January 9th, 2020 
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 168
UQ Holder Chapter 168
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Eva realizes that Sept duped Touta and herself. Since they are stuck naked in the underwater bubble for 20-minutes, they start to chat. Eva becomes self-conscious about being naked in front of Touta. He expresses happiness seeing her smile. Eva takes the time to confess how she had Touta made to defeat Ialda Baoth, the Mage of the Beginning. However, none of this bothers Touta.
Touta asks if Eva remembers him from her youth. However, he makes a remark about her small breasts, leading her to slap him and flee. Eva is frustrated with herself for acting like a junior high school girl. However, her reaction reminds her of her old friends from long ago. She decides that to get her emotions back in check, she returns to her Yukihime form.
She meets back up with Touta. Karin, Kuroumaru, and Kirie decides to spy on them. Meanwhile, Yukihime uses her age-altering magic drug to cause Touta to appear to be a young man. And she gets him new clothing. The two then walk and talk, where she discusses her time with Negi and her former classmates. They find a group of statues dedicated to Negi and company.
After that, the two have dinner and continue to talk. As Touta realizes Yukihime’s happiness, he decides to flee. However, Yukihime easily catches him. He’s depressed that there was another world where he did not exist and she did not need him. Yukihime comforts him, then returns them to their true forms. She acknowledges remembering him from the past and concedes he was her first love. Nevertheless, because she knew him later as an infant, then raised him as a mother, her feelings are conflicted. But, she needs him here and now. And her happiness derives from her friends of old and her current friends.
Thoughts/Review:
It seems Akamatsu-sensei is beginning to resolve the Eva x Touta thread in UQ Holder Chapter 168. I just hope it ends with Eva out of Touta’s harem, but remaining as his friend.
Unnatural Eva
I have to say, it just feels weird to see Eva being the one blushing like a school girl of matters of romance. And it was downright unnatural for her to flee a situation, even when she’s naked. I think back to all of Negima!, where Eva basically had no qualms about being naked. And she certainly didn’t have any qualms regarding sex.
As to love, I think she did fall in love with Nagi. (Though we can’t look too deep there ’cause Eva’s time with Ala Rubra clashes with Arika being with the group.) But even then, she wasn’t all blushing and such.
Still, I get what Akamatsu-sensei is attempting to do. He’s using Eva’s blushing and becoming flustered as a way of saying, “Look how Negi and his class of nutty girls (and battle babes) changed Eva for the better.” But it is still so weird to see her like this.
No “Eva x Touta” Please!
For this alternate universe, I can buy that Touta was Eva’s first love. After all, Touta was about the age that Eva was when she became a shinso vampire. And so when she met Touta in Dana’s realm, he was a breath of fresh air for her. He was a beacon of hope for her. And as she said, his words carried her for 200 years.
But her fight for survival, and constant harassment by those attempting to take her life caused her to forget about him for the most part. And then even in this alternate timeline, she fell in love with Nagi, then later Negi. And when Touta returned to her life as an infant, everything changes. That change went further when Eva became his guardian. Of course Touta didn’t know Eva then, but as she stated in UQ Holder Chapter 168, this complicated things.
As such, I don’t want Eva in Touta’s harem. When Touta and UQ Holder save Negi, I want Eva to end up with Negi. Touta has Karen, Kuroumaru, Kirie, and more. So lets avoid the pseudo-incestuous elements and leave Eva out of the harem!
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Let’s wrap up the review of UQ Holder Chapter 168.
- I think this is the first time we’ve seen Touta in adult form. It worked for what it was.
- I got a kick out of having Karin, Kuroumaru, and Kirie spying on Eva’s and Touta’s date. If I get my way about the Touta x Eva thing, I do hope Akamatsu-sensei gives Touta the battle harem.
- Also, I have to say that Kuroumaru wanting a photo of young man Touta made me laugh.
- Finally, I did like the tribute made to Negima.
In the end, UQ Holder Chapter 168 appears to be about wrapping up the Eva x Touta plot thread. Although it was odd seeing Eva like this, I did like the chapter for what it was.
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Havent been here in a while.
The thing that bothered me most this chapter is the way Eva was being portrayed. She being bounce around between Nagi, Negi and now Touta.
I agree with you, I sort of want Eva to be cemented as Touta Older sister, First love one mother rather than be another on of his harem.
With Nagi out of the picture, I more or less want Negi to get a happy ending in this series, for him and Eva to be happily together because unlike the main series, Negi never got a happy ever after and it just seems ridiculous for them to just eliminate him just because he sacrificed himself to save the world. He deserves to be saved.
