December 9th, 2019 
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 167
UQ Holder Chapter 167
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
The Zero Dawn insurgent base comes under heavy attack. Initially, they think it is a fleet attack, but it is only UQ Holder. Great Paru-sama Mark II flies leads the charge. Gengorou mans its heavy machine gun while Jinbee uses his powers to attack the enemy monsters. The Great Paru-sama Mark II is escorted by Touta and Kuroumaru on one speeder bike and Karin on another. In addition, Santa and Ikkuu fly escort as well.
On the deck of another ship, Yukihime uses her Juculatio Grandinis spell to rain ice spears against Zero Dawn. However, the central core of the base is protected by an impenetrable barrier. Santa and Jinbee penetrate the barrier and fortress to take out the shield generator. Meanwhile, Zero Dawn dispatched the giant, Demon-God Soldiers to attack Great Paru-sama Mark II. Juuzou and Nikitis enter the fray and with Touta, they take out these giants.
Sept gets Yukihime in, where they puts the base on ice. Mana leads Yukihime to the magic circle that Ba’al used for travel.
The battle won, Yukihime has UQ Holder head for New Ostia for some downtime at the onsen resort theme park. In the girl’s bath, they are surprised that Sept now has a large-breasted female form named Nanao Sepko. Yukihime returns to her Eva form to regenerate magic. She encourages Karin, Kirie, and Kuroumaru to go on a date with Touta since they have the time. Kirie attempts to turn it around on Eva.
Nanao has Eva enter a special bubble to enjoy an aquarium from the inside. She discovers lots of couples in other bubbles. Then her bubble bumps into one with Touta, and the two bubbles merge. Meanwhile, Karin, Kuroumaru, and Kirie are unhappy learning Nanao arranged this meeting between Touta and Eva.
Thoughts/Review:
And so UQ Holder Chapter 167 has a mix of action and fun, which kind of surprised me.
A New Enemy
Oddly enough, UQ Holder Chapter 167 dropped us immediately in the action at the start of the chapter. To be honest, the battle reminded me a lot of Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s opening battle sequence. That’s not a bad thing as the fight was fun. And much like that Avenger’s battle, our UQ Holder folks get to show off how much they can kick arse before running up against superior opposition. I liked that as well as seeing Eva unleashed (as Yukihime).
And everyone sans Mizore and Shinobu participated in the battle. It made sense to keep those two out of the fight since they are not trained warriors. So I liked that aspect. I do sorta hope Shinobu has been trained in some self defense though. know Mizore has been.
That aside, by dropping us cold into a mission like this, Zero Dawn comes out of nowhere. I don’t remember this group being mentioned before. Further, I’ve no idea why Ba’al would need an army, considering how powerful he is. I suppose he is using an army because he’s still regaining strength. But how’d he manage to do this in the first place?
More Fun Time
The surprising part of UQ Holder Chapter 167 was having more downtime after the initial battle. To be honest, I figured the previous chapter’s hijinks would be the end of that kind of writing as Akamatsu-sensei winds down UQ Holder. But as long as the overall story isn’t harmed, I don’t mind.
We get our usual, ecchi onsen bath scenes ’cause that’s what Akamatsu-sensei loves to do. And this is where Mizore and Shinobu got brought into the chapter. And of course, this is where Akamatsu-sensei can work on advancing the Touta Harem Project.
I know the chapter ended with Eva and Touta together. However, I really don’t want Eva in Touta’s harem. Leave her for Negi.
Sept
The weird element of UQ Holder Chapter 167 was Sept. As an entity, Sept can apparently change forms to be a man or woman. This felt more like Akamatsu-sensei just wanting to draw yet another female character with large breasts.
Regardless, Sept and Eva seem unusually close. Sept acted as her bodyguard during the intial fight. He also carried her into the Zero Dawn facility, which seemed odd to me. I’m not sure whey she needed a carry except maybe to make use of Sept’s speed.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
In the end, UQ Holder Chapter 167 was a fun chapter, including both action and onsen hijinks. Lets hope comiXology can be bothered to release next month’s chapter on time.
