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

[mark1246]

for those who want a clear guide

Timeline A - Chao's timeline
Timeline B - Chao comes back in time. 99% of Negima and UQ Holder take place in this timeline.
Timeline C - Asuna comes back in time. The Negima epilogue and the UQ Holder chapters that expand on that epilogue take place in this timeline.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Timelines B and C are one and the same until the point where Asuna is returned to the past, and only then it branches out into two from that point. But before that they are the same timeline, as that divergence point doesn't change what happened before it.

[SoloPanda]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

Timelines B and C are one and the same until the point where Asuna is returned to the past, and only then it branches out into two from that point. But before that they are the same timeline, as that divergence point doesn't change what happened before it.

I imagine that there are infinite divergence points though. So overall we may have diverged greatly from the beginning of the story to the point where Asuna wakes up.

[Dargor]

I can't wait for the timeline where the second half of the series wasn't a mess.

[Shippuu]

I was under the impression that the timeline UQ Holder takes place in is a completely separate what-if scenario and has absolutely nothing to do with the Negima timeline (although events may have transpired similarly after Asuna was sealed). When Asuna wakes up in the bad future and Chao and Eva show up they travel to the past of the same Negima timeline, undoing everything up to this point. The happy end does not happen in a new timeline, but the rewritten Negima one. There is no split.

At least I hope so. It would be a massive fuck you to just shit all over the Negima timeline and ruin all these people's lives while Asuna gets shoved into a separate timeline with people who aren't actually the same people she spent all that time with. That's some Esoteric Happy Ending.

I suppose Ken didn't do a decent enough job considering people still have trouble making sense of this mess despite several attempted explanations in-story.

[SoloPanda]

Does this chapter mean that Touta isn't really immortal? i mean his immortality comes from the solar system, this means that he will die when the solar system dies in 5 billion years or so. When that happens all the others like Kirie and Karen will experience something terrible while he gets to die. I know 5 billion years is something that may as well be immortal to the average human, and even Karin is only 2500 years old. But this is just a bit of trivial stuff that stuck out to me. When the Solar system ends Karen will float in space endlessly, Kirie will get stuck in an infinite loop, Touta will die.

[erneiz_hyde]

With this shit about Touta having energy from the solar system, then Karin probably drew hers from the collective consciousnesses of humanity so she will probably lose her immortality before Touta.

[Shippuu]

I don't really follow why Touta immediately jumps to the solar system. Touta draws his energy from Venus, and maybe Mars, but that's far from the entire solar system unless planets all share energy..somehow.
But if each planet has its own Magic/Mystery I wonder if this means that there is a Green of Gaia, or a Blue of Neptune, or the Not-Quite-As-White of Uranus.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Shippuu

At least I hope so. It would be a massive fuck you to just shit all over the Negima timeline and ruin all these people's lives while Asuna gets shoved into a separate timeline with people who aren't actually the same people she spent all that time with. That's some Esoteric Happy Ending.

That's literally the Goku Black arc of Dragon Ball Super, isn't it?

With this shit about Touta having energy from the solar system, then Karin probably drew hers from the collective consciousnesses of humanity so she will probably lose her immortality before Touta.

Karin's immortality seems to be a curse from God Himself, so it's probably as everlasting as He is unless He decides revoking it.

[amtro]

Originally Posted by Shippuu

I don't really follow why Touta immediately jumps to the solar system. Touta draws his energy from Venus, and maybe Mars, but that's far from the entire solar system unless planets all share energy..somehow.
But if each planet has its own Magic/Mystery I wonder if this means that there is a Green of Gaia, or a Blue of Neptune, or the Not-Quite-As-White of Uranus.

He draws his energy from the mana of the solar system, with his portal to it being through Venus. Venus is just a gateway.

[Hata]

talk about rush to ending, 3 UQ in one chapter, I guess Ken was serious when he said it is on the final leg of the story.

[AstroNerdBoy]

> I guess Ken was serious when he said it is on the final leg of the story.

He's shooting for a 2 year marker.

[AP24]

So is Fate really dead?

[SoloPanda]

Originally Posted by AP24

So is Fate really dead?

we'll find out in a year or so when the past catches up with the present. We've had a flash back a flash forward and even a flash sideways, reminds me of a chevy chase movie.

[Shippuu]

There is no way Fate is dead. He didn't have an obligatory death flashback yet.
Besides, he may not be immortal, but he isn't human. I would imagine as long as his core (see Negima) is not destroyed he can be put together again.

