December 2nd, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy 魔法先生 ネギま！Volume 30 Chapter 272 (manga)
Mahou Sensei Negima! Manga Chapter 272
Negima! Manga Vol 30 Ch 272 Review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Jack finds his arms being apparently dissolved and immediately thinks of Asuna with the incredible power being used against him. As at least one of his legs begins to be “removed,” Fate tells Jack that no matter how powerful Jack is, it won’t matter. Rakan activates his pactio artifact and armored arms replace his missing ones as armor also covers his legs. Fate is amazed that Jack plans to fight the Code of the Lifemaker.
Back in Gödel’s office, Kurt offers Negi the chance to join him and to everyone’s amazement, Negi agrees, even taking a knee in the process. Negi asks for the safe passage of the students back to Earth and Gödel agrees but he will need Negi to remain. Negi asks for permission to return to Mahora for a short while and Kurt agrees to this as well since he does not want to deprive Negi of the opportunity to say his goodbyes and wrap up his affairs there.
Outside of Gödel’s office, the rest of Negi’s crew are stunned by what they’ve seen though Paru sees the logic of it.
On Earth, Al, Eva, and Eishun continue their conversation about Gödel and how Kurt would make such an offer of an alliance to Negi. Eva sees no problem with Negi being a political pawn of Kurt so Al challenges her belief in that statement against her student. She confirms it, saying it will do Negi good to learn how cruel life can be but it will make him grow. That leads Al to tease Eva about about Negi’s “growth” and she understands his meaning to be sexual in nature. Al does get serious again and say that while he agrees with Eva’s assessment that Negi won’t be the same type as Nagi, in terms of feelings for Nagi, Negi is as large as they come.
Back in Gödel’s office, Kurt has a contract drawn up for Negi to sign as Chisame, Asakura, and Nodoka observe. Chisame wonders to herself if this is OK. Negi decides to ask a question before he signs, which Kurt has no objection to. Negi asks what Kurt’s real objective is beyond saving the world. Kurt agrees to let Negi know since the truth is something that not even Nagi nor Arika knew about 20-years earlier. To Kurt’s surprise, Negi states what that secret is — the artificial world of Mundus Magicus placed on Mars is in danger of collapse.
Kurt is stunned that Negi knows this information and wonders if Al informed Negi. Negi says that he has his own sources and that it wasn’t Al but does not let Kurt know that Chao, who came from the future, is the one who initially let him know.
Kurt sees that Negi is much more clever than he’d anticipated since his plan was to manipulate Negi. Asakura is impressed that Negi has managed to put Kurt off his game for the first time and Nodoka is horrified that what had only been theory has indeed turned out to be true.
Kurt decides that this should make things easier for Negi to go along with him but Negi challenges Kurt’s idea of saving everyone. Kurt only cited saving 67-million people, but the total number of humans on the Magic World is around 500-million and when demi-humans are added, the number becomes 1.2-billion people. Thus, Negi determines that Kurt is only interested in saving the people of Megalomesembria. Negi does not understand this and challenges Kurt further by citing Arika and Nagi would not have tried to only save so few people, but would have tried to save everyone. As such, Negi agreeing to work with Kurt would not continue Arika’s and Nagi’s work as Kurt had promised. Negi feels that Arika would be disappointed in Kurt and wonders what Kurt learned to make him change over the years.
Kurt sees that Negi is not going to go along with him and decides that he’ll have to show Negi the hard way. Negi prepares for battle and looks at Chisame. With an apology, he says that the safe route won’t work. Chisame tells him to go for it since she didn’t like Kurt anyway.
Thoughts/Review: Well, I for one never thought that Negi and Kurt would be working together because it seemed too obvious that a fight would break out between them. Now, considering Akamatsu-sensei has taken opponents and made them allies (Eva and Kotaro spring to mind), it is possible that Kurt and Negi may work together in the end. Then again, Akamatsu-sensei may go for a Chao-style ending where Kurt is defeated but gives Negi something to aid him in the next phase of his journey.
For now though, a fight seems unavoidable but surely Kurt would have been prepared for such an eventuality and planned accordingly. That would seemingly seem to me that Negi’s girls would be likely hostages to force Negi to behave. Kurt’s initial plans seemed to take into account that Negi might kill him and that would aid Kurt’s purposes. If Negi kills Kurt now, the truth will be known outside of the room (something I don’t think Kurt accounted for) and thus Kurt’s death I don’t think will help his cause.
Now, with Fate executing his plan with the Code of the Lifemaker as Kurt executes his plan to have Negi on his side as a pawn, I do wonder if the two are allied or not. It is possible that both are acting on their own plans but for some reason, I keep getting the feeling that this may not be the case. I can see the story playing out both ways though.
