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I was surprised when I found that this series was apparently extending for a while longer than it seemed halfway through last year. Just to make clear, I haven't read a chapter since I said I was dropping it for good, but I checked some comments elsewhere that give me a general idea of what's going on. After spending some time away, I had some feelings sorted out that I wanted to let out.
Akamatsu probably realized UQ had so many OP players with Touta, sword god Kuroumaru, Juuzou, and Nikitis that he had to introduce last minute OP villains to create some tension, otherwise the final battle would have been only one chapter long.
I had very mixed feelings about hearing Kuroumaru suddenly is top-tier on the level of the concept-cutter and the High Daylight Walker. Long ago, I would have been glad about Kuroumaru getting to look badass, but now it just feels like Akamatsu pandering to the Japanese readers who only talk in forums about how hot Kuroumaru is and how much they want Touta to bang her. Regretting spending so much damn time on Yukihime and Kirie teasing now, huh? Making Kuroumaru one of the top OP characters now, through 45-year time skip on top of it, comes off as a way to give Touta a trophy wife that can compensate for not getting the hot blonde vampire head of the super immortal group. And the 16th birthday thing doesn't matter anymore after the plot jumped 45 years into the future, I guess. Akamatsu is probably saying "Meh, everyone already thinks of Kuroumaru as a girl, so to hell with the choice of gender identity. Kuroumaru always was a walking bag of sexist implications anyway." Even as someone who wanted to like Kuroumaru, there's really nothing I can say in defense of this at this point.
Gotta say, feeling too bad for Nikitis. He's the only character with some charisma and now he's being eclipsed by those like Kuroumaru of all people. Is the manga even pretending he's as powerful as the hyped Daylight Walkers should be? By now, he's like a less dignified version of Dana. He comes out of the blue to give Touta another upgrade and now he's just there to get sidelined in every damn fight. Dana only comes back when Akamatsu needs a plot device when Kirie's save point isn't available, but at least her ridiculous power level doesn't get downplayed. Maybe Akamatsu shouldn't even have included Nikitis so late if he was going to waste him like this...
I think what UQ Holder is right now is a super weird hybrid of Akamatsu's concepts for a series about UQ Holder and the unfinished Lifemaker plot. Ba'al and his mega demon minions sure feel like an individual group of bad guys that were meant to have their own arc, probably at a trip to Venus even, but now they're getting shoved in as some sort of a practice squad for the Lifemaker's forces with absolutely no setup. Well, at least these demons aren't getting curb stomped by a single punch from Touta in just one chapter like the immortal hunters did. That was just embarrassing.
After thinking about it, I realized that my biggest problem with UQ Holder isn't the crappy writing for plot and characters. Lots of series get that and I don't get mad. Other manga that have turned out shitty failed while doing its own thing. UQ Holder didn't. Santa's arc worked to some extent so if the rest of the series had kept trying like it did with Santa, even if it failed, I could have respected that. But Akamatsu just gave in to what his reputation demanded and shoehorned the most boring, flavorless harem clichés done in the most dull way possible when he apply them better in Love Hina and Negima. Also, Touta's motives ended up revolving completely around cleaning up the mess left by Yukihime and Negi. I recall he said he was thinking about his clone siblings who died and wanted to speak more with Fate, but that'll hardly matter with how the endgame is setup. In short, I wanted Touta to find his own motive and purpose as a protagonist, but at best, that's gonna be left for an epilogue that says "the real adventure is getting started". Yeah right, have a happy retirement Akamatsu.
I still consider UQ Holder a disappointing shonen manga but that's nothing new, it's that the reasons why it turned out disappointing for me are quite unique and convoluted as it's not all the series' fault. The author's precendents had a lot of hand in it so what went wrong can't be fully understood by UQ Holder alone, like why it turned into badly written harem and Negima 2 halfway. To be truly sincere, I would have liked reading more arcs like Santa's in UQ Holder, i.e. arcs about the personal circumstances, growth and conflict of the UQ characters. I kept following because I wanted to believe it was still possible to have arcs resembling Santa's even after Dana and the Lifemaker's attack, but it didn't happen. Needed the mini arc with Kuroumaru's clan to turn out lame ass for me to get that. At least I'm glad I could figure out the reasons behind my feelings that get me stuck on this.
What this series ended up being for me is one of those works that can be dull to sit through wih its lackluster execution, but the events and reasons why the characters do what they do are so disjointed and nonsensical that it's way more entertaining to look back on the ridiculousness of it all. Still a shame for Negima and the UQ characters that got misused. Don't think I'll ever find this peculiar kind of trainwreck in manga again. I give it that.
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