November 10th, 2017 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! 魔法先生 ネギま！2 Anime Review
UQ Holder! Mahou Sensei Negima 2
UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 06
UQ Holder Episode 06
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Kuroumaru takes Kurobo to Touta. While walking there, the two talk, but when Kurobo mentions Kuroumaru is attracted to Touta, the talking sword finds itself planted in the pavement. Kuroumaru observes Touta chatting with Shinobu about her speeder bike. Upon returning to the dorm, Kuroumaru takes a shower, but when Kuroumaru comes out, Karin enters the room and discovers Kuroumaru doesn’t have a winkle. A little later and outside, Kuroumaru explains that members of the Yata no Karasu are demi-human (ajin) who are genderless until the age of 16. Thus Kuroumaru is neither male nor female.
Karin decides to attack Kuroumaru to force Kuroumaru to choose female and be with Touta. Ikkuu arrives, having heard the whole thing. So Karin and Ikkuu hatch a plan to have Kuroumaru disguised as a blonde, female cousin of Kuroumaru’s named Kuryuu. Kuryuu wants to go to Shin Tokyo, so Touta borrows Shinobu’s bike and across the bay they go. They have a lovely date, ending at the in Amano-Mihashira Orbital Elevator (tower) observation deck. While enjoying the moment, they are attacked by Xinxai and a four-armed guy.
Touta is easily captured. Kuroumaru discovers that as the female Kuryuu, there is a lack of strength that is normally there. However, after some additional fighting, Kuroumaru escapes from Xinxai’s trap and frees Touta as well. Xinxai and his companion flee as the police arrive. Touta comes to and sees Kuroumaru, who explains that Kuryuu was taken to safety by Kuroumaru. Touta talks about how attractive Kuryuu was, leading Kuroumaru to decide to leave the option for becoming female on the table. Back home, Ikkuu sees fellow immortal Kirie lighting what appears to be an incense stick.
Thoughts/Review:
As we desperately rush forward to get to Negima elements, UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 06 shows the folly of a rushed character story with little foundation.
The Kuroumaru Arc
While the manga has a lot of flaws, one thing it did allow is for a natural progression of Kuroumaru’s personal arc in dealing with Kuroumaru’s feelings for Touta. Further, it also allowed for Kuroumaru’s decision on whether to become male or female to flow naturally. So in the manga, Karin discovers Kuroumaru’s secret prior to their trip to the slums. Then in the manga, because Kuroumaru is a bit depressed over Touta going to Kaito for training instead of consulting with Kuroumaru, that’s when Karin decides to physically confront Kuroumaru by attacking Kuroumaru. It makes sense.
For UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 06, Karin’s discovery of Kuroumaru’s secret happens after the events of the slums. Then for no apparent reason, Karin decides to just attack Kuroumaru to force Kuroumaru to hopefully choose to become a girl. Karin’s actions in the anime don’t make sense because they aren’t grounded in having observed Kuroumaru’s behavior for a period of time and seeing Kuroumaru’s conflict.
Further, by taking the Kuryuu story element from some 80 or so chapters later and ramming it into the present, things don’t add up. In the manga, Kuroumaru had physically begun to transform into a girl, thanks to the feelings for Touta within Kuroumaru. So Ikkuu and Kirie’s (not Karin in the manga) actions to have Kuroumaru be disguised as a girl to go out with Touta makes more sense.
In addition, Kuryuu doesn’t come off as some random girl in the manga who just shows up just to ask Touta to show her around Shin Tokyo. In the manga, Kuryuu is a customer of the Inn (and distant relative of Kuroumaru) who just wants a tour guide. That’s lost in the anime as Kuryuu comes in, says she’s a cousin of Kuroumaru, then wants Touta to take her to Shin Tokyo like a love-sick girl.