I think that since Eva was not the woman he loved, Negi should just be reunited in death with Chisame so they both can be in peace, or even revived since, after all, the Mage of the Beginning herself caused Chisame’s death– she might as well just be keeping her like Yue and Nodoka, but keeping her out of Negi’s reach as another way to guarantee his ‘cooperation’.
Both the Touta and Negi ships suffer from being relationships where it’s obvious the love isn’t even– Negi won’t love Evangeline as a partner unless all other main romantic alternatives are already out of question, which is hardly a service to her, and Eva’s so wishy-washy about Touta it’s obvious she can’t answer to his immature, impulsive love the way he wants to, everything-else-be-damned in that mentality Touta has.
They aren’t equal relationships and thus aren’t really healthy, so the best Eva can do is, actually, going the Negima epilogue way– leaving to live life in her own terms, find her own way to love and heal her wounds by herself, since apparently even Ala Alba and UQ Holder can’t ever finish filling whatever hole she always has inside, even now after EVERYTHING pretty much everyone has ever done for her.
I never really bought the Negi x Chisame ship in Negima. After Akamatsu-sensei put out the news, I reread Negima. Other than Negi going out of his way to bring Chisame out of her shell on Earth, or protecting her on Mars, I didn’t sense him having any feelings for her. I’ve long thought that Asuna was originally supposed to be the girl for Negi. But I think that shifted mid-way through for whatever reasons.
Absolutely.
At the risk of repeating myself, “Absolutely!”
Is it weird that this is one of my favorite chapters so far in UQ Holder? I’m not strongly attached to shipping, so I don’t mind if Touta ends up with Eva or not, or has his harem, but everything in this chapter and Eva’s dialogue with Touta at the end made me really root for them. This weird generational time travel romance is so heartwarming every time they’re openly honest with their feelings.
All of the appreciation for Class 3-A / Ala Alba was really nice to see too.
Everyone has their own tastes. So I don’t think it is weird.
I didn’t say this in my piece (and I was wasted tired when I wrote it), but I do agree there were touching moments in Touta’s and Eva’s discussions. But at the same time, I’ll never get it out of my head that she was his guardian–a mother and big sister. To shift from that back to sexual stuff is just…wrong to me. 😅
I agree.
Not really, it’s kind of a hollow gesture all in all. Eva just laughing at them and insulting them and their memory instead of paying contemplative respect was just in bad taste, and just saying “Oh, that’s just like Eva” isn’t enough, it still makes her look like a jerk. If I were Touta I’d just ask her “Would you act the same way with me if I were gone?”, because that’s not the way to treat the memories of long gone comrades. Seriously, ever try doing something like that in real life and see if you don’t earn the scorn of whoever’s with you at the time.
UQ Holder has done more disservice than service to the Negima cast, and all the ‘sympathy’ cues go on Negi– not even Eva and the surviving 3-Aers seem to ever express any concern or care over the posessed Rakan, Al, Nodoka and Yue, or over Asuna in whatever happened to her after she left with Negi. All of their concern is expressed in terms of Negi, because Akamatsu really doesn’t mind about the old characters unless it’s time to pander, and doesn’t expect us to either. So he just half-does these nods. They are just a bunch of idiots who died long ago, and their statues aren’t even in a majestic resting place, just there at some street.
Best ending would be for Negi to die and Eva to get with Touta. Touta and Eva not happening would make this entire manga worthless in my eyes.
The Eva x Touta thing was a late addition to the manga. In those early days, Touta had zero interest. But when Akamatsu-sensei shifted the series to add harem elements, only then did it become a thing.
Touta had zero attraction to anyone. Diana was one who feed him that line of thought.
Yeah, that’s true–he wasn’t attracted to anyone in the early days. Touta was kinda like Natsu from “Fairy Tale” — carefree, powerful, no interest in sex, etc.
I want to mourn the missing of out the adventures we have missed out on from earliest part of the manga. What could have been if sensei had stuck with his guns and just kept going. Eventually potential readers would have caught on and strengthen it to those who liked it and wanted keep Negi safely unique, and not repeated again for people haven’t enough. Nostalgia can be lethal to stories which that had previous successful run. Just look at Star Wars later prequels and sequel movies.
Chapter 168 was nice over all. Itself was showing how our dear author was trying find closure for Touta’s feelings to his big sister who seemed to try to evolved into potential lover but it was all for not. Then he finally grows up enough realize he was idiot, we get to see self-realization that he was not needed in first place. However, if he comes to term that his presence is in fact is really comforting to eva as it eases her long-life as she loses one lover after another.
Early “UQ Holder” suffered from two problems for me. The biggest was that Touta was a Mary Sue character. And he was irritating as a character (to me, at least). That combination is really off-putting.
