but it isn’t ringing bells with me.
You can even tell that the cell is the same cell that Negi and Takahata were when Negi and the gang were stuck in the future after the festival. XD
Yeah, I thought it kinda looked familiar.
The chi shield that Kuroumaru help him learn before she umm “confessed”. That’s how he saved his neck.
I liked this chapter. I hope he keeps it up. And yes, unless they reset (I really hope something makes it to where they can’t as I’m a bit sick of that fallback) or someone saves all of them, off screen… Akamatsu-sensei did just kill a cute little girl.
I need to go back and look for that. I don’t remember it at all for some reason.
This is what I’m betting on. 😉
Good chapter. Some action and laughs. I seem to remember Cutlass having a pactio card, so her artifact is a pactio. (Which is criminally underused in this series, btw) Touta is clearly trying to reach out to her but I’m not sure if I like her rebuffing him more or perhaps finally coming to terms with herself… In this case we get the former and she seems almost irredeemable. I’m guessing that other clones attacked that station, would be nice to see some of the other brothers and sisters introduced.
Either way this series feels like it’s finally back on track.
I’d have to go back to her introduction. In the last chapter, she produced it without a card and in this chapter, the artifact appears to be coming out of her body.
But I agree, the pactio system has been all but ignored until the elderly Ayaka showed up with her card (if my memory serves me).
I think it showed up during the race or the fight after. She’s one of the few in the series with her own card. I know Akamatsu doesn’t want to make this series too Negima reliant but the lack of magic and pactio really hurts sometimes, as discovering new pactio was very often the best part of Negima.
That sounds familiar to me, now that you mention it. I need to go look.
I actually dont mind that theyre saving the flashback for later. I loved the Negima flashback and im really glad we got it but at the same time the manga is on a monthly schedule and Id rather not spend another 2-3 chapters on more flashbacks immedietly after.
On another note I really hope Akamatsu doesnt pull a deus ex and have nobody die again. I dont think we’ve ever seen an on-screen in Negima/UQ so this could be a nice way to raise the stakes.
I get what you are saying about the flashbacks, but I fear we will never see this info.
Heh. I’m betting on the dues ex machina every time. 😉
I thought Jinbee had one of the ‘weakest’ forms of immortality (basically just being unaging). I didn’t expect him to survive having his head cut off.
Me either. I need to go back to when Jinbee was introduced to see if he said something about this. But at least Jinbee got to show his worth as a member of UQ Holder, even if he’s lazy.
I thought the chapter was okay, though it probably would have benefited a quicker release, so it might be more enjoyable in the volumes.
Mainly, it was mostly due to forgetting what happened last chapter and my interest waning a bit.
Of course, I did chuckle a bit about how Dana took care of Cutlass.
I hear what you are saying. The monthly format does seem a long time, more so when there are no spoilers. For me, the previous chapter stood out simply because Jinbee and Gengorou got to shine. So I was interested in seeing if they’d be allowed to carry things through.
Let’s just hope that, if they’ve commited to a darker and grittier take now we’ve seen a happy ending for Negima, they actually stick to that tone without copouts.
I’m not saying the manga would be any better by being all doom and gloom from here, far from it, but I hope this isn’t swept away with another ‘Kirie loops time back’ or ‘Zazie and Mana saved everyone offpanel, lololol’. And since it seems Negi’s party is not at fault here, please, don’t try to play the guys who have just blown a whole place filled with innocents, children included, for sympathy and easy ‘redemption’ later.
Chao went out of her way to make sure nobody was killed by her plans. Fair enough, she still can be a trusted ally and friend later then. Fate… his whole plan involved destroying people’s bodies and sending their spirits to paradise, but okay, let’s just grit our teeth, pretend that wasn’t the actual equivalent of attempted planetary genocide, and let it slide on a technicality because Akamatsu says it isn’t the same as killing. Let’s even ignore Fate’s recurring tendency to employ sadistic murderers like Male Chao and Tsukuyomi and chalk it up to poor judgment when he should know better. Sayoko tries a full scale zombie apocalypse but she’s disposed of permanently by the plot, that was fine too, I can live with this crime and punishment effect.
But please, whoever ordered a whole terrorist attack eerily reminiscent of 9/11 in space, don’t try selling me that person as a poor misunderstood soul the leads want to befriend later on. Enough already, Akamatsu. I don’t want to read a manga about befriending Magical Space Osama Bin Laden just because he or she is good looking or whatever and you think you can stick a sob story on them after commiting mass murder.
