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

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Eleutheria

25 raw is out - bog-standard shounen fare (feelings > all) but not too bad.

I saw it, and I'm with you on that. I was kind of hoping either Touta was in control the whole time and just actually that pissed, or that he'd "kill" him and freak out,, only for the werewolf to conveniently be immortal as well.

[Breimoon]

the scans are out, it would be nice if he were to join UQ Holders and be the third room mate

[kenjtr]

It is like a ichigo vs uroquiara battle lol

[OverMaster]

The problem with that would be, after this, it would be sticking Touta with TWO fifth wheels who can't hope to catch up to him (let's face it, with all the edges he's been handed, they cannot. Powerups on the level of Magia Erebea aren't sold at the turn of the corner). As it is, this is a terribly unbalanced team already because Touta MUST be pumped high above his acting teammates (Karin, for all her longevity, doesn't seem to have anything on ME level, we've seen how low Kuro stacks next to Touta now, Evangeline and Jinbei stand behind sitting on their butts, and it's unlikely the other members have ME-rank haxes of their own without cheapening the whole setup) for whatever reason.

It's a catch 22. You have made your lead gain a major start on becoming even greater than Eva this early on, and now you either cheapen what Eva-level power means from now on to give Touta credible challenges, or you turn him into a Boring Invincible Hero who can just throw a tantrum and beat nearly everyone down, only to quickly snap back again.

[Fenrir_valindri]

I don't know about Kuro, but Karin seemed pretty damn powerful when she activated her true power. She made short work of the sadist who had otherwise been fighting evenly with her.

[OverMaster]

Yeah, but again, Touta would have wrecked him just as easily if not worse by throwing a tantrum then. Karin seems to be rather above Kuromaru, that's for sure, and her long life span SHOULD make her a very highly ranked top tier (making it even more confusing why she doesn't even ever get a mention in Negima. At least, you'd think Eva would mention her a some sort of apprentice measurement shtick for Negi). But Touta is being so blatantly built as a Super Special Snowflake Author's Pet, it's unlikely he won't outdo her shortly, if he hasn't by now.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by OverMaster

The problem with that would be, after this, it would be sticking Touta with TWO fifth wheels who can't hope to catch up to him (let's face it, with all the edges he's been handed, they cannot. Powerups on the level of Magia Erebea aren't sold at the turn of the corner). As it is, this is a terribly unbalanced team already because Touta MUST be pumped high above his acting teammates (Karin, for all her longevity, doesn't seem to have anything on ME level, we've seen how low Kuro stacks next to Touta now, Evangeline and Jinbei stand behind sitting on their butts, and it's unlikely the other members have ME-rank haxes of their own without cheapening the whole setup) for whatever reason.

It's a catch 22. You have made your lead gain a major start on becoming even greater than Eva this early on, and now you either cheapen what Eva-level power means from now on to give Touta credible challenges, or you turn him into a Boring Invincible Hero who can just throw a tantrum and beat nearly everyone down, only to quickly snap back again.

I'm not so sure about this. First, this isn't Eva-level mojo their throwing down. It isn't even Eva's toe nail-level mojo. There is plenty of room for them to grow before they hit the big leagues.

I don't know much about Karin, but we do know one thing for sure: her immortality is stronger than Eva's. Touta and Negi have "complete" ME, and she's supposed to be on par with them. We don't know how she'll stack up, but don't count her out yet.

And for Kuromaru, I'd like to point out s/he's a user of the Hax McWinButton sword school. Shinmeiryu techniques are fast enough to hit Negi and can penetrate all defenses. If s/he learns Second Blade, it puts her in the same ballpark as Ala Alba.

[AstroNerdBoy]

Originally Posted by XFire

I'm not so sure about this. First, this isn't Eva-level mojo their throwing down. It isn't even Eva's toe nail-level mojo. There is plenty of room for them to grow before they hit the big leagues.

Touta already snuck one over on Eva by stealing her towel. I honestly think she didn't think he had it in him. Touta's already in the big leagues as far as Akamatsu-sensei has set him up, at least in terms of power. His track record is that when you think he's been punked, he just levels up until he punks his opponent.

