April 14th, 2021 
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 182
UQ Holder Chapter 182
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Forty-five years prior, Karin is using her holy magic to defend UQ Holder. She takes a massive attack, which sends her flying naked into space at 10% of the speed of light. Karin decides to pass the time by using her magic app to read the thousands of books in her library. Unfortunately, she burns up her battery in seven months and lacks the knowledge on how to use her own magic to power the app.
She decides to take a page from Touta and train. However, after seven years, she gives in to despair. Thirty-eight years later, Karin has been floating aimlessly in space when she sees what she thinks is a sun. She realizes that her immortality will cause her to fall into the center of this sun forever, never dying, but feeling the torment of the heat. She cries out for help and Touta shows up.
Some twenty-seven hours earlier, Touta is briefed by Fate to rescue Karin and install a gate on Alpha Centauri. He is fired through a series of rings, where he loses his clothing, but not his supplies. He finds Karin and informs her that they have 12-hours to wait before they can return to Earth. During this time, Karin opens up to Touta and confesses her feelings for him. He accepts and they consummate their relationship.
Some time later, the dual are “zapped” back to Earth, where they land in the waters outside of Hawaii.
Thoughts/Review:
Whew. Well, Akamatsu-sensei pushed the ecchi factor to the max with UQ Holder Chapter 182. At this point, he may as well start doing his own H doujinshi titles based on his manga. 😅
Immortality is a Curse, Not a Blessing
In the classic (and good) Doctor Who series episode “The Five Doctors”, the first Doctor remarks that “immortality is a curse, not a blessing.” That line popped into my head as I read UQ Holder Chapter 182 and we got a mere glimpse of what 45 years in space was like for Karin. She was only able to keep herself going for seven years before despair overtook her.
Add to that the fact that she’s flying into a star. And as an immortal, she would take zero damage from being in the core of the sun, yet she would feel the insane heat and blinding brightness for eternity. I mean, that’s just a jacked up situation for sure.
When faced with the reality of that, it is no wonder that Karin was finally able to be honest with Touta.
Karin Joins the Harem
Although I think Kuroumaru is “best girl”, Karin always held a special place with me. I had my issues with Touta as a character, but after Akamatsu-sensei mostly resolved those issues, I wanted Karin to fall to Touta. Yeah, Karin’s fall is part of the tsundere journey, but I still enjoy seeing a tsundere fall. And this has been a long time coming.
Karin’s forty-five years of solitude in space allowed her to finally be honest when Touta rescued her. And Karin being the aggressor here made sense, based on her personality. Touta’s surprised reaction is also understandable. As he stated, he thought Karin hated him, thus her coming on to him set him aback. I don’t think Karin ever hated Touta, but she was irritated because she recognized her attraction to him.
That aside, Akamatsu-sensei again has two of his characters consummate their relationship. Thus Karin officially joins Touta’s battle harem. But man, Karin was naked almost the entire chapter. It made me wonder if Sensei wants hentai artists to do UQ Holder doujin titles. Heck, he could probably make big bank doing his own hentai doujinshi versions of UQ Holder Chapter 182 and the previous chapter as well. 😅
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
In the end, UQ Holder Chapter 182 is a very ecchi chapter. But I finally got to see Karin fall, which was nice. And she returns to the story, which is nicer still.
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As a Karin lover I enjoyed this chapter, though it still is a bit jarring for Ken to just have full blown sex in his manga after years of avoiding the issue like the plague. It’s also nice to see her development completed. I also figured after last chapter ended with a shot of Karin that Touta sealing the deal was what this chapter was going to be about. I also fully expect Touta to go for the hat trick with Kirie next chapter.
But this probably also means that the series is likely reaching its conclusion within a year or so. Generally “these events” don’t happen without the climax in sight. …No pun intended.
It’s almost amusing to compare Ken’s earlier works to these last few chapters as they were always ecchi but with no anatomy shown and certainly not… well, like this. And yet, Karin is the only character with defined features which is a bit strange. But alas, bring on the Kirie climax.
For sure. 😂
Haha. Yeah, Akamatsu-sensei foreshadowed that pretty hard.
Kirie hasn’t been discussed much. I don’t doubt she’s next on the list, but megane girl is shockingly taking third place.
Probably. I think originally, Sensei planned to end the manga last year. But apparently he decided to keep going a bit longer.
I feel like if Touta is going to do the do with his love interests, it only makes sense to have Kirie involved especially since she was the subject of heavy focus earlier. I could very well be wrong but it would stick out like a sore thumb.
Yeah, Kirie will be there for sure. I’m just not a fan of hers. But that aside, the one I’m NOT looking forward to is a Touta x Yukihime/Eva moment.
It’s tough to say if that will happen. I feel like that ship has all but sunk at this point.
I hope it is sunk, but she was apparently in on the agreement with Kuroumaru, Karin, and Kirie, unless I misread it.
Nice review astronerdboy. I always wondering is the touta gonna date/marry all the heroines or is he gonna date/Marrying one heroine
We’ll have to wait and find out to be sure, but at this point, it does appear a harem ending is in store.