Also, I really hope the result of this isn’t that close to what Cutlass was implying when she went on about the rich minorities and the rest of the world. If the thing to be shown later on is the poor or exploited people have become mass murderers on poor innocent rich folks who can pay themselves Space Olympics while the poor suffer in slums, and the elite team of beautiful immortal people living in the luxurious hotel and bath house must kick the exploited people’s evil arses, well, that’s filled with all sorts of Unfortunate Implications. Akamatsu’s social commentary so far has been very clumsy at best so far, so I’m actually rather concerned about this.
Also, sorry, but I didn’t like the Dana thing. It’s one of those things that look funny and cool until it sinks in it really belongs in Bobobo rather than here, and that making Dana so stupidly broken only hurts the series’ power balance. If Dana’s on the good guys’ side, the only ways they can lose with skills like this is because Dana keeps herself out of the way when plot demands for it (after we’ve seen she helps whenever she feels like it– at least in Negima Eva had good reasons to be unavailable most of the time) or make the enemies just as powerful as Dana, and with this kind of powers, that means turning the whole manga into Looney Tunes rather than UQ Holder.
And please, before you say ‘Rakan’, even Rakan was never anywhere as bad as this.
The first half of the chapter was great, with Jinbei and Gengorou shining and making up for how annoyingly Edgelord Tryhard Cutlass always is, but after the fight’s over the chapter seems to fall apart with things that are too exaggerated and tonally different from each other.
I agree. But I’m expecting the dues ex machina simply because this is a shounen manga.
I know she’s supposedly disposed of permanently, but there’s a part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if Akamatsu-sensei found a way to bring her back.
Well, Akamatsu-sensei is doing that with Cutlass and Touta’s treatment of her.
Haha! I wouldn’t say that. Dana is on a whole other level, so much so that I don’t take her all that seriously any more.
In what way tonally different, unless you mean the tone after Cutlass is captured? To me, Dana does cause a disruption, but after that, I felt that Touta’s actions felt real. He wants answers and Cutlass is the one with some answers.
Tonally different in that, right after a scene where a character grabs another one with a perspective gag like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, we follow with a scene where innocent families are murdered out of nowhere in outer space. The transition is too sudden and jarring and make both the humor look awkward and the drama look forced, because they are too close to each other.
And even if it’s a shounen manga, that’s no excuse for constantly reviving dead characters or faking their deaths out in the first place, especially if they are extras. Especially now the series is in a more mature oriented magazine than Shounen Sunday. InuYasha, Death Note, Fist of the North Star, Rurouni Kenshin, and several others were shounen manga that knew how to kill secondary or background characters and let it stick for real, without stopping being successful.
Ah, yes. I guess I’m used to it as it didn’t even make me blink since Dana has already been shown to be a broken character. ^_^;;;
Must admit that sometimes is good that characters dont actually die, but overused it becames like Dragon Ball, where deaths were merely a temporary change of scenary until the revive is coming again.
Important character deaths should be rare and meaningful(unless a manga on which “everyone can die” type) to the plot and cheating death should be even rarer, otherwise it degrades their own death plot
A lot of shounen manga titles abuse the “I’m not dead yet” thing. Fairy Tail was notorious for this.
Of course, in a series like UQH, things are a bit different since they are all immortal.
This was very intense encounter. I totally agree it’s nice to see Gengorou and Jinbee in action without the main characters coming in to the rescue. I do think though, Akamatsu-sensei may have forgotten about Jinbee supposely having weaker immortality. He was suppose to be durable, not super ubber. Removing of his head and reattaching it was bit much.
With space elevator being attack, it’s almost as if the story line is about to go into another level of change. No longer the time-taking to tell the tail, were almost going into crisis to crisis. I guess it depends on how well the anime show does to lure new readers.
Anyone keeping track of the rating?
As of today, MAL rates it at 7.87.
The anime’s rating is 7.53.
I have no idea about sales numbers or its magazine-internal position.
What the scale? I hope hell it’s 10 is the top, that would give it a fighting chance. If it’s out of a 100, the manga is done for.
Yeah, it’s out of ten. MAL is very skewed though, so a rating below 8 can be considered ‘bad’.
MAL is not the best platform for ranking something. There’s fandom wars, “your anime is shit (aka ‘fuck you’)” votes, and the people who made a vote might not have necessarily watched the whole thing.