Meh. I said what I wanted to say in the post that goes up tomorrow on the blog (complete with Monty Python awesomeness). ^_~

[dragon1412]

Is it just me or do anyone here have the feelings of Kamijou Touma speech when reading the Touta speech to the wolf ?? for a while there i thought he is going to say " i'm going to crush that pathetic illusion of your".

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by AstroNerdBoy

Touta already snuck one over on Eva by stealing her towel. I honestly think she didn't think he had it in him.

She didn't use a magic barrier so she was going easy on him. She might have been a bit surprised, but she was still holding back.

Touta's already in the big leagues as far as Akamatsu-sensei has set him up, at least in terms of power. His track record is that when you think he's been punked, he just levels up until he punks his opponent.

I really wonder where you get this from.

[AstroNerdBoy]

Originally Posted by Endscape

I really wonder where you get this from.

Maybe we aren't reading the same manga.

Kuroumaru -- well trained immortal hunter and youkai to boot. Squares off against Touta, seems to have an advantage, ends up being punked by Touta.

Eva -- Supreme mage and shinso vampire. While not going all out, she does unleash one of her high end, ancient ice magic on Touta. Touta avoids, smokes up a cliff, steals her towel after an initial fail (with Kuroumaru's tossing assistance).

Underground -- Dark carverns filled magical monsters of various kinds. Touta loses an arm. He's given Gravity Blade, masters it in a month, punks all these monsters (with assistance from Kuroumaru and probably Jinbee), emerges from the UQ Holder trial in record time.

Kaito -- Powerful, battle hardened, mercenary werewolf. Punks Touta by sealing him. Touta unseals himself, uses ME, powers up, punks Kaito. Further, Touta punks his own ME by forcing it down, then punks Kaito again in the arm wrestling match.

By virtue of this fight, after having been punked by Karin and Kuroumaru in arm wrestling, is there any doubt that Touta will have the women cooking for him now?

[XFire]

Originally Posted by AstroNerdBoy

Maybe we aren't reading the same manga.

Kuroumaru -- well trained immortal hunter and youkai to boot. Squares off against Touta, seems to have an advantage, ends up being punked by Touta.

Eva -- Supreme mage and shinso vampire. While not going all out, she does unleash one of her high end, ancient ice magic on Touta. Touta avoids, smokes up a cliff, steals her towel after an initial fail (with Kuroumaru's tossing assistance).

Underground -- Dark carverns filled magical monsters of various kinds. Touta loses an arm. He's given Gravity Blade, masters it in a month, punks all these monsters (with assistance from Kuroumaru and probably Jinbee), emerges from the UQ Holder trial in record time.

Kaito -- Powerful, battle hardened, mercenary werewolf. Punks Touta by sealing him. Touta unseals himself, uses ME, powers up, punks Kaito. Further, Touta punks his own ME by forcing it down, then punks Kaito again in the arm wrestling match.

By virtue of this fight, after having been punked by Karin and Kuroumaru in arm wrestling, is there any doubt that Touta will have the women cooking for him now?

Kuromaro was sent on that mission with the express intent of getting him killed, and he beat the shit out of Touta during their fight. Touta won because lol!immortal.

Eva was playing with him. As in, that's literally the way they spend their free time together. If she had been remotely serious she'd have vaporized him.

Kaito isn't anywhere near the big leagues. Speed of Sound = Speed of Shit in Negima, and this is still using those standards.

[EvI]

it's just me who thinks that kaito can be koutaru descendent?
and that old man immortal hunter seems to be up to something i don't like him at all... >_>

and i disagree with you xfire, the only one to surprass this kind of speed in the manga was negi who reached the speed of light by turning himself lighting, hell that was op

i am impressed with touta and this manga, i like harem histories but i found that i like the typical action, romance(with one-two girls) more and also this thing that the protagonist "HAS" to be the strongest is lame already... so seeing touta growth and the strength of his companions is great, totally different from negima where negi was the only one at that level (asuna may have also reached this level in the end but...it was in the end...) reason i liked nagi history more where we saw a bunch of ultra powerfull characters fight together against ultra powerfull villains (damn i want a nagi manga)....

