(L) UQ Holder (Ken Akamatsu's new series)

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Endscape

I'd say Negima stopped being about those things since the start of the Mundus Magicus arc, though, and it morphed into something much more like what UQ Holder is, except for the arc at the end there.

Yeah, well, like I said, UQ Holder inherited and amplified most of the narrative vices Negima acquired by the end of Mundus Magicus. I'd argue, however, the series' original spirit still mostly continued through the arc's start, despite of the change in setting.

To be fair, this is no different from today's world.

It goes way too far in that direction. It ends up just being a badly done caricature of unequality, and it's not even intended to be that way, which would at least pass for some sort of misguided commentary, it's clearly just a result of sketchy and badly structured world building.

But the real goal he's after is to help Evangeline, because she is the closest thing he has to a family member. He wants to help her move on with her life from all the Lifemaker stuff that has been haunting her and everyone she's cared about since the moment she became immortal.

Touta's whole relationship with Eva falls apart as soon as he and the narrative start treating her, his mother figure, as his love interest (because Akamatsu is too stuck on harem dynamics as a default.) This creates a domino effect that basically unravels everything the series tries to do with them, including forcing a sort of idiotic competition with Negi in a 'love triangle' that never works out beyond being squicky and uncomfortable.

Not really, UQ is high stake dram are whatever. It classic Shonen and it stick to it from beginning to the end it has stable cast of characters that doesn't loose its relevance as story progress.

... no, UQ Holder's secondary cast DO lose a lot a relevance as the story goes on. They'll still try to catch up here and there, and the Pactio rush is obviously a desperate hurried attempt to pull them up, but right after the battle with Negi the team already is indulging in typical shounen secondary characters ruminations on how they aren't up to the task, blah blah blah. Basically by now they're split between being Touta's harem, those who are Touta's cleanup crew (often offpanel even), those who will job to set the stakes higher for Touta, and those who are a combination of any of the former.

Negima started as harem and switched to shonen battle story. As result we got two overbloated sets of characters with
neither of them being flashed out.

At least Negima has the excuse of having many characters (and again, many of them didn't need much focus or development because they had common origins and basically one can assume their backgrounds and pasts didn't need much expositition.) UQ Holder manages to have an even more one-note cast out of characters who whould be fair more unique overall, but mostly behave not that differently from the human teenagers seen before them, just immortal and all that.

Negi as character can do practically anything he is genius in academics, magic and even martial arts before even hitting puberty. Oh and he is also secretly space prince.

Please, if any character is 'can do practically anything the plot needs him to' that's Touta, and that's while being not even one decade of real time old himself, it's hypocritical to pin that on Negi while excepting Touta from it. Touta not only gets all the lineage bull of Negi by being his descendant, he also gets far more plot coupons on top of that. By the equivalent Negima time Negi still was a struggling n00b Touta had already been artificially pulled up near the top of the food chain.

[Kazu-kun]

^ Touta never saw Eva as a mother figure but more like a big sister. And wanting to f@ck your big sis is nothing new to anime and manga.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

^ Touta never saw Eva as a mother figure but more like a big sister. And wanting to f@ck your big sis is nothing new to anime and manga.

That's the way we ended up with trash like Oreimo (okay, little sister, but whatever, you get me.) If you're aiming that low for your pandering of choice AND placing it at the core of a mostly high stakes fate of the world series as your relationship centerpiece then you are... well, it could work with better writing than UQ Holder's and making a point on how unhealthy it is (something even Oreimo tries at times in its own clumsy fashion), but again, for Akamatsu it's just another token scratch off the harem stock trope checklist.

Besides, regardless of his views she WAS his mother figure. Even with Negi, she was more of a teacher figure.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

If you're aiming that low for your pandering of choice

Harem is bottom of the barrel as pandering goes anyway. And it's not rare to find a sister character among the haremettes. It's part of the course.

for Akamatsu it's just another token scratch off the harem stock trope checklist.

So you do get it. Why are you complaining then? That's what Akamatsu does. You shouldn't expect anything else. You shouldn't read Akamatsu if you want something else.

[Dargor]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Why are you complaining then?

Because Akamatsu has done better? Hell, for someone who codified the Harem genre, he's been pretty uninspired in nearly every department with its characters far as Holder goes.