Speaking of Fate, it would seem that Jack’s pactio artifact has some sort of resistance to magic cancellation. That would make sense to me since Asuna’s magic cancel ability never impacted her own pactio artifact usage. Indeed, through the pactio card, she drew on a lot of Negi’s power, especially during the Mahora Festival Tournament. So if pactio magic is immune to magic cancel powers, then Jack would appear to be safe for now.
If Jack is nothing but an illusion though, why only have his arms disappear then his legs. Why not just make him vanish immediately?
Finally, while I’m not going to say that the Lifemaker image is in fact Asuna (though it well could be), it is clear that Fate has tapped into Asuna’s powers. So, I’m hoping that the tease Akamatsu-sensei gave us showing the young Asuna with the teenaged Asuna will be explored more. I’m sure it will be but when is the big question.
Another good chapter in the books. I really look forward to seeing where things go.
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On the Asuna code of the lifemaker connection it has to be noted that it has been demonstrated that Asuna’s power can be used against her will. It was certainly used this way when Baron Herrmann captured her at Mahora, and I think it was probably used in a similar fashion in the war.
This means that while Asuna’s magic may be powering the code of the lifemaker, there is a good chance it is not “voluntary”. It also seems that Jack could have faced this power before as his comments about it seemed to me to indicate some familiarity, especially about a link with Asuna. This makes me wonder if given that Fate 2 managed to battle Nagi to a draw, if he used the “same trick” with Nagi as we know Asuna was unsealed at this point. Given that Jack could defeat Tertium if he had not used the Code of the lifemaker, Nagi should have been able to defeat his predecessor in a fair fight.
On another note this chapter seems to confirm that Al and Kurt have had some sort of recent contact as Kurt wonders if Al told Negi the information about the magic world. The only outstanding question is are Al, Eva and Eishun aware of the current situation in Mundus Magicus or is Al assuming things are going as Negi initially planned.
Supposedly, since negotiations broke down, a fight happens and eventually Negi and co. escapes the governor’s place before the place or all of New Ostia gets locked down.
Never expected rakan’s pactio to be able to do that…from weapons to replacement arms and legs
what’s next a giant mecha?….wait that would so fit him
I thing im confuse about, how would have Negi killing Kurt help in Kurt’s plan if his plan was to use Negi. Also if the magic world would have in fact collase how is it that Chao lived in it in the future?
The way Akamatsu-sensei has set up the plot, even if we dump some of the girls (the non-pactio ones at the very least) back to Earth, the whole issue of saving the Magic World is still there. I do wonder if Akamatsu-sensei will have things in the short term be resolved (Fate defeated, Asuna and Anya rescued, Kurt defeated), have everyone return to Mahora, but then make it so that Negi’s goal is to return to the MW and save everyone.
@Hector
hector I’ll assume that the future magic world in chao’s timeline is probably in ruins and totally unreparable but people can still live there
I’d go a step further and say that Chao not having natural magical abilities but needing technology to use magic indicates that the Magic World was destroyed and that a prime source of magic was lost (or canceled). As such, she’d need the magic of the World Tree to time travel and power her suit.
The last chapter was certainly interesting. It seems to further point in a direction that has already been hinted at in the past.
The Artificial nature of the magical world, the hinted at ethnic tensions between the fantastic original inhabitants and the humans that came later, Asuna’s origins and her ties to to Negi’s mom’s family, it all will probably tie together in the end in some way.
At first glance it seems like Fate and whatever faction he represents want to use the power of Asuna’s magic cancel to destroy the magical world and have attempted as much in the past. If the magical world really is instable and in danger of collapsing by itself that goal would not make any sense. Why not just wait, if it is going to happen anyway?
Kurt’s plan of saving the world seems more like evacuating some people before it collapses.
The fact that Rakan seems to be nearly unraveled by the magic-cancel/code-of-the-lifemaker attack seems to hint that the non-human inhabitants of the magic world are just as ‘fake’ as their world. Perhaps all the magical flora and fauna including the sentient one was created along with the magical world. When the magic stops. All the dragons and catgirls and various beast-people will disappear leaving behind a few pure humans from the north chocking on the Martian atmosphere. That would explain why Kurt only plans to save a fraction of the people. He plans to evacuated as many as he can, the fates of the rest of the inhabitants are tied to their world.
Perhaps Fate and whoever is behind him plans not just the end of the world but merly its Ragnarok a destruction, renewal and rebirth kind of thing.
Neither solution would seem acceptable to Negi.