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by AstroNerdBoy

Maybe we aren't reading the same manga.

Kuroumaru -- well trained immortal hunter and youkai to boot. Squares off against Touta, seems to have an advantage, ends up being punked by Touta.

Kuromaru was winning that fight handily, he easily displayed more skill than Touta, who only won because as XFire mentioned, 'lolimmortal', plus a healthy dose of surprise

Eva -- Supreme mage and shinso vampire. While not going all out, she does unleash one of her high end, ancient ice magic on Touta. Touta avoids, smokes up a cliff, steals her towel after an initial fail (with Kuroumaru's tossing assistance).

She was going easy on him. We know mages of Eva's level can control projectiles through psychokinesis, so she could have easily speared him.

As for the towel, as I mentioned earlier, she didn't use a barrier, she let him get it.

Underground -- Dark carverns filled magical monsters of various kinds. Touta loses an arm. He's given Gravity Blade, masters it in a month, punks all these monsters (with assistance from Kuroumaru and probably Jinbee), emerges from the UQ Holder trial in record time.

Those monsters are scrubs.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by EvI

it's just me who thinks that kaito can be koutaru descendent?
and that old man immortal hunter seems to be up to something i don't like him at all... >_>

and i disagree with you xfire, the only one to surprass this kind of speed in the manga was negi who reached the speed of light by turning himself lighting, hell that was op

i am impressed with touta and this manga, i like harem histories but i found that i like the typical action, romance(with one-two girls) more and also this thing that the protagonist "HAS" to be the strongest is lame already... so seeing touta growth and the strength of his companions is great, totally different from negima where negi was the only one at that level (asuna may have also reached this level in the end but...it was in the end...) reason i liked nagi history more where we saw a bunch of ultra powerfull characters fight together against ultra powerfull villains (damn i want a nagi manga)....

Wut.

Are you joking or did you miss the entire second half of the manga. Everyone in the highest tier of Negima (Fate, the Disciples, Ala Ruba, Eva, etc.) could not only react to but counter Negi's lightning speed. They themselves are generally clocked in as being thousands of times the speed of sound. Dodging bullets in flight and crossing huge distances in seconds was standard fare. Hell, Setsuna and Kaede were able to keep up with Negi himself for a while. I'll be perfectly honest here, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Kaito is even stronger than End-of-series Yue.

[chaosprophet]

A correction though, Negi with his ME moves at the speed of 150km/s (speed of lightning). That's still way slower than speed of light (2000 times slower). That's about 450 times the speed of sound.

[Sage Shinigami]

Originally Posted by AstroNerdBoy

Touta already snuck one over on Eva by stealing her towel. I honestly think she didn't think he had it in him. Touta's already in the big leagues as far as Akamatsu-sensei has set him up, at least in terms of power. His track record is that when you think he's been punked, he just levels up until he punks his opponent.

Meh. I said what I wanted to say in the post that goes up tomorrow on the blog (complete with Monty Python awesomeness). ^_~

Not hardly. I think what's throwing you off is that, power-wise, we're starting from a place much further along than where we started with Negi. Negi started off as a baseline human who just happened to be a good spellcaster. But he was kind of a weakling until he started getting training.

In fact...Negi really did start off one of his earliest training sessions just...practicing martial arts. Something you can just go to a dojo and do. Meanwhile Touta's first training is someone teaching him how to go the speed of sound.

To use a completely different shonen for what I feel is a better example: Mahou Sensei Negima was like watching Goku start out in Dragon Ball with people who can do fairly normal stuff and then by the end it's like the end of Dragon Ball Z where they're tossing around spells that can cause mass destruction, erase people and things from existence, moving several times faster than the speed of sound or the normal human eye can ever see, and everyone can fly.

And then UQ Holder comes along and starts you with a new protagonist...only from the Saiyan Saga. It's pretty impressive, but he's got a long way to go.