None of this should be surprising though. Its been going on ten years since he did anything that's been up to snuff with his past work, barring the Rakan fight. UQ Holder's basically just a continuation of all of Negima's worst vices and then some, just without having a cast to care about.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

It goes way too far in that direction. It ends up just being a badly done caricature of unequality, and it's not even intended to be that way, which would at least pass for some sort of misguided commentary, it's clearly just a result of sketchy and badly structured world building.

How exactly does it go "too far"? Surely you're not suggesting that extreme poverty and wealth can't exist in the same area, are you? Akamatsu was being cliche, what with the plucky, hard-working child routine, but that's a different criticism.

Touta's whole relationship with Eva falls apart as soon as he and the narrative start treating her, his mother figure, as his love interest (because Akamatsu is too stuck on harem dynamics as a default.) This creates a domino effect that basically unravels everything the series tries to do with them, including forcing a sort of idiotic competition with Negi in a 'love triangle' that never works out beyond being squicky and uncomfortable.

You're falling into the trap of treating all older females as mothers and you're pushing that assumption on Akamatsu.

Narratively speaking, Akamatsu clearly wrote Eva from the start as a Cool Big Sis, she ticks nearly all the trope boxes; she appears professional outside the house, but is sloppy indoors, lacking skill at traditional maternal roles like house cleaning and cooking, and delegating that stuff to the little brother, being extra tough on him to other people, etc.

As Kazu-kun mentioned, it's also pretty standard for male characters to at least go through a phase where the big sister becomes a romantic influence. In Touta's case, this happened for sure, but I also think he's (mostly) gotten over it now.

Please, if any character is 'can do practically anything the plot needs him to' that's Touta, and that's while being not even one decade of real time old himself, it's hypocritical to pin that on Negi while excepting Touta from it. Touta not only gets all the lineage bull of Negi by being his descendant, he also gets far more plot coupons on top of that. By the equivalent Negima time Negi still was a struggling n00b Touta had already been artificially pulled up near the top of the food chain.

Honestly, I think you're being disingenous here. Both of them could basically do whatever the plot demanded from jump. Negi was regularly doing amazing stuff from Day 1, the lighter nature of early Negima just made Negi seem more like a n00b.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Endscape

You're falling into the trap of treating all older females as mothers and you're pushing that assumption on Akamatsu.

Eva IS Touta's mother figure, though. Who else fills the role if not her? She raised him from almost birth, and even when it's a big sister doing that she's basically graduating to a replacement mother role.

You are letting anime cliches replace your view of an actual family relationship, at which point we're just falling into the rut of what Miyazaki Hayao once called writing without contact with reality as a starting point for your story and characters, only from others' prexisting regurgitated cliches. A 'big sister' is one thing and a mother is another. Eva fills the first role for Touta far better than the second one.

How exactly does it go "too far"? Surely you're not suggesting that extreme poverty and wealth can't exist in the same area, are you?

Not when the cause is 'governments agree to split poverty globally', because THAT'S NOT HOW ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY WORK. The spreads of poverty and richness are far more complicated than that, and while UQ Holder obviously can't be a treaty on the subjects it doesn't even try for a decent enough handwave.

Because Akamatsu has done better? Hell, for someone who codified the Harem genre, he's been pretty uninspired in nearly every department with its characters far as Holder goes.

Yeah, when Akamatsu actually tries he can subvert tropes and cliches well. Negi himself is a great subversion of the Idiot Shounen Hero with BANZAI NIPPON spirit, and clumsy as the Chisame reveal itself was, it at least tried for a First Girl Always Wins subversion that would have been great to see if done properly.

[Shippuu]

Originally Posted by Endscape

Honestly, I think you're being disingenous here. Both of them could basically do whatever the plot demanded from jump. Negi was regularly doing amazing stuff from Day 1, the lighter nature of early Negima just made Negi seem more like a n00b.

Negi was at least established as a genius from the very beginning and has studied for years before he arrived at Mahora. He also had character flaws that started to become more prominent in the Magic World arc which persisted despite multiple interventions from his students. These were carried over into UQ Holder and I do like how his Emiya Shirou syndrome and slightly disturbing obsession with his father finally came back to bite him hard. It's in-character with everything established in Negima.

