May 9th, 2018 
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 148
UQ Holder Chapter 148
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Touta is shown a world where there was no Asuna. Here, Nodoka and Yue become Negi’s permanent partners. Because of this, things evolved differently in his relationships with the other girls. Further, they did not find Nagi-Ialda (Mage of the Beginning) until many years later. Because of this delay, MotB’s power was much more than Negi had thought.
When MotB attempted to capture Negi, Yue and Nodoka jumped in to save him from this. Jack jumps in to rescue the girls, but he too is snared. Al attempts to save the trio, but it is only a delaying action. Negi tries to save them, but Jack sends him packing. The foursome decide to become a firewall and prevent MotB from coming after Negi.
MotB still comes for Negi, so Koyomi attempts to use her artifact to freeze time. This does not stop MotB for long, and she kills Koyomi for attempting to stop her. MotB attempts to possess Negi, but Chisame sacrifices herself for Negi.
Sometime later, a depressed Negi returns to Mahora and pays a visit to Eva. As it rains outside, Eva observes the sleeping Negi.
Thoughts/Review:
For UQ Holder chapter 148, we get a great deal of backstory for Touta’s timeline, which is a good thing.
The Current Negi Crew
One thing we learned from UQ Holder chapter 148 is how Yue, Nodoka, Al, and Jack are currently with the possessed Negi. I love how Yue and Nodoka became Negi’s official pactio partners in this timeline/universe. I always liked this dynamic duo in Negima, and I would have bought a manga featuring Yue as a magical detective, had Akamatsu-sensei done one. So I’m glad Akamatsu-sensei gave Yue and Nodoka a bit of love here, even if this timeline goes poorly.
Jack and Al succumbing to MotB makes sense since she’s ultimately their creator.
What’s interesting is that the four are still around after MotB possessed Negi.
MotB
So, at the end of UQ Holder chapter 148, Negi is apparently not yet possessed by MotB (more on that in a bit). Indeed, there’s a seeming disconnect in how she works. For starters, the previous information given to us about MotB’s possession is that the moment her current body is slain, she immediately possesses the person who slew her current body. Yet here, Nodoka and Yue were able to thwart MotB from reaching Negi. Then Jack and Al further delayed that, though ultimately, MotB overcame them.
MotB comes after Negi again, but Koyomi attempts to stop her with her time stopping artifact. That too fails and Koyomi appears to pay for that with her life. Chisame also thwarts MotB, after stepping in front and taking the blows meant for Negi. What is not clear to me is if she too is absorbed by MotB or is just slain.
It is unclear to me if Negi escaped in the clear at the end of the chapter. It seems like he may have escaped, but he could have come to Eva after having been possessed by MotB. Akamatsu-sensei didn’t show us the events that transpired between Chisame’s actions and Negi arriving on Earth. Eva was kind her her old charge and former teacher, but as he slept, she did have an odd look on her face as she looked at him. That could mean that Negi is possessed and she’s wondering what to do.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Well, I need to wrap up my review of UQ Holder chapter 148 while I have a decent Internet connection. I liked this chapter a great deal as we finally get to see some info on what happened with Negi. Here’s what I’m hoping to see.
- Why does Eva seem so much weaker in Touta’s timeline?
- Is Negi possessed when he visited Eva?
- Since MotB can overcome a timestop, I presume this means that the Touta-Kirie timestop ability is useless.
- Is Chisame in MotB? Since we’ve seen Nagi with Negi in earlier chapters, could Nagi still be in there as well?
- Will we finally get to see Touta’s creation, including Cutlass’s?
In the end, UQ Holder chapter 148 was an enjoyable chapter, though we need a ton more information.
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I read one of the earlier chapters stating that Ialda reared her ugly head on Earth 30 years before the events of the manga which led to another war. I’m kinda guessing this is where Ialda comes for Negi…
Yeah, that’s possible.
I’ve had a feeling for a long time that the original Negima! anime used Akamatsu-sensei’s notes about a possible ending to help construct their Gecko Ending [spoiler]Asuna dies, and everything splinters under the weight of her loss until they use a ripoff of Cassiopeia to pre-save her so she can later save herself[/spoiler]…so he rewrote the story. It could just be confirmation bias on my part, but imo this chapter supports this theory.
Having re-read MSN a few more times since then… I still think the Chisame ending is extremely forced. Love Hina is the same, but at least there it was believable. People really do change affections when we’re apart for a decade, literary tradition (all the way back to Odyssey) notwithstanding. And we generally do pick the troubled relationship* we already know over what could be a much better one. But in MSN, it’s hard to point to anything other than Author Appeal.
* – If their genders were reversed, we’d hate Naru for constantly beating up Keitaro. Sometimes I wonder whether Chuunibyou was taking a deft poke at this anime tendency, by showing Yuuta physically hit Rikka a few times early on.
My best guess is there was a large chunk of Negima material we never got to see (the span hinted at in the final class roster’s annotations, the school trip to India mentioned in the last few chapters, the actual ongoing conflict arc against Lifemaker) that would have fleshed out Negi and Chisame’s relationship a lot more, so it wouldn’t feel so out of left field by the time the actual end came.
But then things happened, and by now it’s just too late to turn the clock back.
