Negima! Magister Negi Magi Recommended

Publisher
Del Rey/Tanoshimi
Writer
Ken Akamatsu
Artist
Ken Akamatsu
Country of origin
Japan
Year
2004

Nagima vol 1-3

By John Huxley
1st Jan 07

Negima...from Ken Akamatsu, the creator of Love Hina.

Now, I’ve never even seen or read Love Hina, yet for some reason the mere mention of its name grabbed my attention. After all, if this was the follow-up work from the creator of one of the most popular series in recent years, surely it’s got to have something going for it? You’d hope so.

Negima has sometimes been compared to Harry Potter, and not without good reason, as both share a very similar main protagonist (at least in vocation and age). Negima is a 10-year-old student of a British (he says he’s from Wales, though the text sometimes refers to him as English, so it’s safe to assume he’s British) magic school and top of his class. But in order to graduate from his year, he needs to first complete some practical coursework - which in his case involves flying all the way to Japan to teach a class of 30 rowdy (regular - not magic) private school girls.

Right about now it might seem like Harry Potter meets GTO, but in truth it’s about a million miles away from either of those. You see, unlike the unfortunate Onizuka, the majority of Nagima’s class almost immediately (and pretty inexplicably, to be honest) takes to their adorable little teach’. Only the flame-haired Asuna voices any real opposition to Negima’s frankly astonishing appointment, yet even she is won over eventually by Negi’s charm and charisma.

What follows is more like Tenchi Muyo than Harry Potter, as Negima and the girls become inadvertently involved in all kinds of hilarious scrapes, mostly involving some kind of sexual tension between student and teacher. To be fair there are a couple of funny moments here and there, but too few are genuinely laugh out loud in the same way as GTO, and too many rely on the girl’s clothes falling off. I suppose this is one thing that Negima shares with GTO - fanservice. But here it’s incredibly excessive even by my low, low (low - I actually quite liked Najica) standards. There’s barely a page that goes by without one the female characters losing her clothes or a gratuitous panty shot. Apart from the nip and (obviously) the private parts, nothing is left uncovered. And we’re talking young schoolgirls here, some of which look no older than 10 or 12, even though their profiles have them down as 14 or 15. As much as I usually defend even the most pointless of fanservice, somehow this just doesn’t feel right.

But it would be too harsh to judge Negima on this basis alone, and thankfully it does have some redeeming qualities. Of the three volumes I’ve read so far, volume three really ups the ante and introduces a suitably silly bad guy for Negi to tackle in the shape of student Evil Evangeline, a vampire-cum-wizard who for some reason holds a grudge against Negi. This also introduces us to a back story involving Negi’s father, the world famous magi called ‘The Thousand Master’, who is missing presumed dead. Although the Evangeline story kinda comes to a conclusion at the end of the volume, the back story hints at something more substantial to come.

Which will really be make or break time for Negima, because on the basis of the first two volumes alone - which is mostly pointless fluff with a little magic tacked on the side - I’m sure many readers won’t be overly eager to buy in to the rest of the series. And even if it does continue to improve at a rate of knots, the fanservice is so overbearing it’s really an acquired taste.
So it’s very much a case of ‘wait and see’ where Negima is concerned. It’s certainly a title that has plenty of potential, if only you could spot it for a all the gratuitous panty shots getting in the way...

-- John Huxley 1st Jan 07