Touta went from a bumbling idiot without any real education whatsoever to a hyper competent problem-solving genius suddenly doing off-screen research in highly advanced magical theory that even Negi and Eva have minimal knowledge of like its nothing within the span of a few months.
He gets everything handed to him on a silver platter and gets what little he didn't with absolutely minimal effort. The universe bends over backwards to provide him with god-powers, gravity blades, timelord vampire teachers and all-knowing multiversal libraries, even retroactively inserting him into Eva's past for good measure. He loves good people, he hates bad people and he wants to save the world because he wants to bang a woman in a platonic way. He has no actual character flaws or ugliness because he barely has a character to begin with beyond stereotypical shounen tropes. He feels like he has little drive of his own and mostly just reacts to things and circumstances, more like Ichigo rather than Luffy or Naruto.

As for the mother figure thing. It makes me think back to Negima, where Asuna was clearly Negi's onee-san and never anything even remotely motherly in stark contrast to Eva, who gives me completely opposite vibes.

[Tenzen12]

It's not like he wasn't helped by much smarter people then himself, right?

Something Negi never could because he was smartest guy in universe.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

Eva IS Touta's mother figure, though. Who else fills the role if not her? She raised him from almost birth, and even when it's a big sister doing that she's basically graduating to a replacement mother role.

You are letting anime cliches replace your view of an actual family relationship, at which point we're just falling into the rut of what Miyazaki Hayao once called writing without contact with reality as a starting point for your story and characters, only from others' prexisting regurgitated cliches. A 'big sister' is one thing and a mother is another. Eva fills the first role for Touta far better than the second one.

The reason Akamatsu specifically wrote Eva with those tropes is because he didn't the viewers to see Eva as Touta's mother.

You can make arguments about the nature of motherhood and non-stanndard family structures, and they would probably be correct too, but in terms of what Akamatsu wants the viewer to take away from it, it seems clear.

Not when the cause is 'governments agree to split poverty globally', because THAT'S NOT HOW ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY WORK. The spreads of poverty and richness are far more complicated than that, and while UQ Holder obviously can't be a treaty on the subjects it doesn't even try for a decent enough handwave.

What does that even mean to begin? Did countries meet up and tell another country that they were going to be poor now? Or was it an allegory for how things like income inequality can force certain sections of people into poverty?

I'll agree it was a crappy handwave. I'll give Akamatsu the benefit of the doubt and say he was going for the latter, but it was still poorly done.

Originally Posted by Shippuu

Negi was at least established as a genius from the very beginning and has studied for years before he arrived at Mahora.

Touta was hardly introduced as a normal person though.

Touta went from a bumbling idiot without any real education whatsoever to a hyper competent problem-solving genius suddenly doing off-screen research in highly advanced magical theory that even Negi and Eva have minimal knowledge of like its nothing within the span of a few months.

Now you're just exaggerating. Yes, he can read books and he's come up with some ideas (based off Negi's research), but I don't think he's done anything as amazing as completing a technique even Eva couldn't complete, plus a bunch of new spells in only a few weeks.

He gets everything handed to him on a silver platter and gets what little he didn't with absolutely minimal effort. The universe bends over backwards to provide him with god-powers, gravity blades, timelord vampire teachers and all-knowing multiversal libraries

You could easily make the same assertion about Negi.

He has no actual character flaws or ugliness because he barely has a character to begin with beyond stereotypical shounen tropes.

Not true. His pathos about being a fake is something, even if you don't like how Akamatsu handled it, but its's still there.

As for the mother figure thing. It makes me think back to Negima, where Asuna was clearly Negi's onee-san and never anything even remotely motherly in stark contrast to Eva, who gives me completely opposite vibes.

Different strokes, I guess. Eva's relationship with Touta reminded me more of Misato and Shinji, ,or Ichika and Chifuyu. It simply didn't feel motherly to me. Perhaps it's because they leave them to their own devices, mostly?

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Endscape

You could easily make the same assertion about Negi.

At a much slower rate, and feeling like he had earned it much more. It takes him a whole volume to beat Eva (who was going easy on him), she doesn't agree to teach him right off the bat until a few volumes later, and after a new test of worth he barely passes. Even earning Magia Erebea was an in extremis thing with serious heavy downsides that he has to overcome with others' help.

Basically, Negi doesn't start feeling like an overpowered gamebreaker until Negima is falling apart narratively, tellingly enough.