So what were your thoughts on this chapter? Let me know in the comments. 😊
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Basically, the chapter doesn’t work because it tries to do too many things at once and ends neither fish nor fowl. I suspect it’s because Akamatsu is on a rush to end the series fast and thinks it won’t sell enough to get there without fanservice and huge splashy fights, so he just crammed as much of both as he could with little rhyme or reason.
The Great Paru-sama II is a major nostalgia appeal, but it falls flat since it comes from nowhere, and other than Eva none of UQ’s members has any connection to Haruna or reasons to take after a name thought up by her, so it feels gratuitous. The enemies have no personalities making the conflict feel shallow as well- to keep the comparison with the Avengers movie, while the Chitauri aliens had no personalities either, they were working under Loki, whom we had known during the Thor movie and then the rest of Avengers, with a strong emotional link to Thor, and a colorful, striking personality. This needed something like that to work, even hving Ba’al himself there to call the shots might have worked, or one of the Lifemaker’s associates from Negima.
And then, just like in the chapter before, the shift from a major fight to wacky comedy is too jarring and abrupt, and it just looks like there are no proper authorities whatsoever to keep tabs on these things in these world. UQ Holder has just launched a massive warfare attack, but apparently doesn’t need to answer to anyone or coordinate anything with any governments or organizations, instead having time to just waste naked time with harem antics. It only makes everything feel even more unreal and by the numbers (no pun intended).
Also, UQ Holder is taking the fight to Negi, and while it’s nice to see Mana joining in (I hope she isn’t just shoved back right afterwards again), where are Zazie and Chachamaru? Surely Ayaka can get herself someone else to push her wheelchair while Chachamaru handles the little bitsy tasks of helping save the world and their beloved teacher and help keeping Ayaka’s own child granddaughter safe while she’s dragged in the middle of a war between world crushing immortals?
Maybe. But for me, if you are trying to rush to the ending, you don’t waste time with the fanservice. That actually makes me think he’s not exactly rushing to the end.
Great Paru-sama Mk 2 was introduced in chapter 113. Isana and Haruna apparently own it. Why they own it, I couldn’t say.
Man, that’s a great point. It didn’t even register with me that they were gone, though admittedly, I was irritated because of comiXology.
He already did that with Negima, though. The final few chapters before the rushed conclusion were spent on a frivolous fanservice chase where the satellite stripped Chachamaru and Chisame and then many girls in swimsuits ambushed Negi and Akira at a pool, instead of using that time to set a proper finale for the series.
Haha! Touché. Looking back though, I now see he did this because he knew he was ending the manga, so he just cut the main plot and just did harem hijinks to mark time. And then we got that, “Oh, and here’s the end.” With UQ Holder, he already announced he was ending the series in 2-3 years. That’s why I wouldn’t think that he’d waste time on harem hijinks when he’s got a main plot to finish in that time frame.
In my mind, it would be, “Let’s just get this story over with already!” Doing harem stuff just slows that down.
I would have a question for you, would you prefer Eva to be with Negi or Touta at the end? Personally, I would prefer an Eva x Negi
I agree with you. I’ve never liked the inseki-incestuous elements of the Touta x Eva stuff Akamatsu-sensei has done. To me, Eva should be with Negi.
I was under the impression Negai is a dead man. Unless they somehow drag that wizard out of his hair (*cough*) body before it get’s burnt up, i don’t think it will be okay that route.
Frankly, i’m sad entire thing going end. We never got better tour of the scifi world of UQ Holder. There was much more out there to be explored.
I’m not caring at this point who Touta hooking up with. Eva really the main character of the series, touta the flash part of it. Their both co-main characters in this series now.
Well, based on how Nagi was saved, I’m guessing Negi could be as well.
Yeah. It is a shame that all of this won’t be explored.
I can understand that.
Did we even get a January release of the manga? I’ve not seen it anywhere.
UQ Holder 167 did come out. It was delayed on comiXology’s site by a day, which pissed me off. Well, it was delayed for those of us stupid enough to subscribe to the series. If you just paid for it on Amazon, you got it immediately. I don’t know if it came up on Crunchyroll or not.
https://anime.astronerdboy.com/2019/12/uq-holder-chapter-167-manga-review.html