The second was the attempt to have “UQ Holder” be like “Fairy Tail” in terms of structure. Mashima-sensei could get away with having disconnected adventure stories with almost no overall story arch. But after “Negima”, I think fans of that manga came to “UQ Holder” expecting a connected set of stories that would answer questions about what happened with “Negima”. When Akamatsu-sensei didn’t deliver that, the combination of this and the Touta problem caused folks to leave in droves.
I obviously don’t mind them being companions and such. But I just don’t like the notion of them being lovers. 😅
I’m just miffed that Negi got his dedicated space for his statue while Asuna, the one who literally brought everyone back to life and restored the actual planet, while still keeping it from blowing up into itty bitty bits is shuffled off to the side with everyone else like Negi’s personal peanut gallery. But I guess that’s just the logical conclusion of…everything that happened after Mahorafest I guess.
That is a good point about Asuna. She should have been with Negi. Sadly, it was post-Mahora Festival where I think the original story got changed to go down a different path. But at the time, it wasn’t obvious.
I mean, if Akamatsu believed the write up of the anime final was going to be his ending as originally intended, it still says that he was going to end things off after the MW no matter what happened. Which is bullocks, since there would have never been enough time to remotely deal with any plot threads the series had in a satisfying manner in the first place.
I mean, good on him for being ambitious and all, but the series frankly grew beyond the scope of whatever story he was trying to originally tell, and couldn’t handle it. Hell, he can’t handle it in UQ Holder despite a reduced cast and the potential of shedding most of Negima’s baggage. Why he made the decision to make it Negima 2 while not even doing anything remotely decent with either the current cast of the previous one is beyond me.
I wonder if Akamatsu-sensei had considered the ramifications of getting 100% control of his copyright materials, at least prior to the Magic World arc. And then while doing the arc, he realized he was going to have to shut down Negima! and get a new deal with Kodansha.
I’m thinking this was a desperate attempt by Kodansha and him to bolster UQ Holder sales. Akamatsu-sensei brought this upon himself by making UQ Holder a spinoff-sequel to Negima in the first chapter. So Negima! fans just wanted resolution to things from Negima!. Akamatsu-sensei just wanted to do a manga with ties to Negima, only with a story-telling structure like Fairy Tail. And when Sensei wasn’t providing that, they started leaving. (And it didn’t help that Touta was an irritating, Mary Sue character.)
This chapter in a nutshell…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_-ZoO87KpY
Haha! And from my favorite Star Trek series to boot. 😁
I am at lost where their going with the story on the Magical World. It literately jump into them finishing a big fight, where you didn’t get see said fight/adventure.
Yeah, I’m not totally sure either.
I think Akamatsu is now just jumping into the bits and pieces of the now story is what happening. He was trying show something major happened, but he didn’t have time to flesh out entire arc for it except for down time for characters to have amusing interactions with one another.
Lordy i miss when he took his time tell a story and fleshed out everything. It really was more enjoyable than this jump to scene thing he been doing lately.
I miss those times as well. It made for more interesting stories.
What a beautiful chapter.
No matter what happened in the other world, in this world,
You are here with me and you are someone important in my life, I need you.
Those words are the ones Touta needed to hear, he always wanted to get stronger for her, he thought she would never get happiness if he didn’t save Negi, he would do anything to save her from that unhappiness, and to discover that in that timeline he doesn’t exist and she is happy, that in the timeline where he exists, she smiled as she had never done when she saw those statues, so Touta felt that sadness of thinking that his existence is not important to her, if she doesn’t need him at all, if she is happy without him, because he should exist in this world.
I didn’t know that Eva was able to swim, I remember that in Negima Chachamaru said that Eva didn’t know how to swim ._.
About Kirie, that espionage recon magic… Goodness me, that’s scary, imagine they go to a room, there would be no privacy.
I would like this chapter could be animated one day.
PS: the phrase: ‘I haven’t laughed myself to death in ages, my tummy hurts’ lol X’D
I didn’t remember that specifically. But there has been time in the intervening years to learn how to swim.
Haha! True enough.
I don’t think it ever will be. At best, a limited edition OVA would be created. But that would be restricted to Japan only.
Chances are that the next chapter will be on Kuromaru’s past according to the summary.
https://www.pika.fr/livre/uq-holder-chapitre-169
Is that an official site?
Looks like it is. Thanks a TON for the tip Kiba!
You’re welcome ^^
And yes, i’m french and this is the official publisher in France, so don’t worry the summaries are always true.
Thanks! I really appreciate the tip. Do they usually produce something so early like this?
Usually 2 days before. This time it’s because the bessatsu shonen magazine comes out earlier in Japan.
Oh. I wonder if that means UQ Holder chapter is coming out today on comiXology. I was expecting the 8th.