Some years ago I would have said Ken Akamatsu was among the worst mangakas I had ever read. Look at Love Hina. It started somewhat amusing, but then went down the crapper as he reused the same goddamn jokes five billion times per volume, the characters just didn’t learn making the exact same conflicts pop up constantly as if they simply took a turn to see who was supposed to fuck things up in that arc, and towards the ends there was just so much random whacky shit happening for no goddamn reason that it turned just… loud.
I’m not exactly sure why the heck I started reading Negima. I was barely a few pages in before the first gratuitous pantyshot, and it looked to be just a remake of LH but with more characters, most of which were designed using rehashes from the Love Hina crew. But somehow I kept reading a few volumes and was about to drop it…. but then the fight with Evangeline took place, and it kept me somewhat interested until the school trip to Kyoto, which in turned earned enough good will for me to keep on reading and before I knew it, I was actually enjoying the whole thing a fair bit.
It really does show why when you read one of the old volumes and compare them to the most recent ones. While there’s still fanservice in spades, Akamatsu now makes it a point to actually be funny about it. There’s a dramatic change from the beginning when everything was an excuse for someone to get naked. The jokes and shameless references are actually funny, and to my tremendous surprise, the “misunderstanding/walk-in-punch-to-the-stratosphere” joke is, if not completely eradicated, so rare and sparse you completely forget about the fact that the guy used to not be able to go a single chapter without doing it at least twice. It hasn’t happened in over ten volumes for God’s sake.
Then there’s the characters. There’s an actual substance to them beyond simply fulfilling a fetish. Setsuna, Yue and Nodoka and Evangeline all got some serious development, the first one being my favorite character by far. While I admit that Asuna is still bland, it looks like her story should be an important plot point later. And… hell, there’s way too many to mention everyone. Obviously not everyone is completely fleshed out, but a lot of the girls have already got something to them besides “lol boobs”. And of course, it’s pretty interesting to see Negi shift back and forth between what he’s supposed to do as a teacher, what he tries to do as a mage and what he can do as a little kid. The sucker actually grows. The last chapter released was especially interesting, seeing his “oh hell yeah” expression as he realized he was facing a life-or-death duel with no backup for once. Actually, just any chapter in which Negi goes into Fuck Shit Up Mode is fun to read. Chamo and Chisame are particularily fun, the former if only because of his antics, and the latter because her role is basically to parody the clichés.
It clearly turned into Shonen somewhere along the line, and I couldn’t be more pleased by it. The most surprising part is that it’s actually fairly good at it. Granted, it’s not the best ever, but the way most important battles are won, usually through strategies or tricks instead of SCREW THE RULES, I HAVE PROTAGONIST HAX! Is certainly a plus. Negi is not even immediately a genius fighter with secret techniques (Except… well, the secret one) or even remotely the strongest character in the cast. Hell, he spends the better part of most fights getting punched/burned/impaled and otherwise maimed, and when he does win it’s because of wits when using what skills he’s got.
A great plus to the narrative is that from the get-go it’s established that messed up shit will happen. To be frank, the secret library trip WAS too sudden and the introduction of the Ku-Fei and Kaede could have been a bit better planned, and Ayako’s wealth is played once or twice as a plot device for ridiculous settings (the isle trip) but once he got the hand of creating better excuse for this (Eva’s resort) and the fact that Mahora is basically a magic hiding camp sinks in, the whole thing starts to make a lot more sense. It’s far cry from Hina’s “peaceful student life… peaceful student life… SUDDENLY, DESERT ARMIES AND MAGIC SWORDSMEN! THOUSANDS OF THEM!”
I really enjoyed the festival arc. I usually hate tournaments, but the Negi Vs Takahata duel had pretty much everything I like about how Akamatsu deals with fighting, so I ended up loving it. The whole deal with Chao was pretty well done too, and a good shot at including a grey-area villain.
The story is currently moving at a considerable pace, and considering it started with Negi getting stabbed through the chest by a giant stone spike, he’s been kicking good amounts of ass so far.
So that’s my embarrassing confession. Yeah, I like Negima.