The ANN reviewer ranks the anime at B- so far. I don’t think they did a review of the manga, not that I remember at least.
The only way to really see UQH’s popularity would be sales numbers and magazine ranking, but I have no idea where to get these.
Thanks for the info.
I just discovered something, nothing important. I was re-reading the old Love Hina manga.
It then i realized there a pattern who the male main character ultimately gets as the girl. It seems that Akamatsu-sensei has habit of making the Tsudere who wears glasses the ultimate destination / choice.
Early chapters of Love Hina has Kanako, Negi has Chisame Hasegawa (we find out much later that SHE is the ONE negi actually marries) and now you have Kirie. Who’s been strongly hinted resembles the previous two girls and has been hinted as being possibly Touta’s final destination.
They all look similar to one another. I know this sounds random, but i think that’s (if story wasn’t being rushed so badly,) Kirie would end up with him.
Yeah, he loves the megane babe. For Negima, he had to remove Asuna ’cause Asuna doesn’t wear glasses.
As I understand it, Kanako was something Akamatsu-sensei was forced to add to the manga to keep it from ending. The manga series was very popular, but Sensei had all but completed his tale. So he had to invent the half-sister and roll from there.
No, you are spot on. That’s why Akamatsu-sensei is ramming Kirie in our faces every chance he gets.
I think the only wrong with it, is that Kirie looks much younger in the anime than he does in the manga. What is she? 10 years old forever vs his 14 and yet in later manga she looks bit older. Still looks questionable. 😛 Atleast his characters in Love Hina were grownup enough to be in college.
Well, gotta go for the ultimate loli factor I guess. ^_^;
Is that good or bad?
I don’t think he forgot it, based on what Cutlass said. I suspect that me might have a bit of reconning going on here.
Yeah, assuming the anime does well. I haven’t kept track of the ratings though.
I liked that the chapter showed the abilities of Jinbei and Makabe, Makabe has a whole background of weapons and the ‘invincibility’ it was funny, I was surprised when Cutlass attacked Jinbei in the head and he spoke as if nothing lol, he’s not for nothing the number 2. Cutlass is like a final boss, when you think that you have already won she transforms.
When Dana took Cutlass, seriously? Dana doesn’t need Photoshop, she already removes the things that she doesn’t like from the images XD
Well, the story of what happened in this time with Lifemaker and Negi, it will be seen in other time, I wonder if Evangeline will see Chachazero since Shinobu has her.
About Cutlass’s cell, where is it? Under the underground caverns too? I didn’t think that UQ Holder had this place, I wonder if they have more prisioners, I don’t know why, but I’d like Evangeline to go see Cutlass, maybe she knows something about Cutlass and Amater.
About the end of the chapter, I wonder if Kirie will use her power, or there will be someone who has saved the people, Maybe Fate?
The lifemaker won’t be happy, they have destroyed the tower.
Yeah, I liked that Jinbee got to shine, especially against someone as tough as Cutlass.
You may be right here. I think they met during the fight with Negi-MotB, but nothing was said there. That doesn’t mean Eva might not know something.
I was thinking possibly Eva.
Long time no type. (^_^)/
Thank you for keeping up with this, and giving us more interesting exposition than the original. (^_~) Back in the days of Star Trek Voyager, there was a guy who did the same… I knew it was time to stop watching the show, when I realized I only watched it to enhance reading his reviews.
Looking back, I think Chisame was probably the final straw for me. Let’s see, a tsundere who frequently hits the MC (Naru check), semi-retires IRL and becomes a ‘net cosplay idol (Chisame check), finally becoming a bit of a recluse instead of continuing as a ‘net cosplay idol – I wonder who this could be? XP
I have to admit that I’m being hypocritical, because I was happy when I thought Nodoka would be Sensei’s “apology” to LH’s Shinobu (who IIRC, he liked and he didn’t think he did her justice). But twice in a row, creating characters who the readers love better than they do his wife’s expys… only to force through his wife’s expy anyway? Meh. 😐
If it makes him happy, I’m glad for him. But only the great writers can keep readers’ interest even while being self-indulgent. And no matter how much he loves this genre, he’s not one of its great writers.