I’m sure you’re right. I’d love to see Nightmare Circus, the cheerleaders, etc treated as more than one of 31 fetishes he threw at the wall to see which ones stick. More to the point, at some point he said he regretted all the ideas he didn’t flesh out (IIRC).
For myself personally, the only important difference between announcing “MC gets with X because she’s an expy of my wife” and actually developing it in-story is that the former is more blatantly thoughtless of the readers… but 1) that’s his prerogative, and 2) it’s also everyone’s prerogative to have their own feelings about it. (^_^)
Very random thought: Is it just me, or did he never really develop Yotsuba Satsuki (cook) to a believable character? Or for that matter, is it just different culture? I could sorta see fighting students calming down (festival arc) due to fear of being unwelcome in her restaurant, but I never understood Eva (and the girls trying to force Negi to name Chisame) being strangely obedient near the end. I know Eva said at one point that she respected Yotsuba for having a realistic dream, but that came off as more of an announcement than an explanation (considering she tsundere-cheered-on Negi and the battle harem in their impossible quests).
Yotsuba seemed like a “I’ll throw in a fat girl into the harem mix ’cause there are guys into fat girls.” But she had no development to speak of. She just was and she was respected ’cause “reasons.”
The problem with Satsuki is she had no conflict to drive the character up. Writing Negima fanfic myself, she’s the hardest character to write for since there’s nothing she has to solve, she’s basically already settled for her way in life and what she wants by the time the story has started. Other characters have inner struggles of their own that give them character arcs to overcome, and even those who don’t often at least can supply good fight scenes to justify their presence (like Kaede, who also has pretty much found her way in life already). But Yotsuba has neither of those. There’s no romance angle and there’s no action angle to her in a romantic action series, and she’s too dignified to be the butt of any jokes (even Evangeline can have the joke being on her sometimes) so she’s not really good for comedy either, like Misora or the cheerleaders would be.
In short, there’s literally almost nothing for the character to do.
I strongly believe (and have believed) that Akamatsu-sensei decided to go another route sometime before the Magic World arc started.
Yeah, it is absolutely forced. Asuna was set up as the chosen girl for all practical purposes, but then this got changed ’cause “reasons.”
I wouldn’t say “forced,” but I know what you mean. Naru was going to be the girl from the time Keitaro met her. What was a stretch was that at such a young age, she was the promise girl, but since we already knew it was going to be Naru, we let it slide (or rather, I let it slide).
With Chisame, she was rammed into this late in the Mahora Festival arc, and then the ramming continued so that she’d have time with Negi. And then Asuna was removed to force Chisame on us, but even then, I never once thought, “Chisame is the girl.” I was hoping for Eva, but figured on Asuna right until near the end when Akamatsu-sensei sank that ship.
Disclaimer: Much of my opinion has probably been shaped by seeing the Love Hina anime first.
Aye. My objection is that Sensei worked too hard making Mutsumi a credible rival and making Naru tsundere. Or in common parlance, Mutsumi was Best Girl. (^_^)
Yup. A promise girl in diapers isn’t adorable, it’s frickin’ creepy.
Again, YMMV… but to me it makes MUCH more sense that Mutsumi was the real promise girl, but prioritized Naru and Keitaro’s happiness over her own.
Likewise. I don’t remember if my jaw literally dropped when I found out, but it might as well have. I couldn’t even make sense of it until someone pointed out the Author Appeal angle.
I can see Eva, especially in hindsight and with Negi becoming quasi-immortal at the end.
Personally I was hoping for Nodoka (that awful scene with Paio[?] clinched it, then the rest of MW was icing on the cake), or Nodoka and Yue. Or Asuna, or Eva. Or Makie, or Kuu Fei, or Chachamaru. Maybe Ayaka or Konoka as the official wife, with Nodoka and Yue as his mistresses? Maybe even Akira, or Misa’s “Reverse Hikaru Genji Project”. XD
But Chisame? Geddoudaheah, as I might have said back in NYC. (^_~)
Yeah, that’s true. (Oh, and I also saw the Love Hina anime first. But then I read the manga and I’ve had a hard time watching the anime ever since.) At the time, none of the girls at the inn were credible rivals, so here comes Mutsumi. I liked her as a character, and I know she was created to force Naru to start to deal with her own feelings for Keitaro.
Deep down inside, I’ve always thought this was more the case rather than what was done on page.
Absolutely. Any one of these girls being “the one” (or part of an official harem) worked for me. Even Chisame is a part of a battle harem would have been fine. But for Chisame to have been the main girl, it just wasn’t in the story. I reread Negima after learning of Chisame, and though you can point to an element here or there, overall, there’s nothing to indicate Chisame x Negi.
Chisame x Negi was foreshadowed from the very beginning of the story. The fact that character-wise she’s the other side of Asuna and that Asuna is functionally Negi’s aunt, therefore completely off the table by default, should make this abundantly clear on it’s own merits; as a married man with two kids, it should probably come as no surprise that Ken’s not actually into incest.
As of writing this, I’ve read Negima about 4 times through from front to back and the setup for Chisame’s position is staggering; it goes right the way back to volume 2 where Negi first gets her to come out of her shell in front of her classmates as well as her being one of the first classmates to get her own dedicated side-story despite having NOTHING to do with the main plot at the time.