In contrast, Touta's powerup rate is much steeper and can't help feeling a lot more gratutious.

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

It's not like he wasn't helped by much smarter people then himself, right?

Something Negi never could because he was smartest guy in universe.

This is a blatantly false statement. Evangeline was always portrayed as being more knowledgeable on everything related to magic. Rakan, despite his Idiot Hero aura (and Rakan was always smarter than he let on) was also much better instructed on areas of magic Negi knew nothing about at first, like Magia Erebea. Fate was just as smart in his own ways, and by the way Negi can come up with an asspulled solution to the MM problem while he couldn't it is, again, because the author had just stopped worrying to make sense by then. Even the likes of Asuna, Chisame and Yue were shown as having more common sense intelligence than Negi (a child) at times and would correctly call him out on it. Chao basically won their overall match, but she threw the plan at the last minute fter trusting him with the future.

Negi got a fucking lot of help from others, it's just he actually earned it in a more believable way.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

At a much slower rate, and feeling like he had earned it much more. It takes him a whole volume to beat Eva (who was going easy on him), she doesn't agree to teach him right off the bat until a few volumes later, and after a new test of worth he barely passes. Even earning Magia Erebea was an in extremis thing with serious heavy downsides that he has to overcome with others' help.

Basically, Negi doesn't start feeling like an overpowered gamebreaker until Negima is falling apart narratively, tellingly enough.

In contrast, Touta's powerup rate is much steeper and can't help feeling a lot more gratutious.

Negi was amazing from Day One. A 9 year old graduating at the top of his class, and managing to (more or less) be a functioning English teacher. Eva was praising his raw magic from the start and by the time Mahorafest rolled around, when he had studied kung fu for a few months, seasoned fighters like Setsuna were praising his skill.

I honestly don't see that much of a difference.

[Tenzen12]

Difference is that Touta has much harder time use magic...

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Endscape

Negi was amazing from Day One. A 9 year old graduating at the top of his class, and managing to (more or less) be a functioning English teacher. Eva was praising his raw magic from the start and by the time Mahorafest rolled around, when he had studied kung fu for a few months, seasoned fighters like Setsuna were praising his skill.

I honestly don't see that much of a difference.

That's standard Shounen Lead shit, but Touta still takes it much further.

Difference is that Touta has much harder time use magic...

And he has Magic Cancel and a much faster developing rate to more than make up for it. Seriously, Touta really doesn't even need casting and the like to steamroll over most situations, and the real spellcasters of the team, like Kirie, mostly suck at being very battlefield-useful (Kirie mostly serves as Reset Button Spam.)

[Tenzen12]

Nah, being perfect in everything isn't standart shonen protagonist trait. That's being Gary Stue.

And so far only UQ character that ends mostly useless in battlefield is Karin (and she deservedly got lot of flak for it). In comparrison not even half of Negi class really contributed to anything.

[Dargor]

Originally Posted by Endscape

I honestly don't see that much of a difference.

Its the scale. While you got the standard issue of the protagonist developing their abilities at a breakneck pace, Negi didn't tap out at the high tiers until RTII became a thing towards the series tale end, and its basically been the only thing he's been using ever since. Compare and contrast with Touta catching up there comparatively quicker as far as the stories narrative is concerned. He was already throwing down with people who would have mopped the floor with our hero's by the time the MM arc swung in damn near the first actual arc of the series. That's not even getting into the fact that he's in reality done very little to have any real distinguishing abilities, up until the most recent chapter. Sure, you can excuse it being a sequel series and trying to keep pace where Negima ended on, but that's a whole different ball game and frankly does UQ Holder no favors on its own.

For the record, I'm still of the mind that RTII basically ruined everything that made Negi entertaining as a character in the first place. Royal blood blah blah blah being used as an excuse for his intelligence just makes everything worse.