So Santa gets Chisame's artifact? That makes no sense, no sense at all. It looks different but he says it's hers. What?
Kuromarou's remark about the monsters under the inn resurrecting due to humanity's malice seems interesting, but I thought only spiritually powerful entities like Vrkso Nagasya and Ryoumen-Sukuna-no-Kami can survive the destruction of their physical bodies?
Not a fan of all the time-skips and mini time-skips to suddenly make Touta hyper competent (Touta did research? Touta?) but I suppose given the looming end on the horizon there's no time to waste.
The library under Mahora was always a strange place, but I don't think even Ken had any idea how important it would be in those early chapters where a bunch of children delved into its depths in pursuit of a magical book to improve their grades. True to its name, the Akasha Library contains books not just from this timeline but others as well. Civilizations that were and might have been. The question is of course who built it? Who could have built it? Considering its nature Dana seems to be most obvious guess with her transcendental powers, but is that it? The statue of Amateru and her knight stands in the lobby, and Ialda created the librarian who would oversee its halls for many years.
Touta notes Nikitis' resemblance to Fate. Did Ialda model Fate after this guy?
To put a stop to Kuromaru's nagging, Nikitis shuts him up by using a power suspiciously similar to Rewrite. Wait what? But only Ialda's descendants can use the White of Mars. Even more interesting is the fact that the White of Mars, so far, has only demonstrated the ability to create and manipulate separate spiritual worlds. Nikitis meanwhile casually warps actual physical reality. Did Dana use the same power for her "optical illusion" to catch Cutlass? Is their power the original the White of Mars is based on? We know a lot about the workings of the Black of Venus by now but the White of Mars remains an almost complete mystery.
And wow. Ken not only finally straightened out the retcon mess that were Nobles and High-Daylight Walkers by clarifying that Nobles are indeed humans who became vampires through Magic, but they originate from a highly magically advanced civilization on Venus. Ah... Venus, Venus.. finally you reveal your mysteries.
Civilization on Venus suffered the same fate many advanced civilizations in fiction share, and the survivors were banished to a spirit world which would later be known as the demon world. But who built this inverse side? Ialda? And why is it apparently not collapsing even though Venus itself presumably has no life left to sustain it? The same process clearly didn't work for Mars. And how did these surviving people turn into demons, a form of life so different than vampires? I also find it rather humorous that for all their research and intelligence, these unparalleled geniuses from a hyper advanced alien civilization could ultimately only stuff themselves with lots of beasts and become generic b movie monsters. Not even sure what to make of his "creatures of darkness who nevertheless walks in daylight" statement. It's not like they're actual vampires who hate sunlight. There really was no need for them to be called vampires. They could've been anything else and it would have been less of a mess.
It seems likely that Ialda is from pre-catastrophe Venus but I don't really think so. Her White of Mars and Black of Venus are failures, her immortality is ass and she isn't a Noble or at the very least did not become one through her own research as she couldn't turn Evangeline into one. She does seem to have demonic entities inside her main body similar to a Noble but who knows. I certainly find it hard to imagine how a no-name mage from presumably primitive backwater Ancient Greece could make it this far. Maybe there was an ancient super civilization on Mars too?

What a chapter. Messy though it may be, at least I'm finally getting answers.
Now the only real mystery left in UQ Holder is Juuzo. But if we apply Occam's Razor and visual similarity to Dynamis and Mana as well as being second in strength after Evangeline, It seems be likely that he's a demon of some kind. He could be the perfect gateway to learn more about the current demon world, as Zazie and Poyo are mostly absent and have probably better things to do.

[Ultragunner]

Wait, is Ba'al now an ally of UQ? If not then why two senior members of UQ standing there?

[Dargor]

I think she mind woogied them. The bandages over their eyes are probably some form of Charm used to control them.

As for Not!Fate using rewrite, I don't think so. He's a vampire, so using a charm ability to get Kuro to shut up while everyone else carried on their normal business seems to be a much easier leap to come to. No one else was suspect while Kuro was thrown for a loop, so it seems to me that it was messing with his mind exclusively.

Her White of Mars and Black of Venus are failures

W...what? Given that we know bunk about her abilities, that seems like a stretch, especially given that everything to do with ME is a permutation based off her own abilities. She's literally never demonstrated any actual powers beyond the big lasers of doom, and paralyzing Jack and Eva. Or, y'know, creating sentient beings with fully functioning souls, which no one else seems to have done despite how much power they profess to have.

[silenceblade]

Touta's ability to draw infinite magical power from the solar system is similar to Ialda's ability to draw power from the suffering of everyone (they both even have the solar system image on them). Since the white of Mars an black of Venus came from her it is not surprising that Touta is the most similar to her.

It is shocking that the purebloods are 12000 years old while Ialda is less than 3000 years old. I am not surprise that there are beings similar, however a whole race is equal to Ialda?

[Shippuu]

Ialda might be much older than it seems. The way she phrases it could simply refer to her having lived with the Resonance for 2600 years.
And race doesn't say much either. There might "only" be a dozen of them still around by this point and most of them are no different than living corpses according to Dana because of the sheer amount of time that has passed and boredom.
There is also demon royalty which is supposedly on the same level but considering the way royalty works "final boss materials" like Zazie and Poyo are probably much fewer in number than even Nobles.

And we don't really know Ialda's actual power in comparison to the other two races because we don't really know how powerful Ialda is. Most of her abilities are informed attributes and she never demonstrates any of them. All the spells she programmed into her constructs? Never uses them. Magic Cancel? Nope. Magia Erebea? No. Demon form? Nope. In her current state she's basically just a raw powerhouse, and even that is only when she is fighting on her main body. Away from it her magical power seems to be reduced dramatically and she no longer has any kind of regeneration, otherwise it would've been impossible for Nagi to defeat her.
If she could actually use the Black of Venus and White of Mars to the extent that Touta, Negi and Asuna can she would probably be literally impossible to defeat even without the raw power of the Resonance.
And remember the soul-killing spell she created? Neither does Ken. Because then the fight would be over before it even starts.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

What a mess. Not only the story jumps back and forth with little rhyme or reason, but one can easily tell all this convoluted crap is going to leave a ton of unexplained plot holes... again.