Lunatic Antics

Mahou Sensei Negima! is an ongoing manga series authored by Ken Akamatsu. After finishing Love Hina, a very successful harem comedy manga, he wanted to try his hand at something different. While Negima starts as the same genre as Love Hina, it evolves into a shounen action kind of story without losing the characteristics of a harem comedy. The result is a story which is able to mix those two genres smoothly and create something innovative. It can please both fans of harem comedy and fans of shounen action, yet also please those who aren’t fans of either of those two genres.

Negima started publication on 02/26/2003. As of today, it has 267 chapters and 27 bound volumes released.  It’s released weekly, but with a break week (a week with no chapter being released) between each 4 weeks with releases.

• The Story

The story starts with Negi Springfield, a 10 year old Welsh boy, graduating from his magic school. To continue their training to become a Magister Magi (something like a Master of Mages) each student receives a task after graduation. Negi receives the unreasonable task of being a teacher in Japan. That’s how he ends up being an English teacher for a girls’ middle school, and the homeroom teacher for Mahora Academy’s class 2-A: a second year class with thirty-one 14-year old girls.

Negi and the 2-A girls

Mahou Sensei Negima! starts with lighthearted themes:  a little slice of life, a little harem comedy, a lot of fanservice.  All three are on display as soon as he arrives at Mahora Academy.  He has a really bad start with Asuna, who happens to be not only his student, but also one of the two girls he will have to share a room with. Asuna, who already isn’t fond of children, gets an even worse impression of Negi through a succession of unfortunate events usually triggered by Negi’s naïve personality.  Things only get worse when she discovers he is a mage, something he is supposed to keep as a secret from all his students.

There are a few other students who, for their own reasons, don’t take kindly to Negi. And while most of the class likes him, they can’t take him seriously because of his personality, not to mention the fact that he’s younger than them.  Yet another problem arises as he arrives in the last trimester of the school year; he immediately needs to improve his class’ scores, by far the worst of all the second-year classes, on the end-of-year test if he wants to continue to be a teacher there – and he has to, in order to become a Magister Magi.

With lots of effort Negi is able to slowly gain the trust and respect of his students and conquer his hardships. The story dynamic starts to change when we learn Negi’s reason for wanting to become a Magister Magi:  he wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, Nagi Springfield aka The Thousand Master, famously touted as the strongest mage ever.  Nagi Springfield was supposed to have died a few months before the birth of his son, but in an encounter six years before the story, Negi met someone he still believes to be his father.

It’s in Negi’s search for clues about what happened to his father and his quest to become as strong as him that the story starts to take a different path. While fanservice and harem comedy stay present in the series, they take a bit of a back seat as the story starts to darken a little and shift its focus more toward powerful magic battles. For Negi to mature and reach his objectives he will need to learn that things such as good and evil, or right and wrong, aren’t absolute.  Negi will also learn that most of his students are far from normal as he discovers the relationship amongst them, the world of magic, and what happened with his father.

• The Characters

The main cast is sizable to start, with Negi and the 2-A students. In the beginning they may look similar, but as we are introduced to them and slowly learn more about their backgrounds we can see how unique each character is. The cast grows a lot with time as more and more important characters are added to the mix, but the manga is still able to keep most, if not all, of them interesting and each contributes at least a little to the main plot.

While Negi and Asuna are the central characters, many others take the spotlight during the course of the series. Some seem minor at the beginning but end up suddenly shining later; most get a decent amount of development during the series, which shapes them into becoming even more unique. Romance is also developed nicely, not only in relationships with the girls and Negi, but also between other characters.

• The Setting
  

Most of the story happens in Mahora Academy, a learning institution about the size of a small city with its own residential and shopping district.  It contains, amongst other things, elementary, middle and high schools, each divided by gender, and a university fully equipped with research facilities. It also features many clubs which have members from all grades.

A view of Mahora Academy

Mahora has many mysteries, like the Library Island, a giant library in the middle of a lake with many underground levels, and the majestic World Tree, which stands in a small hill in the middle of the campus.

Library Island and the World Tree

• Art

As the characters mature and the story changes its direction, the art evolves too. A panel in Negima tends to have many details spread through it, and to obtain that level of detail Ken Akamatsu uses CG for drawing many of the manga’s background elements.  Those details can be important, as Mahou Sensei Negima! has a lot of foreshadowing hidden in plain sight.

Negi as in the first chapter and in a later chapter

• Negima’s other media

Many adaptations and spin-offs based upon the Negima! manga have been created. I will give a short summary of each, concentrating on their relation to the manga. I asked Seishi to give a summary for one of the series as he knows more about it.

Mahou Sensei Negima! (Anime)

The first Negima! adaptation with a total of 26 episodes.  It faithfully adapts the first few volumes of the manga, although the art quality isn’t the best and the fanservice is downplayed.  The pace picks up for the last few episodes, cutting some important scenes out of the story, and the final arc is completely original.

Negima!? (Anime)

Summary done by Seishi:

First of all, we must establish the two things Negima!? is not.
1) An adaptation of the manga’s story
2) An actual coherent story of its own

Having said that, Negima!? stands out for its quirky but stylistic take on Ken Akamatsu’s popular manga. The first thing manga fans will notice is the noticable toning down of fanservice, something Akamatsu used quite liberally. In the beginning, the focus of the series goes straight to Evangeline and the problems she causes for Mahora Academy. The first batch of Negima!? episodes features a greater focus on action and pactio forming, the latter of which is very different from its manga counterpart. All wrapped up in this is Studio SHAFT’s (Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Bakemonogatari, Hidamari Sketch) magic touch; director Akiyuki Shinbo manages to entertain his audience with his usual animation tricks.

As the series progresses, it manages to fully separate itself from the manga, which in turn alienates long-time Negima fans.  This is rather disappointing because Negima!? has elements that hardcore fans should be able to latch on to if they can look past the obvious adaptation decay.

Mahou Sensei Negima! Haru OVA and Natsu OVA

Two 1-episode OVAs loosely based on events from the manga. They don’t really fit in any of the timelines from the manga or either of the two animes, so they’re more fanservice for the fans. They were also animated by Shaft.

Negima!? Neo (manga)

A manga adaptation for the Shaft anime. The main plot of the anime is shortened; after it covers all of the anime, it becomes more of a slice of life. It’s like a middle term between the manga and the second anime.

Mahou Sensei Negima! Shiroki Tsubasa Ala Alba (OAD) / Mahou Sensei Negima! Mouhitotsu no Sekai (OAD)

These two Shaft-animated OAD series were supervised by Ken Akamatsu, so the art and story are fairly loyal to the original manga. The first series, Ala Alba, with 3 episodes and one drama CD, animates some of the later chapters of the manga and acts an introduction for the second OAD series. The second series is still ongoing with 1 of 4 episodes released. It follows the events from Ala Alba and will adapt the latest manga arc together with a movie.