October 8th, 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 176
UQ Holder Chapter 176
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Touta wakes up and remembers the events on the space station when Kirie was put out of action. Kirie’s powers are sealed, meaning no reset. Nikitis believes an enemy has the same power as Kirie. Gengorou does some research and finds someone with a Death Penalty ability on the station, but they have no record of them. Meanwhile, Ba’al and three minions show up.
Touta is frustrated by his memory loss and gets a day off. His Nigerian boss hooks him up so he can visit a library. He gets a library card-passport, which costs three month’s wages. In the library, Touta can’t find info on UQ Holder members. But he did learn that a magical pandemic transmitted via magic apps connected to the Internet infected most of Earth’s population. Because the infection could not be purged, Earth has reverted back to 20th century technology.
Touta is depressed. He checks for Mizore and Shinobu on the pandemic death list, but they don’t show up. He finds he has pactio cards in his pocket. Shinobu’s and Mizore’s cards are dead, meaning the girls are dead. Touta despairs over his failures. Akim finds Touta and treats him to dinner. Touta returns to work and decides to save money to return to Japan. However, an assassin tries to kill him.
Touta’s continued injuries from months earlier give him pause on his immortality status. He survives the fall, but has only a fraction of the power he previously had. More assassins target him. Touta is able to escape, but takes more damage. He decides not to give up and find answers. However, one of Ba’al’s minions finds Touta. He states that Touta is the last living member of UQ Holder.
Thoughts/Review:
Well, Akamatsu-sensei certainly is putting a twist on things in UQ Holder Chapter 176. Originally, I thought this manga would end at the end of 2020. Now, I’m not so sure.
Missing Plot Elements
Akamatsu-sensei has definitively stated within UQ Holder Chapter 176 that this is reality. So, taking that as the truth, I’ll proceed from there. Clearly, Touta’s convenient memory loss contains key, missing plot elements. So while Touta may have crashed to Nigeria over forty years after the destruction of the space station, I can’t help but suspect that we’ll have some deus ex machina element that happened during that forgotten time.
Why do I think this? Because assuming Ba’al’s minion did kill all of UQ Holder, I do not believe for one moment that they are truly dead. Kirie’s powers can easily bring folks back to life. Sure, she had some convenient power-sealing ability slapped on her to supposedly prevent this. But that doesn’t mean that during Touta’s memory gap, UQ Holder didn’t arrange for her to be sent to Dana’s realm (as an example).
As such, I fully expect that when all is said and done, we’ll end up back at the space station before Ba’al’s attack, and Touta will lead the way to stop Ba’al so that they can go on to battle the Mage of the Beginning.
Delaying the End?
I realize that the biggest shock element in UQ Holder Chapter 176 was the revelation that everyone in UQ Holder is dead. Thus Touta is alone and quite weak. While I admit this took me off guard, this wasn’t the biggest shock for me. The big surprise was seeing Akamatsu-sensei introduce FOUR new enemies to the mix.
Up until last chapter, it felt like UQ Holder was on course to end by early next year. That would put it on pace to end within the 2-3 mark Akamatsu-sensei announced back at the end of December 2018 (click here for more details). However, one doesn’t introduce a bunch of new enemy characters just immediately kill them off in a chapter or two. Granted, Sensei could do just that and wrap everything up next year. But to me, that doesn’t feel like it would be satisfying with the latest plot twist.
Thus I’m now starting to wonder if Akamatsu-sensei might be reconsidering ending the series. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that. Granted, in Love Hina, it was forced on him. That said, maybe something has changed that caused Sensei to decide to delay the ending. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Let me wrap up my review of UQ Holder Chapter 176 with some final thoughts.
- I had to chuckle at how future Nigeria seems pretty much like Japan at times.
- Also, I got a chuckle at how Akamatsu-sensei came up with a reason to have the future now have 20th century technology.
- Just how did those pactio cards appear in Touta’s pocket? (Maybe Kirie?) And why only Mizore’s and Shinobu’s cards (other than as a marketing scheme)?
In the end, UQ Holder Chapter 176 is not a bad chapter. I do like how Touta had this sober awakening. And we’ll see what happens with these four new enemies.
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A terrible chapter. From all the racial insensivity, to the general dark edgelord tryhardness feeling (Baal, for instance, was more ridiculous than scary), to the bad taste coronavirus ‘Too Soon’ obvious references, to pointing out how terrible Touta is a solo character while shoving the whole cast in the fridge in as forced a way as possible.
More years of this? God, no.