Mahorafes only cements this even further as next to Eva she’s given a stupid amount of screentime for someone who seemingly has nothing to do with the magical world. That’s not something that a writer just does off the cuff, Ken was doing it because he wanted to illustrate to the readers that ‘Chisame is an important character’. Why would he be doing this? Because it’s setup for a relationship dynamic. Is it a harem style relationship dynamic? No, it’s setup for the relationship dynamic that likely would have been present in the original draft, ie a relationship dynamic from a regular old battle shounen with a light romantic subplot, which is probably exactly what Ken wanted to originally write.
This continues for the entire rest of the story to the point where Chisame’s interactions with Negi rival literally everyone else’s except Asuna, Eva, Nodoka and Yue. The writing has been on the wall for a good 2/3rds of Negima’s plot, and the sheer fact that people are complaining about how much the Ken forced her into the frontline of the story as a replacement for Asuna is more than enough proof of that.
Her and Makie being the only two characters who didn’t get trapped in Poyo’s dream combined with the fact that Makie has like zero screentime in the magical world arc just cements this even further. Asuna never even felt like the main girl to me, she always felt something like a big sister character, this was even starting to happen back in Kyoto where relationship-wise she seemed to be playing second fiddle to Nodoka.
I get that there’s a lot of people who might not personally like Chisame very much, but we can’t in good conscience just pretend that she wasn’t going to win the Negibowl because of how abysmally the last chapter of Negima’s original run was actually handled. At the end of the day, she was always Ken’s favourite and I would be genuinely shocked if she wasn’t present in early drafts of the story where the character cast would have been about a fraction of the size of what it ended up being given how present she’s been in every single major story arc excluding Kyoto.
Please forgive me if I come across as rude, I’ve never handled how badly she got shafted in the original ending of Negima and the extra chapters in UQH didn’t help things at all: we got a rejection scene which should have been on of the first chapters of a non-existent volume 39, then we did what every single japanese author ever does and speedran to the wedding photo. No buildup, no wind-down, no story…. just a pair of photographs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the story isn’t set up for the ending we got, I’m just saying that the story we got is literally half of a satisfying romance; the moment in UQH where Negi states he’s going to be a monk is exactly how Ken likes to start the next big arc of a romantic subplot.
UQH makes me immeasurably upset. Negima’s ending makes me immeasurably upset. Why did Ken have to start a fight with his publisher? Why did Kodansha have to engage in overreach at the worst point possible? It’s clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that for all of the bad decisions that Kodansha made with regards to Negima, Ken’s work was massively improved by his editor. You can see this just by looking at how badly UQH turned out in the end, and now all we have to show for it is another pair of stories to chuck on the pile of ‘the Japanese people cannot write a good ending to save their lives’ while Ken fails to accomplish anything as a politician because he thought the problems he tried to fight to get rid of came from outside influence, when the fact of the matter is that they’ve been internally pushed for a long, long time.
I’d like to close this off by saying I don’t want to write a fanfic to clear this up, I want to put together an actual non-H doujin series that takes all this into consideration and gives the story a proper ending.
EDIT: If it’s not abundantly clear, there’s a damn good reason why I refuse to refer to Ken as Akamatsu-sensei.
I never picked up on that. I frequently reread the all the volumes of Negima! whenever a new one dropped. Negi was just a kid trying to be a mature teacher and doing something for his student. And based on Akamatsu-sensei’s patterns, I think that initially, Asuna was the girl. BUT, Sensei changed course at some point when he had to ram in something about Negi’s mom that doesn’t fit with the history we got from Eva. At that point, he could take Chisame’s stuff and promote her forward.
Haha! He came close in Love Hina with what the Japanese call “inseki”, since Kanako is only Keitaro’s step-sister. 😜
I always interpreted this as Akamatsu-sensei providing a “normal” character to represent the audience.
Yeah, the ending of Negima! was not good as it just ended with a “and they all lived happily ever after.” And that really harmed UQ Holder.
I wasn’t aware of any fights. After all, Kodansha published UQ Holder. As I understood things, Akamatsu-sensei got all of the rights to all his works. So to secure his rights, he just ended Negima!, then started UQ Holder with Kodansha with a new contract in his favor. But I could have been wrong.
Haha! I completely understand. Thanks for such a passionate comment. I was recently mentioning to another person that I needed to dust off my Negima! manga and reread it.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my uncontrolled and impassioned ranting, I really appreciate it.
I re-read the final chapter and I can see shadows of the original Asuna pairing showing up, but I still think that because Asuna and Chisame are, from both a personality perspective and a special abilities perspective, two side of the same coin (Asuna is Naru Narusegawa who is the key to everything being fixed, extroverted, big sister archetype, whereas Chisame is the Naru Narusegawa who isn’t anything special, introverted, gets caught up in the flow of the story and steps into fill the role of Asuna whenever she’s absent from the plot) that she was always one of the frontrunners next to Yue, Nodoka, Eva and Asuna.