(In fairness, it could be a lot worse. In one series that I used to pay more attention to, the mangaka appears to have decided that his particular fetish has universal ap-pee-al. (>_<) )
I don’t think Shinobu was owed an ‘apology’ since in Love Hina it was always clear from the start Naru was the endgame girl. The hints were always set there blatantly, and thinking otherwise is just fooling oneself through hopeful thinking. I’d have loved for Mutsumi to win, or at least Motoko, but I’d never pretend those two had any chances, much less Shinobu, who was much more passive than the former and too much younger than the later.
The situation with Negima was kind of different since that never had too much of a clear ‘winner’ during the run. Nodoka gained an early edge but then pretty much stalled, and Asuna became too much of a sister figure. Ayaka was always played for laughs, Yue never stood a chance (she’d have been my second pick after Chisame), Chachamaru (my third choice) was simply too passive, and Chisame ultimately ended up gaining too much ground during Mundus Magicus. I’m glad we at least got a conclusive shipping ending, badly executed as it was, and that Anya never won, thank God.
I would somewhat disagree here. I honestly think Asuna was the girl initially. She was the first partner. She was the one Negi roomed with. But I think around the Magic World arc, Akamatsu-sensei decides to sweep Asuna aside and move Chisame into replace her.
Very early on, the race was more or less evenly split between Nodoka and Asuna, I think. Asuna was the primary partner and the roommate, but Nodoka was the first girl Negi really felt flustered and embarrassed about, and the first one to confess, and the second ever Ministra, so she wasn’t left that behind either. Plus, back then the ‘the Tsundere always wins’ pattern wasn’t so evident in Akamatsu’s work there, so we could be forgiven for thinking he’d try something different after Love Hina.
Well, in a way, Nodoka was best girl. She was timid and shy, yet when push came to shove, she was the bravest of them all. If Negi had ended up with Nodoka, I would have been happy with that result.
Sorry for the ambiguity: I don’t think he “owed” Shinobu anything either, at least not per se. This is just something I think I remember – that Sensei said something early on (in one of the book notes IIRC) about liking Shinobu, and feeling like he should have done more for her (I got the feeling he meant “more deban“, to steal a joke from a few years ago). And to be fair, from time to time she did get some really good deban. One of my favorite laugh-for-a-solid-minute-then-chuckle-for-several moments was saishoudoukin (165:7).
Welcome back!
Heh! So I have too little synopsis stuff or too much. I think I did more back with Negima. My schedule is so tight these days, I try to do less. ^_^;;;
And folks wonder why I get annoyed with Kirie. 😉
That’s true.
Wow, I really need to work on ambiguity… sorry, I meant the review is more interesting than the original content (not that it’s too long). (^_^)°
Wrt “author appeal”, yeah… at least Sensei deserves that much credit. Exasperation still beats “Ewwwww nonono”. Or as a really-old-style fortune cookie might have put it, “Confucius say: It is better to be piss off than to be piss on”.
Well, I probably need more sleep than I currently get. Can’t wait to get some time off next month!
I am just wondering if Ken is focusing on a critical point of time for the UQ-verse. The series is set in a time near the year of Chao’s birth. Chao’s role in Negima was very important. At the moment, I don’t know if Chao will exist in the UQ-verse, but her role is very important for the past, present and future.
Chao had stated that she was alive during a time when Mars was experiencing a major crisis. All Chao had Negi about the future was very limited. She told Negi about being one of his descendants. We had only recently learn about who became Negi’s wife in the Negi-verse. Despite being a recluse(not a hikkomori), Negi’s wife doesn’t mind being married to Negi. as well as having a few friends. Oddly in her own way, Negi’s own wife is a famous hacker on three worlds. She doesn’t mind being seen as a famous hacker on three worlds.
UQ Holder is set during a dark time. Many people like Cutlass hate the immortals. Not all immortals are monsters. The immortals of UQ Holder are simply misunderstood by the majority of the people of Earth. One of the immortals does keep an eye on UQ’s Earth and the Negima Earth. It is likely that Immortal is Chao.
Yeah, we’ll see how Chao from Negima! will play into things. Also, we’ll see how CHAO Xinxai will relate to her, if at all.
I think it depends if sensei can remember her and if he has room to fit her in. Remember this universe touta’s gang is in not same as the one Chaos originated from. Marsverse was saved in this timeline too. Just it not considered to be the “happy ending” one.
I’m curious how Asuna role will be as she’s now teamed with Team Negi-MOTB. She will be heck of a monster to contend with.