(Please don't get too caught up making a direct one-to-one correlation. It's just meant to be a general analogy, I'm not saying Negi can blow up galaxies or anything like that.)

[Superbia]

Originally Posted by XFire

Wut.

Are you joking or did you miss the entire second half of the manga. Everyone in the highest tier of Negima (Fate, the Disciples, Ala Ruba, Eva, etc.) could not only react to but counter Negi's lightning speed. They themselves are generally clocked in as being thousands of times the speed of sound. Dodging bullets in flight and crossing huge distances in seconds was standard fare. Hell, Setsuna and Kaede were able to keep up with Negi himself for a while. I'll be perfectly honest here, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Kaito is even stronger than End-of-series Yue.

They weren't reacting to Negi's lightning speed, but the streamers that got sent ahead of him that telegraphed his movements. That doesn't require mach 1 level speeds.

And unless the mangaka makes a guide saying everyones top speed, you can't be sure that everyone else was capable of moving faster than Kaito.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Superbia

They weren't reacting to Negi's lightning speed, but the streamers that got sent ahead of him that telegraphed his movements. That doesn't require mach 1 level speeds.

And unless the mangaka makes a guide saying everyones top speed, you can't be sure that everyone else was capable of moving faster than Kaito.

First, they were reacting to the second form, which circumvents that weakness. Again this is discussed within three chapters of him using it for the first time. And they react to him moving at that speed when he's three feet away.

And unfortunately for you, the mangaka does in fact comment on the issue of speed in the back-of-the-book sections. Speed-of-sound is basic for an experienced shundo user. Kaede, for one, can go a step past and freely use Shukichi, which is basically the Hax version of shundo and compared to teleportation.

Kaito might be on the level of those trash mob bounty hunters that cornered Nodoka, but I can't see him being higher than that.

[chaosprophet]

Yes, XFire is correct.

Negi with only one layer of thousand bolts = able to do a 150Km/s instant movement. Weakness is that it is "telegraphed", at least for those experienced enough to being able to react to it.
Negi with two layers of thousand bolts = Now he constantly moves at the speed of 150Kms. Both his body and thought processes are accelerated. The previous weakness disappears.

And like XFire said, some of the high end people like Eva with Queen of Ice ME, while not being able to move as quick as him, was able to react to his speed.

If anyone wants to remember more about Negi's ME, here is the explanation taken from end of volumes and translated by CanonRap:

Spoiler for a bit long:

He Astrape Huper Ouranou Mega Dunamene [Η Αστραπη Υπερ Ουρανου Μεγα Δυναμενη]
雷天大壮 raiten taisou
Supplement: Khilipl Astrape

Great Vigour of the Thunderous Sky. By absorbing the most powerful spell in the lightning element, the mage physically transforms into sacred fire – that is, a charged particle mass, which grants an instantaneous speed of 150km/s: Lightning Speed Instant Movement (雷速瞬動 raisoku shundou).

However, a major disadvantage exists in that being truly “lightning,” a positive streamer will always move before the mage, telegraphing the destination of every movement. Also, the speed boost is limited to the mage’s physical actions.

Da Zhuang (大壮 taisou) is title of the thirty-fourth hexgram in the I Ching, thus named because the hexagram composes of ‘Force’ (‘Heaven’) and ‘Shake’ (‘Thunder’). The hexagram itself more or less means ‘strongly, intensely, lively’, thus the Greek name: “lightning above the Heavens is extremely powerful.“

Tastrapa Huper Ouranou Mega Dunamena [Ταστλαπα Υπερ Ουρανου Μεγα Δυναμενε]
雷天双壮 raiten sousou
Supplement: Khilipl Astrape x 2

Twin Vigour of the Thunderous Sky, Mega Dunamene 2. By absorbing the ‘Thousand Thunderbolts’ twofold, the mage can maintain a constant speed of 150km/s – Constant Lightning Form (常時雷化 jouji ikadzuchi-ka). At the same time, this form increases both physical mobility and mental processing speed, allowing the mage’s mind to keep pace with a “lightning” body.