She’s also the only character in the story who, despite being only canonically 16, regularly talks like someone who’s in their 30s. To be even more specific, at many points in the story she sounds like someone’s wife giving their husband a pep talk. A lot of people have brought up that she’s probably the self-insert for Akamatsu’s wife, considering that she’s functionally a cosplayer who’s special skill is giving the MC really good advice, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. (Chao Lingshen gets a pass from this for being a seinen war-story protagonist, these sorts of characters have to grow up fast. The only war Chisame has likely every participated in prior to the start of Negima is an online flame war or two, which is why she references them in the mahorafes arc)
Even knowing all this she’s still my favourite character because she feels more ‘grounded’ than anyone else; she’s not an overtly special character outside of being tech-savvy (which you would have had to have been anyway to run the sort of net idol homepage op she was running back in the early 90’s where the start of this story is set), she’s got a cute design but she’s overtly more plain than ‘bishoujou’ (though she does have extremely pretty eyes, imho) and, like you said, she fills the role of your typical shounen audience advocate, though I’ll admit I don’t see how this role stops her from being a romantic interest. I know that a lot of shounen like to split the two roles apart, but there’s no hard and fast rule that prevents a character from doing both things at the same time.
I wasn’t actually aware that Ken stuck with Kodansha for UQ Holder, that’s what I get for not paying as much attention as I should do. In all honesty that’s really not helped their position in my mind and makes me think that they mav have actually sabotaged both the ending of Negima and the story of UQ holder in some way. You might think that’s an odd thing to suggest, but this kind of thing happens all the time in Japanese companies, and it’s the main reason why Kazuma Kaneko doesn’t work on any of the Megaten titles anymore.
If you’re wondering what I mean by sabotaging the ending of Negima, look at the characters who show up with Negi in all the panels of the epilogue that aren’t a part of the ‘where are they now?’ spread: you have Yuna, Makie, Yue, Nodoka, Ku Fei, Chachamaru, Setsuna, Konoka and Chisame. For someone who was written out of the story as a hikki-neet, it doesn’t make any sense for Chisame to be here unless she was always intended to have a bigger role in the story. You can even see her in the previous Asuna chapter where she’s looking at the photographs in the time capsule; her face is obscured, but given all the stuff we know about UQ holder and the rest of the ending chapters, it’s clear that in the photo with Negi, Chachamaru and the unnamed 3rd character, she’s the one standing to the right of Negi in a business suit with her hair let down. No other character would fit because of the hair colour and styling outside of Asuna, and Asuna was still sealed away at this time. Why would someone who very clearly has a prominent role in the photographs and is one of the 9 chosen girls to appear in most of the paired character panels of the epilogue be written off as a loser if not because of some sort of meddling from somewhere for the deliberate purpose of keeping things as open as possible?
The more I think about it, the more I have this uncomfortable sensation that Negima! was meant to go at least partway along the bad ending route in the original plotline as part of the final arc to add stakes to the story. I really can’t say much more than that, but I do not like what we got in the end and a part of me still hopes that Ken realizes politics is a waste of time and comes back to at least try and give finishing the story a proper go around, sort of like what happened with Shaman King and tangentially with FMA Brotherhood (I know the circumstances are different for Brotherhood, I’m just using it because it’s an example of an incomplete plotline-the original FMA anime-being given a proper conclusion)
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Asuna and Chisame as different sides of Naru is something I can easily see and accept.
I think his wife did cosplay as her. Well, she wore the uniform at a minimum.
I don’t think Kodansha did this. I blame Akamatsu-sensei for the whole mess, or at least 90% of it. With Negima!, I’m pretty sure he quit, got the rights to all his works (rather than Kodansha having the rights), and then got the new contract for UQ Holder. And there were probably some legal issues with keeping Negima! running. That always seems to be the case.
That said, with UQ Holder, I have a theory on what happened there. (And I think it ties in to the sabotage feeling you have.) For a start, Akamatsu-sensei started UQ Holder with near complete break from Negima! I mean, there was no reason to rename Eva, or give her a different adult appearance. But he did. (And I despised how Chachazero got ditched in the prologue.) That aside, I feel that he wanted UQ Holder to have the link to Negima, but not be Negima.
Next, I think Akamatsu-sensei kinda mapped out Negima!, changed his mind, and then mapped out the rest. Mapping out a story limits creativity. I believe Akamatsu-sensei looked at Mashima-sensei’s success with Fairy Tail and thought, “That’s what I want to do! I some kind of loose thread of an overarching story arc. After that, I want to just do whatever stories I want to do, just like Mashima-sensei. And I don’t really want to be tied to canon either.”
However, none of this was what Negima! fans wanted. So Akamatsu-sensei was forced to bring in the tropes from the past. So fan service came back. The story brought back more of the Negima! elements. But then the UQ Holder story was made an alternate timeline.
Finally, I think Akamatsu-sensei was weary of the rigors of a manga series. Even shifting UQ Holder to monthly didn’t help that. And he was already getting into politics to a degree with his work trying to get digital manga to take off in Japan, and stopping piracy.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on and on. And I’m exhausted from work, so I may not have made any sense.
Regardless, it is cool to discuss all this. I still fantasize that we can someday get a proper Love Hina and Negima! anime adaptation.
It’s fine, I understand completely.
At the end of the day I’m just upset that something which was going well and had its own identity was axed without a proper resolution by the author himself, and that he then decided it would be a good idea to just leave it there.
At times a part of me thinks he just supplied people with story threads and a canon ending with the expectation that a doujin circle might be inspired to finish the story themselves.