To add to what I said the other day, I’m actually kinda glad Akamatsu is going with a harem ending this time instead of just teasing one and then never going through with it. Touta is a lot more like Nagi than Negi in that he’s going for multiple formal contracts. The potential was there in Love Hina and Negima, but he never pulled the trigger. Keitaro only wanted his “promise girl” and ended up marrying Naru (I was always a Kei/Motoko shipper). Negima never had an official pairing by the end of its run, though UQH revealed that ended up happily-ever-after with Chisame in the original timeline, while in the UQ timeline he first ended up not-so-happily-ever first with Nodoka and Yue (does that count as a harem ending?) and then with Evangeline.
Likewise.
As to Love Hina, you are correct in that the potential was always there. And a decent case could be made for the other girls. But the nature of the promised girl story made it so that Naru was fine.
As to Negima, I still think Akamatsu-sensei switched things from Asuna to Chisame. The battle harem was something that made sense story-wise, but the series ended abruptly, so…
Naru winning, it’s hard to say if that was a case of what TV Tropes calls Author Appeal. I think you can make a very good case for “He did too good of a job making Mutsumi a credible rival, to where Naru really suffered by comparison, but he stuck to his guns because that’s what he always intended.”
(Personally I think Mutsumi as a MC could have been the glue that made a trio-or-more work, but it was doomed because Naru would never go for it. Mutsumi saw the writing on the wall, so she pretended Naru was the promise girl to make the people she loved happy.)
Negima, I don’t think there’s any real doubt. It may be mean, but I don’t think I could ever buy Chisame for close to the same reasons as above: Other endings would’ve been far more believable, but a perception (true or false) that they would upset RL Naru dictated otherwise.
In the case of Naru, it was more believable to me than the Nagi x Hayate forced ending for Hayate the Combat Butler (IMO).
Likewise. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single ship that was really done justice in Hayate (in a wide variety of senses).
Wrt NagiXHayate, the 0-to-60 “transition” between one of my least favorite rationales ever (“MC gets with X because they’re the neediest” (>_<)), and her supposed redemption as an independent person, reeeeally didn't help.
You know, now I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to see Dana getting her own naked H scene with Touta like Kuromaru and Karin. Just to see people’s reactions.
Evil. (^_^)b
Haha! But funny.
Sometimes evil is good, and needs a thumbs-up. (^_^)b
Like if it could result in going from
“It’s a deep symbolic metaphor, people are too prudish”
to “OMG KEN PUT HER CLOTHES BACK ON WTF MAN”
in 2.3 seconds. That’s my kind of evil. (^_~)b
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Too funny!
I guess this settles that Ken got hit by a truck driven by SEO Kouji. (^_~)
But instead of bonus alternate endings where (after the “true” ending) the MC doinks each of the potential harem in turn, here the MC will doink each of the harem in turn and then we get the “true” harem ending.
But will he find a way to bring back Mizore and Shinobu for the ultimate harem?
Just when I think Akamatsu has hit rock bottom, he starts digging.
Did you miss the loli race about 80 chapters ago?
This was worse, in my opinion.
The loli stuff bothered me more than Karin. But that’s just me.
I agree. I straight skipped the loli race and some parts with Kirie and Eve. Unless there’s a visual reference of Touta, Kuroumaru, and Karin standing next to normal adult I easily picture them as upper teens or young adults. If or likely when something happens with Kirie or Eve… imma just gonna skip that chapter. Things like that make me uncomfortable and I wish it wasn’t in the manga.
I’ve given Eva more of a pass because of her true age (over 700 years) and her Negima history. But the inseki (pseudo incest) factor is what I object to the most with Eva/Yukihime.
With Kirie, I hear ya. We don’t know how old she is, but it isn’t the same as with Eva (at least to me).
The biggest difference between “That’s it, we’ve hit rock bottom” and “We haven’t gone far enough, let’s keep digging” is how much explosive you’re willing to use. (^_~)
This chapter was fine. I honestly prefer character building over endless action any day.
Exploring how immortality can be such a curse to have, is plot and theme I wish we got more of in this manga about immortals.
Remember back in chapter 10, when Yukihime said to Karin, that it’s better to be friends with Touta, since due to the strength of their immortalities, they’d probably outlast the human race. Karin didn’t take it well back then, but now she’s perfectly fine being all alone with just Touta by her side.
There’s a theory that Touta and Karin’s return was blown off course due to the fact they’ve been doing it so hard and so long ( like 5 hours, jeez), which might have affected the distortions that were supposed to bring them back.
By the way, is it just me, or did Kirie in the first page get a bit older? Could it be a side effect of whatever took her down the first time….or?
Me, I prefer the action and the ass-kicking over discount Negi banging genderfluid discount Setsuna and useless female Judas.
I have no problem with character building for sure.
Yes! This has been my biggest disappointment with the series, going back to its start. I had hoped that Yukihime and Touta’s road trip would have started the exploration of immortality. But alas, that was not to be. Akamatsu-sensei has touched it here and there, but not in depth.
I will have to look again. Sensei may be drawing her a bit older looking to avoid it looking too bad when he does the Touta x Kirie sex stuff.