The Possible Fate Problem
In skipping the second fight at the slums, where Nagumo and company try to capture Touta, we lose an element where the table is set that Fate wants to capture Touta. As such, in UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 06, we run into Fate’s companions, as dictated by the Kuroumaru-Touta date story from the manga. Xinxai makes a half-arsed effort at capturing Touta, but quickly gives up. That’s because in the manga, by this point, Fate had ordered no one mess with Touta, but Xinxai did anyway.
I get that the anime is acting like Xinxai and his four-armed companion (who’s name I should look up) have orders to do this. But they gave up too easily, which made no sense. If the anime does the “Fate stomps” story (which it appears they might), we know that Fate didn’t let anything stop him in his goal to capture Touta.
Also, Fate got notified about Touta and started coming down in the elevator. In the manga, that was so he could confront Touta and brutally deal with the others with Touta. In the anime, one would have thought that he would have come down as well, but instead, Xinxai and companion botch things, allowing Touta and Kuroumaru to leisurely escape. Where was Fate coming in to prevent this? As far as I’m concerned, this is another anime story structure flaw.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
OK, time to wrap up my review of, which now gets me caught up with Japan. Yay! As I write this, chapter 142 of the manga has just been released, so I need to get shifted to that.
- I don’t remember Kurobo ever talking to anyone but Touta before.
- Kirie is barely in this episode and already she’s annoying me. 😆
- Shinobu’s speeder bike is here, so I guess the pod race stuff will be in the anime.
- An interesting change from the manga is having Eva and Jinbee discuss Touta having Magia Erebea.
In the end, UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 – 06 has some nice elements, but fails overall due to the lack of setup for Kuroumaru’s feelings for Touta and the natural progression the manga had for those feelings over 100 chapters.
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Definitely some rushed stuff going on here. Of course the casual viewer probably wouldn’t notice. Really big shame that Santa’s arc is going to be skipped over. I find him far more interesting than Kirie… It’s also a shame Akamatsu is compressing a 100+ chapter series into 12 episodes, which pretty much omits any chances of a season 2 happening. It’s fine to get it all up on screen and all that but he really fails to understand how to market his series properly. I can only imagine how popular Negima would’ve been had it been properly adapted.
Totally agree here.
Yeah, that’s true. However, during Negima, I’m not sure how much creative control he had over the anime as he didn’t own the copyright. He does now, and for UQH, so my understanding is that Sensei is actually writing the UQH anime.
I have to wonder how do they think they are going to adapt both Kirie and Mizore meeting and developing feelings for Touta, plus the conflict against Fate, plus the final conflicy against Negi, all of that in only six episodes left.
Plus, there shouldn’t be any time for training arcs in between the fight versus Fate and that versus Negi, so… how come Touta won’t get squashed flat as soon as he meets Negi in the anime? In the manga he stands a fighting chance for a very short while because he’s had nearly one hundred chapters to grow stronger through training, missions and fighting, but here, without all of that, is he just going to face the Mage of the Beginning like pretty much a fresh faced amateur, and even without Santa’s help to, um, well, stall Al at the very least?
That… That all seems so absurd I can’t even see how they would also stuff a naked Loli water race in between on top of all of that. First you’d need to set up the Olympics, fighting tournament included, and again, there seems to be no room whatsoever for that either.
Super Touta to the rescue. 😉
One of my main complaints about UQ Holder’s early story arcs was that Touta was always, “Not interested in training,” but he’d see someone do something and then he’d have near-instant proficiency at it, then total mastery a little later. I suspect that’s what we’ll have here in the anime.
They’ve set up the pod racing stuff. I highly doubt we’ll see any tournament stuff. Even in the manga, Akamatsu-sensei has been avoiding it.
I have to say that I don’t really get the hate against Kirie, I mean, sure some parts rubs me the wrong way about her (mainly her tsuntsun), but it’s hardly worse than the tsundere characters that people keep being unable not to squee over, and at least she appears to recognize that it’s a personality point that she have to work with.
Its because Akamatsu-sensei keeps pushing her to the front at the cost of other characters, just because Sensei has a thing for loli, megane babes. Kirie wouldn’t bother me so much if time were given to Karin and Kuroumaru to develop their characters.