At the end of the day it just makes me feel bitter, but I guess that’s life. ‘Trust ye not in princes in the sons of men, in whom there is no help’, after all. Ken was always better at the romantic subplots than anything else, and I think deep down he knew that, but for whatever reason he wanted to try and get away from it instead of accepting that it’s just what he’s good at.
Everyone always remembers the Rakan fight, but having re-read it too many times to count, I noticed that it’s not the actual fight that gives it weight, it’s the continuation of Ako’s subplot from the mahorafes arc that makes everything work; the fight itself is more like a bonus and is for all intents and purposes a nicely written but fairly standard shounen affair, but the most memorable three panels from that arc are the ones of Ako in the bathhouse when she discovers that the guy she’s been daydreaming about the entire time is nothing more than an illusion.
The worst part of it all is that Ken could have easily wrapped the story up nicely in only 100-110 more chapters; a sub-arc for mana could have been worked into the final arc, the romantic subplots could have all had a proper resolution, we could have had actual setup for the Ialda fight and then had both an actual fight, a short explanation of her backstory to give a little context and leave only small bits and pieces to the imagination, and then a nice epilogue. If he’d chosen to do that then everything would have been fine, but instead we got what we did and now no-one’s happy: Ken’s burned out and likely doesn’t want to do anymore work, the fans of Negima feel like they’ve been let down, and the fans of UQ holder aren’t doing much better.
There’s an important lesson in all this, but it’s not a lesson I like very much. A real bitter pill to swallow.
Yeah, I hear ya. We were let down by Negima, then UQ Holder. Akamatsu-sensei does still do some doujinshi work, but it is manga related to politics for the most part. But he does go to the venues and sell doujin stuff like other circles. Kinda funny, actually.
Where could those doujinshi be found? They don’t seem to be online anywhere.
Hasegawa being the winning girl probably was decided when Akamatsu named the girl who looked like NaruSEGAWA HaSEGAWA.
You’re talking about the new ones Akamatsu-senesei does? He posts stuff on Twitter/X.
https://x.com/KenAkamatsu/status/1844696671122502090
And then here’s a picture of him selling his stuff.
https://x.com/KenAkamatsu/status/1838026439985369122
Since it is all about the Japanese Diet and politics, I don’t know how much demand there is for it. I think he did some Negima (maybe with other works) art book too.
Hahahahaha! Wow. I never caught that before. Awesome OverMaster (and nice to see you back).
Thanks. Twitter is blocked in my country currently.
There are Negima ones, at least two that I know of, titled “A Break for Ken Akamatsu”. From what little I saw of the sample pages in an online bidding site one of them had manga showing the Narutaki twins, Yuuna and I think Mana.
Ugh. That just means insane loons are running your country. 😅 No VPN to get around that?
I’m not sure what was in the one new Negima! doujinshi that Akamatsu-sensei created. I’ve never seen the contents.
It’s pretty clear that the battle in 2065 is where Negi got possessed. However, that leaves two glaring questions.
1: If Nagi!Lfemaker was killed here, who is the main body when they fought her in 2065? If Nagi!Lifemaker wasn’t killed here, why did the LM show up in her true form after the heart punch?
2: How is Alberio with the good guys in 2065, if he was supposedly taken over by the Lifemaker in the earlier battle?
Can’t answer your first question, but for the 2nd. Wasn’t it shown that Alberio could make fake bodies to interact with people from long distances?
Remember the tournament when he was fighting Kaede? She mentions how unfair it is that he can use a fake body to interact with people from a long distance away.
I don’t remember the exact details, but it’s possible that the version that was absorbed by the MOTB wasn’t his real body but another duplicate one.
So many unanswered questions.
They’re basically an OT3 at this point, right? It’s never clarified what a “Formal pactio” is but I can’t help but think of the Permanent ones back in Negima, which was implied to be made by… well, “Sealing the deal”, shall we say. If nothing else, Yue’s comment about “As long as Nodoka is here” really makes me believe they hooked up post-Negima, with or without Negi.
Asuna really is a “nail” in this series and is explicitly pointed out by Dana. Never mind the MOTB, society itself becomes much crappier with her gone. (I’m reminded of the wars Mana was dragged into that were mentioned in the final chapter) I wonder what Asuna herself would think about this. Also while she was put to sleep to help save the magic world, what happens to it in the timeline where she’s not asleep?
All in all, it was a decent chapter, though this just makes me yearn more for either a proper Negima sequel or an animated series that fills in these gaps. Gahhh, Akamatsu, why can’t you into anime properly.
There’s a sleeping Asuna in both timelines, consisting of the Asuna that was naturally born in that timeline, who went through the events of Negima.
The Asuna that is awake in the Asuna Awake timeline jumped into that timeline via time travel after waking up in the future of the Asuna Asleep timeline.
I have nothing against your OT3; in fact they’re mine too. (^_^)
But this might explain a lot more about Nagi’s lack of chemistry with Arika than Sensei intended, considering we know about Al and Jack Rakan. Come to think of it, weren’t all the Ala Alba members guys? (^_~)
(And now I’m wondering if Negi exists because Arika got Nagi extremely drunk one night. “Huh… when dij you get sho shoft, Al?”)
I’ll always believe Arika was a retcon. I don’t think Nagi was a butter-side-down guy as he did have an eye for the ladies.