[Shippuu]

I never liked Raiten Taiso 2. It's so broken and turned Negi into a one-trick pony when he had quite a lot of interesting spell variety in the earlier days. It also doesn't help that Akamatsu sucks when it comes to speed consistency and like many battle shounen mangaka VASTLY underestimates how fast lightning is. Not to mention Negi is literally thinking at lightning speed as well. Never mind movement, he should be able to cast thousands of spells nearly simultaneously and instantly. It should be utterly impossible for anyone to keep up with him. Some people have little problems keeping up with Lightning Negi only to get trashed in a later fight. Some people can throw 2000 punches in a second with just "normal" magical enhancement. The first RT version was okay because while awesome it had reasonable limitations, but I think it would be better if you removed the Armament ability from ME entirely. How much longer will it be until someone absorbs a Light-element spell and becomes a literal God?
The Black of Venus in general seems to be turning into the Sharingan of the series. If you don't have it, don't even bother competing at high levels.

High-Speed regeneration so powerful you can survive the total obliteration of your body.
Immortality (maybe even without the connection to Venus, but you don't get the regeneration anymore?)
Demon Physiology, increased strength, speed and durability.
Being able to absorb Mana, Chi and spells, yours and the enemy's, and convert it into energy or store the spells inside you for later instant use.
Reflect enemy spells back at them.
Armaments allow you to take on an absorbed spell's attributes.
Able to absorb people into your body and turn them into your puppets. (Maybe. Seems to be a Black of Venus technique but who knows)
Even without the White of Mars it allows for the creation of a pseudo-perpetual motion magic circle, providing you with endless mana depending on the opponent.
Instant regeneration from blood splatters allow for pseudo-teleportation around the battlefield.

Sure, it's some sort of god power and supposed to be awesome, but it's getting ridiculous. Even the White of Mars, what very little has been revealed about it's concrete abilities so far, seems almost useless in comparison.
Magic Cancel can be resisted by Anti-Anti Magic shields to some degree, most mages learned the Dispulsio spell which is the same effect but weaker, powerful mages can potentially blast through it (which kind of goes against the whole point of the ability), it can be replicated by science, has to be activated manually and it's unknown how long you can keep it active or if you can actually use magic yourself while using it.
The world creation also seems extremely limited and inherently flawed, and even the reality warping inside these worlds is not omnipotent.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

Nah, being perfect in everything isn't standart shonen protagonist trait. That's being Gary Stue.

Negi was not perfect in everything at first, though, way to miss the freaking point. That is why he needed partners in the first place! Have you been paying attention, or are you just not getting it intentionally by now?

In contrast, Touta, even when he gains Pactio partners, goes right afterwards and gets into major fights on his own just fine, which Negi didn't start doing until after the narrative began collapsing under the weight of the power scalation.

Want to throw stones at a Gary Stu? There's Touta with a huge target spray-painted on him.

And so far only UQ character that ends mostly useless in battlefield is Karin (and she deservedly got lot of flak for it). In comparrison not even half of Negi class really contributed to anything.

Like half of them were not in Negi's team to begin with, so... duh.

Of course they didn't contribute, they weren't supposed to (nice as it would've been for them to become relevant too.) Those were comic relief for the most part. Next you'll be complaining about Oolong and Puar not contributing to beating Frieza or Majin Buu. While we're at it let's tackle the issue of the likes of Mizore and Shinobu doing freaking nothing at all, and being unlikely to ever do much in the future with a short deadline quickly coming for the series, though, which would be a much more apt comparison point since they have been pulled into UQ Holder business now, unlike someone like the cheerleaders or the twins.

[Shippuu]

That chapter was way too slow for the monthly wait but at least Juzo is here now. And how! Turns out he's basically Sasaki Kojirou with Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, except he doesn't have any special abilities and got this awesome after swinging his sword a long time. Uh..okay. But can he kill Servants? And how is he weaker than Eva?
In a way Juzo perfectly encapsulates the cancerous "everything just works" element permeating throughout UQ Holder. There is no rhyme or reason, everyone is just awesome.
Even Rakan's bullshit was somewhat grounded in magical realism and theory, but this guy is something else entirely. With Juzo's conceptual attacks, Nikitis being able to turn the Earth for a year with 0.1% of his energy and Dana being a time-space god the power creep is escalating so hard one has to wonder where it will end.

Juzo's last words were particularly noteworthy. Are they going to use him to cut the Karma clinging to Ialda? And I still have no idea where all this terrorism and Noble stuff is going. How does it relate to the main plot?

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Another stupid load of bull edgy asspull chapter.

No wonder they'd be keeping these new characters away for so long, they all suck. Only 'lol coolness' edge and power escalation with no substance or damn sense.