I didn’t see “racial insensitivity” as it is pretty common for a lot of Japanese artists to make any foreign country just an extension of Japan. Generally, it tends to be European countries though, at least stuff I’ve read. Akamatsu-sensei did draw some buildings to have a non-Japanese architect style.
Interesting turn of events for sure. We’ll have to see where things go. Had to admit even though I saw it coming, the dead pactio cards hit me a bit. Of course he’ll get sent back in time, that much is obvious. Maybe Kirie is still sealed somewhere?
Even though he’s been doing it for a few years now, I still feel like Akamatsu hasn’t really grasped how monthly series work. Each chapter feels more like its own story than part of a greater arc, but oh well. I still enjoy it.
Yeah, it is a bummer. I liked Mizore and Shinobu, but alas, they weren’t used well in the series.
I think I see what you mean. I don’t feel like I’m not in part of a greater arc. But I do feel like the chapters are written the same way he’d do a weekly chapter, only with a lot more padding for some, and abbreviated action for others. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing though. Properly executed, more character work and such could be done. And super-elongated weekly chapter fights work best in book form rather than weekly chapter form.
Yeah, pretty sure he’s trapped in Cosmo Entelecheia now. I mean, justifying the virus that was putting people asleep when they left Earth as something passed through the Internet? Realy? It would also explain why the Pactio Cards appeared in his pocket just when he was thinking of those two, since Cosmo Entelecheia responds to the victim’s thoughts to some extent, even if the one Touta is trapped in isn’t the paradise advertised by Ialda Baoth.
I forgot about CE. That was an earlier theory I had. The elephant in the room is why hasn’t MotB done her thing? Of course, the only flaw to the CE idea is Touta not being in a paradise, as we’ve seen in Negima. But if Touta’s own fears generated this fantasy, then it might be a situation like “Better Than Life” in the sci-fi comedy series “Red Dwarf”.
If I had to guess, I think that maybe Touta’s Magic Cancel may be interfering with CE in some fashion. That may be why this world is slowly turning into a nightmare for him. I predict that once he gets going, Touta will use Magic Cancel to break the illusion around him.
If he’s in CE, that is possible.
It’s a little late to be replying (I just read the chapter on CR), but a virus passed through the internet via magic-enabled phones is scarily plausible. Assuming you can construct a biological virus with magic and you discover a wormable exploit in a widely-distributed, magic-enabled, internet-connected phone OS… you could probably doom humanity in a matter of days with the right virus. The worm would hijack basically all those phones within a few hours and start pumping out virus particles so long as they had power. You’d completely bypass concepts like incubation and contagion and directly infect millions of people the first day. It’s all downhill from there.
Suddenly, having the replicators in Star Trek connected to the ship’s computer seems like a reallllly stupid idea.
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the food replicators were sabotaged so that a virus was introduced electronically to whatever food/beverage was created. So yeah…
overall interesting chapter. I think the pandemic that killed a large portion of the human race would have delayed the Mage of Beginning plans or it was actually Cosmo Entelechiea activating and sucking up all their minds.
Touta losing his powers might be due to 40 years of his chi/mana being mixed up qnd he hasn’t separated it (he has to keep rotating it in order to use his powers)
Overall I think we will get a reset or something? Though I woildnt mind some permanent deaths
Interesting theory.
Yeah, that’s possible. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why Touta is not regenerating like he should be.
As much as I would hate seeing Karin or Kuroumaru killed, it would be something else if Akamatsu-sensei did this.
Hmmm my theory is that he can regenerate but his powers mainly come from Venus, he was regenerating but if you think back/look back to the Dana training arc, she said that immortals can in theory speed up regeneration or even hold it, there was one time Touta didn’t regenerate his eye after facing Cutlass.
sometimes there could be seals or like issues that prevents Regeneration but considering Touta’s level of recovery, he should be able to regenerate unless his is the type that can’t regenerate as long as the limb exist.
If I remember correctly, because Touta’s arm was in the belly of a magical beast, he couldn’t regenerate it until he retrieved the part of it was obliterated. So either he is still restricted by this weakness or he is blocked by a mental block… ideally I think he can regenerate but given his current state, diluted/mixed magic of white and black that needs seperating again (he started revolution again) and his current mental state, everything is just working at slow speed.
Some of the members are definitely too hard to kill and would have to be sealed away… since Karin is on a level above Touta in terms of regeneration. I do wonder how they will undo all the damage… perhaps a certain Chao Lingshen will appear?
Thanks for sharing. 😊