Me either, but I found the thought amusing. There are just too many genuinely innocent details that look suspicious in hindsight:
Zero chemistry with Arika
The excess macho in Ala Alba
Nagi’s flamboyance
Rakan’s flame-boyance
The way Al toys with Eva
The absence of Konoka’s mom
Takamichi turning down Asuna yet not getting with Shizuna
Etc.
I disagree there. Arika is a tsundere and Nagi was an immature guy with a massive amount of power at his disposal. In that light, they appeared to express their feelings within those bounds.
Hahaha! Well, that’s pure shounen flair. 😉 And I think you meant Ala Rubra, right?
I just saw this as him being a punk ’cause he knew he was massively powerful without even having to properly earn it.
Hahaha! 😆
The whole thing with Eva is another topic indeed.
She has to be there somewhere since Eishun married into the Konoe family. And we know Eishun had a thing for hot women, seeing Jack used that against him. If anything, Eishun was a bit of a lolicon.
But we did see him going out with her.
I would say that much of this is Akamatsu-sensei not bothering to explore much of any character. How much did we learn about Takamichi’s master? How did Takamichi get involved with Ala Rubra in the first place? There were so many things I wanted a deeper look into, but Akamatsu-sensei didn’t touch them.
(Sorry for the rant.)
Nothing wrong with disagreement (here, about a matter of taste) or correction (below, about a matter of fact) — quite the contrary, I’m grateful since it’s both valuable (“as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”) and much too rare lately. Thaaaaanks, corporate “two-side” media creating a dual climate of “Omigod, you disagree about a minuscule detail! You must be an evil [epithet for The Other Side] who represents everything I hate and does [horrible actions perpetrated by a handful of trolls]!”
Kyaaa, thank you for the correction. They say the eyesight is the first to go as you get older… I can’t remember what the second thing is. (^_~)
And indeed, the innocent take is almost certainly the one Sensei intended. It only looks sketchy with the alt-explanation of Rakan and Al’s pactios with Negi. [There are just too many genuinely innocent details that look suspicious in hindsight:]
Quite so, as above.
Quite so. If you have the time, this is a thread I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on: Schoolboy pranking the girl he likes, a perverse snarky nature (librarian ironicus, as his pactio card said), or something else?
Thanks for the info about Jack using his nature against him, I didn’t remember that. And indeed, she had to be there somewhere since cloning wasn’t a thing then — I was just noting that her absence (which goes with shounen macho territory) complements a weird “he-man woman-haters club no girls allowed” atmosphere around AR. Plus, Elton John. (^_~)
I’m curious: Do you mean the possible date Asuna saw, or that they got together in the aftermath? If it were the latter, I wouldn’t doubt it (with my fragmented memory and all).
Bull’s eye. ((((./”))))
Sometimes it makes for a better story to not follow up every detail, and it even allows readers to create their preferred ending when the author/mangaka just CAN’T make everyone (or even anyone) happy. But sometimes, it’s needlessly annoying to leave interesting (or even vital) plot points on the table, like Gateau or “How/when did Nagi suddenly reappear at the end of Negima?”.
And sometimes, it lets mischievous readers make up their own explanations for why AR was a boys’ club that imo awkwardly ignored/harassed Arika, like a boy who just happens to have boobs. (^_~)
Thank you again for the feedback. I was hoping that you could poke me on any details I might have scrambled, and I’m glad you did.
The former.
KareKano was one such title. Tsuda-sensei decided that in order to better understand her male and female lead characters, we needed to DEEPLY explore the parents of said MCs, going back to how those parents were in high school, how they met their spouses, etc. I wouldn’t have minded some small amount of backstory here, but Tsuda-sensei got way out into the weeds. I didn’t have a vested interest in either set of parents, and they weren’t a major part in the manga until Tsuda-sensei decided to make KareKano about the parents for several volumes.
I’m guessing Akamatsu-sensei and his editors were afraid of going into the weeds too much, so they limited backstory stuff on that ground as a start. Plus, I’ve strongly believed that Akamatsu-sensei likes to keep things as vague as possible on backstories so he is not limited if he decides to change things from the original intent.
Who knows what timeline they are actually in.
Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if this were the case.
I think that’s a stretch. They are best friends and Yue has always felt guilty about stealing Negi from Nodoka. Yue is good being with Negi, providing Nodoka gets her share (and maybe a bit more).
Haha. Yes.
I keep thinking about this: The only time I remember it being implied was in Setsuna’s fantasy about Konoka (“Isn’t it time we had our true pactio”, wearing a towel). I’d always just thought Setsuna was just romanticizing it… but thinking about it, it really could be read as an endorsement of this theory. :-\
But again, we know that Nagi pactioed with at least Al and Rakan. XD
It could be a translation thing too. We’ve seen a number of different ways to describe a pactio across many different translators. As far as I know, while Asuna was Negi’s main partner there wasn’t anything to make it more special than anyone or anything else… Would also explain the awkwardness between the three, and their sheer joy at him accepting.
I still wonder about the logic of hooking Negi up with Chisame beyond something to do with Akamatsu’s wife. Or maybe “No guy wants to be chased” or something. Plus she would eventually pass away while Negi stayed the same. Whereas Yue/Nodoka have the benefit of being young… possibly forever.