I don’t like how young Kirie is being portrayed in this so far. Then again, a new viewer or casual watcher won’t notice anything. I do think the progression of the story is bit off little bit, but no one new would really noticed it that much.
Question if Sensei really knows or controls how their going to unfold the story.
It sounds like Kirie’s introduction with Fate going to be coming in rapidly next episode.
With episode 7, there going to be what…5 episodes left to tell UQ Holder tale. Question is it going be enough story to satisfied everyone and get new readers for the manga.
Blanking out the manga from my head, i would rate this a “Ok” series. It’s slight future elements would intrigue me little bit, but it’s bit dull.
When I try to objectively look at UQH as an anime without manga knowledge, I think it is just “OK” as well. But it is hard to do at times, especially when the flow of the story jars as much as it seems to in the anime. Granted, the “lovely date” story probably would better pass muster with folks who’ve not read the manga.
If I had not seen the manga, I would not be worried, but, that’s not the case, I see that they skip things and then they add it later in a different way, now Fate will appear, I guess they will put the fight like the manga, but I don’t know if Touta and the others will appear in the underground caverns and Evangeline will fight with Fate (Since this is going fast) then once this is solved, what will happen? They will meet Mizore and they will put Negi suddenly ‘Here I am’ Touta will use Nakama power and everyone happy? or maybe they will put Negi and it will happen like in the manga, and they will be putting more chapters changing the order, I mean, how they put the chapters in a random way…
Maybe this will be one those alternate futures (new happy ending vs what happening in the manga) sort of things. Really i’m trying not care how this story goes. This is all a big advertisement for the manga. So they maybe pleasantly surprised how things are in manga. Given what’s going on now in manga, i’m worried that it’s accelerating to it’s doomed ending prematurely if this anime flops in it’s attempt to bring in new people.
Yeah, but with UQH anime only having about 13 episode (at the moment), a lot of skipped stuff is going to be skipped.
I found information about the OVAs of UQ holder, it tells:
The first is titled “Setsuna of Eien no First Kiss” and will accompany the sixteenth volume, in stores on March 9, 2018. According to the magazine “An important accident begins with a kiss” and “Kirie will climb the stairs towards adulthood ” The other one is titled “Karin-Senpai no Ienai Himitsu”, will be released next to the seventeenth volume on June 8 and will show us a “The cute part of the cool Karin”.
The website is: https://www.koi-nya.net/2017/11/13/uq-holder-anuncia-los-titulos-sinopsis-dos-nuevas-ovas/
I think that the first OVA is about the chapter when Kirie freezes time and Touta and Kirie are in UQ Holder. And the second OVA, I think it’s when Karin and Touta eat Evangeline’s truth chocolates.
Good grief. Well, i guess alot of that business being stranded in the resort after Touta’s training with Diana arc lead to the series drama overall arc going on hiatus would fit in. It could have had happen anytime.
Thanks for the info!
So uq holder volume 15, debuted with a positive correlation of sales.
From 32K volume 14 to 50K now.
So maybe, it will have a perpetual net benefit, for the series.
Which also means, that it almost sold as much as volume 14, in one week, a third week in the top 50, will be strongly indicative, especially I it does 50K each week till, then.
Meaning, that it will finally outsell volume 1.
UQ holder must be unique in that regard, as to never surpass it’s first volume sales.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-11-15/japanese-comic-ranking-november-6-12/.124081
Thanks for the info!
I hope your right, that’s glimmer hope. I just hope sensei doesn’t waver in what he’s delivering. Going back and forth on the format of the series is bit nerve racking.
When i started reading the manga i thought this was going to be adventure/comedy spin off based on the negi universe. Vs Retro-active Echi-Harem Action Comedy. :/
I wanted see the other planets, see different adventures take place.
Astro, you coming out with your views for Episodes 7-8?
Seven is in the pipeline. I think I have it scheduled for Friday. I hope to put episode 8 in there as well, but if I do, it would be scheduled for Sunday. ^_^;