It’s possible I suppose that things just happened that were originally planned but we didn’t get to see. This set of flashbacks is very reminiscent of the ones Rakan shown, the Coles Notes version.
Again I can’t help but yearn for more details. An ideal anime would show the events post-Asuna return/sleep… But if Akamatsu ever figures out anime it’ll likely be too late.
Pretty sure it starts and ends there, tbh.
Quite true. It really is quite plausible for a guy to think “I have all these lovely, courageous, shining-hearted women who will go with me to hell and back and want me to be happy even if it’s without them — but I think I’ll chase the self-centered net idol who doesn’t want me and will eventually become a hikikomori“. It’s just a bit extreme.
If you ask a lot of married men, they’ll “jokingly” opine that her eventually passing away is a benefit. (^_~) But then again, the same men would probably be just as happy with a wife that stays young forever.
Well, they did talk about how partners often got married. Also, although Asuna preferred older men, she began to show signs of attraction to Negi.
I think that’s all the logic there was.
I really do think that Akamatsu-sensei had one plan, then decided to go another route as the Magic World arc approached.
This is honestly one of the best UQH chapter’s in a while.
Dana does seem to be aware of what’s in happening in the three known timelines. According to some UQ fans, the events of the series is taking place during the second timeline when Asuna was asleep. I still prefer the UQ Holder series to take place in a parallel universe. Dana did point out the importance of Asuna in the UQ Holder! series. She have given the hint that Asuna is sort of still asleep in the UQ Holder universe. In the Negima-verse, Asuna’s reasons for being asleep was to help the Magic World.
In the UQ-verse, Asuna’s reasons are similar. Yet, something had gone wrong. I don’t want to speculate. At least, we are learning about the importance of Asuna. Oddly, there is another important character whose purpose is yet to be disclose in the UQ-verse. Dana is aware of her fellow master of time. The person is Chao Lingshen. Her part in the UQ-verse is only limited to her visit to the past is the moment.
Since Dana is aware of Chao, she will have to inform Touta just to protect the importance of her visit to the past.
Dana should be aware of what happens in every timeline, based on the type of entity she is.
Please forgive my ignorance, I have a bad habit of tuning out immortality and timeline mechanics… is UQH the timeline that continued after they took Asuna back, and what they just saw is the parallel timeline Chao created by bringing Asuna back?
Related question: Is it just me, or was this chapter a ringing endorsement of Chao’s attempt to change the timeline in the festival arc? I’ve hated most of the Bad Ending aspects so far, because imo it implies all that Negi and 3-A did turned out to be a complete waste of time. But I can really get behind the conclusion that Negi shouldn’t have opposed Chao.
Imo, one of the worst human blind spots is “That which exists is inherently good and should be continued, so fundamental change is inherently wrong”. We keep building copies of Titanic and rearranging the deck chairs, instead of fixing the design.
Negi’s knee-jerk opposition to Chao always bothered me to some degree… now I think I know why.
Negi basically wanted to stop Chao because otherwise he’d be punished by the magical establishment, and because he was afraid of shaking up the status quo. He basically said he saw no good reasons to oppose Chao’s plans, but since she wasn’t giving him outright reasons to support her either (maybe she should have just told him all about the Martian Wars, but then characters in this universe often hide things up ‘because reasons’, which is my next point) and he’d be turned into an ermine if she succeeded, he opposed her anyway.
Negi was always pretty much a ‘do what the authorities tell you to do’ (just like a honor student, I guess) unless he was really backed against the wall and/or framed (like running away from the powers-that-be in Mahorafest and Mundus Magicus). When he finally disrupts the status quo and reveals magic himself it’s only because he literally has no option but doing that or leaving Mundis Magicus to die.
The problem being, authorities in the Negimaverse actually tend to be either corrupt or incompetent (the good guys from Mundus Magicus hiding secrets from Negi ‘because reasons’, all the crap the Megalomesembria Senate did, falling for Cosmo Entelecheia’s schemes, Konoemon failing to protect Mahora during the Mundus Magicus climax to the extent the students had to save themselves- really, had those demons been willing to kill, there’d have been a bloodbath-, Yukihime and Jinbei’s very lax and questionable direction of UQ Holder, the academic system allowing the discrimination and abuse run rampant in Santa’s school, governments coming up with the utterly stupid idea of ‘redistributing poverty’ and spending millions into Space Olympics while half of the planet is a Mad Max dystopia). It’s no wonder eventually it all culminates into global war.
I wonder if Akamatsu isn’t also a ‘do what the powers that be tell you to do’ man, which is why no matter how many times he’s burned he always ends up staying by Kodansha’s side…
I get the feeling that he puts a bit too much of himself (in a fantasy setting) into Negi, just as he openly said he did with Keitaro in Love Hina. It makes more sense of the Chisame crack pairing.
It was good for sure.
Good chapter, Sensei is on a hot streak right now. This time he made a conceited effort to explain the timeliness. Like chisame dying and living is important to Negi. Etc.
It is a good chapter, but then it is a Negima chapter rather than a UQ Holder chapter.
It was a ground breaking chapter, though i find couple things that bother me.
There no open mindedness by author that there are other timelines? They don’t simply go away. There the original timeline where this mess started from where nether event happened. The timeline where Chaos came from the first place, where mars was died, magic world went away and Earth was fighting the “natives”. The reason why Chaos came back into the past change events in the first place!
Then you have the original timeline where Asuna overslept and was brought back by Eva/Chaos to back Nega’s time where the happy timeline happened.
Where was MoB in that messes? She seemed to have active hand in all events apparently.
However, i’m curious where entire thing going to. Is Clueless Touta going come up with plan stop MoB??
I’m not sure how Akamatsu-sensei is actually treating other timelines. I know that he decided not to go there with Kirie’s ability, which went against what he had established when he initially created his multiple timeline/universe elements.
Haha! That’s what clueless MCs do. 😉
It’s too bad he may not be handling those other timelines. It’s reasonable run story-side story from those two. The one when Asuna over slept and the other one, where timeline never changed. Where Negi never saw Asuna alive again. Maybe MoB was taken Negi or not. He does die.
Then the unchanged timeline where Chao Lingshen lived on Mars, related to Negi, where where Mars was turned into desert planet where Humans who were only real people on planet struggled to survive as Earth humans tried take the planet for themselves.
I kinda thought they would be interesting timelines.
I think they would be as well.
One of the MoB’s motives is to continue to create chaos on Earth, Mars, and the Magic World. The MoB will notice the only major threat to herself to be a Chinese Mage whom to UQ Holder! seems to be someone of no particular importance. Only Dana is aware of why UQ Holder needs to protect to protect the Mage.. For he is connected to Chao. He doesn’t have to be one of Chao’s parents.
Chao’s importance in Negima was her visit to the past and the second timeline . We are aware of Chao’s motives to traveling to the past. Her visit to the past was so important to the point where the Magic Police couldn’t stop her.
Since Time is important in UQ Holder!, Dana’s motives for asking UQ Holder! to protect an insignificant Chinese mage sounds strange to UQ Holder!. until they notice the connection between the Chinese mage and Chao. The Chinese mage is an expert of the marital arts.
I may have missed something — where did Dana ask UQH to protect an insignificant Chinese mage?
The Chinese mage is just an ideal. The timeline of UQ Holder! does take place before the year of Chao’s birth. Chao’s main importance to the series is her visit to the past. Dana is well aware of the events involving Chao. We have found out that Asuna is very important in the UQ Holder! universe. Details about Chao’s parents are a little sketchy. Because Chao’s surname is a Chinese one, we can figure out that her father is Chinese. It is likely Chao’s father may not be born in China, but in a country where there are lot of descendants of Chinese immigrants. Japan does a large Chinese population.
Chao’s mother is likely one of Negi’s grandchildren. We don’t know how Chao’s mother is related to Negi since he is sterile. Touta is connected to Chao in some ways which he is not aware of. Yukihime/Eva is aware of the year of Chao’s birth. She seems not to care about anything involving Chao. At least, Yukihime/Eva is only focusing on the present. My ideal of the Chinese mage who has a connection with Chao somehow is a view of foreshadowing. One of the ways of defeating the MoB is ironic Chao’s visit to the past.
Ah. OK.
As to Chao, it wouldn’t surprise me if we learned that she’s another “clone” like Touta and Cutlass.
Wait…where was that mentioned?? If it IS Chao Lingshen from the original Manga. That has alot problems to be answer. Chao has always been scientist, she has no magical abilities thus why she had always had help with magic related things and shared her technology abilities. If she only a Mage in the Touta would be bizarre change. True the RoadWarrior like rough existence of Mars didn’t happen and magic world may have infused her with magic talents….she is suppose to be RELATED to Negi some how.
Dana is very aware of the events involving Chao. The series’s main timeline takes place before the year of Chao’s birth. The Chinese mage is just a way to provide a connection between Touta and Chao. If Chao has biological parents, her father is Chinese who happens to be born in Japan. Japan does have a large Chinese population. When it comes to Chao’s mother, all we know is that Choa’s mother is likely one of Negi’s grandchildren. Yet how Negi can have children when he is sterile. Since the Chinese mage whom I am speculating about is an expert of marital arts, he is likely one of Chao’s trainers.
If the Chinese mage exists, he can be one of Ku Fei’s students. The Chinese mage can be one of Kei Fei’s gradnchildren, therefore providing another link between Al Alba and UQ Holder. Why the MoB wants to focus her attention which UQ Holder considers to be an insignificant marital artist who happens to be related to Ku Fei and to be one of her students. The answer happens only to be known by Dana. Oddly, Yukihime/Eva will be able to figure out the importance of the marital artist to the future.
One thing I always think is that Kondasha is the reason we’re never gonna see the full depth of negima-verse, and that’s it. I do remember him saying he could write about 500 volumes worth of stuff. Don’t forget we still had the mars arc to visit the Demon realm. The home of the twins, and more Mana backstory. And the twin story that would thrown in our face cause we could never see it ?
I don’t know if Kodansha is the problem or not. Akamatsu-sensei is a middle-age guy now, and it isn’t easy to do the long hours a manga takes. He probably could write 500 volumes of stuff, but his production speed is only 40 pages a month, so it would take him forever to pump that out.
It would be nice to see the rest of this stuff for sure. Maybe we can see some abbreviated form of these other worlds.