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

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

I stick to what I already said with the Ala Rubra comparison.

As you yourself noted, Negima took the time to deal with Ala Rubra. I don't see why UQ Holder should avoid taking time to do proper storytelling simply because it takes longer from a monthly point of view.

Au contraire, it's the whole root of the series' overall problem. Pretty much all of its major organization, narrative, priorities and structure issues steem from this key core problem.

That's not the point. You can say that till the cows come home, but it is already done, so Akamatsu has to write the best story he can under these circumstances. He can't simply ignore the readers that didn't read Negima because he shouldn't have written a Negima sequel.

Well, that's like saying "He built this bridge on faulty materials, but it's already built, so he might as well put fancy ornaments on it so people walk on a well decorated faulty structure".

No, it's more like saying that he built the bridge with faulty materials, but he can't tear down the bridge, so he has to make the bridge as safe as possible.

By this point the best he could do to savage the series is moving on ahead and away from the Negima stuff he should have issued somewhere else instead of just keeping on picking on the wound, which by now isn't bleeding anymore but filling with pus.

He has to deal with the Negima stuff before moving on from on it.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Originally Posted by Endscape

As you yourself noted, Negima took the time to deal with Ala Rubra. I don't see why UQ Holder should avoid taking time to do proper storytelling simply because it takes longer from a monthly point of view.

If you can't see the importance of time in a serialized storytelling and the different approaches one must follow when tackling a monthly schedule (especially since you don't have to take only the narrative laws themselves into account, but also those of the market, in a quickly changing environment and with UQ already being a niche series as it is, with an anime and multimedia push that pretty much went under the radar), I don't know what to tell you.

That's not the point. You can say that till the cows come home, but it is already done, so Akamatsu has to write the best story he can under these circumstances. He can't simply ignore the readers that didn't read Negima because he shouldn't have written a Negima sequel.

By this point 'the best story he can' is simply sweeping the Negima leftovers under the rug as much as possible and trying for a new approach, though, which is the exact opposite of what he's doing here. This is like Spider-Man trying to move away from The Clone Saga by mentioning it in every story from then on.

No, it's more like saying that he built the bridge with faulty materials, but he can't tear down the bridge, so he has to make the bridge as safe as possible.

... by adding more of the already defective materials, in this case. What this story needs is more fresh stuff to finally stand on its own, not more of what we saw already, but twisted and darkened in a way that doesn't satisfy fans of the old OR the new unless they're that desperate for Muh Eva Shipping.

He has to deal with the Negima stuff before moving on from on it.

Again, he's already done enough of that. You know what's the Negima stuff he has left to deal with? Kicking the Lifemaker's ass and be done with it already so this finally can get a life of its own.

[Ultragunner]

there we go again, the whole Negima vs UQ stuff

while both have legitimate arguments, I was just sitting there enjoying all the materials we've got.

I mean, I love the world of Negima, and UQ is a part of it.
The way I see it, Eva shared the protagonist role with Touta, as much as Touta is the MC, and she does needs all of these developments such as "what happened?", "how did she get here?"...etc....


I mean, even in Negima, she was just depicted as a powerful being with some quirky moments, and a soft spot for both Negi and Nagi.
Whether UQ's Eva had broken her "image" or not, it is no question that we have got to see more of her backstory, and also the world of UQ.

Of course, I'd also love to know more about the other members of Holders, but for now it is Eva's time, and it is hard to separate her from those Negima's content

[AstroNerdBoy]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

I disagree. I think it was clear he was going in that direction since Tota saw Eva in her true form for the first time which was pretty early (way before the Dana chapters).

He saw Eva in her true form for the first time in chapter 2. Then when getting Kuroumaru to help him win Eva's challenge at the onsen, Touta was repulsed by Eva's old lady body, resulting in Eva punishing him hard. There was zero indication of Touta being attracted to Eva until the Eva flashback sub-arc of the Dana training arc.

Harem ending is just a cop out so the author doesn't have to potentially piss off part of the fanbase. This kind of cowardly shit is cancer and should be avoided. Harem ending should only happen when the author sets things up from beginning (think High School DxD).

Haha. And yet as you prove, even the harem ending pisses off a part of the fansbase. So in fact, in a harem setting, ANY ending will piss off part of the fanbase.

As to harem endings, in a pure romance (or romcom) story, sure, pick a single girl. But as is the case with the canon Tenchi Muyo! part of the franchise, the harem ending is justified in terms of story.

I'm not saying Touta has to end with Eva. But Akamatsu has to stop being a little shit and give him a true partner at the end, even if that ends up being Kirie (and I don't even like Kirie).

Pushing the romance elements to the side, from a story perspective, Touta having a battle harem makes sense.

[SilverGlavenus]

Meh, at this point I only hope that Akamatsu won't waste the potentials of a high vampire storyline. Introducing someone as op as Dana and leave it at that would be a middle finger to us.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

That's more of a Nakama that a battle harem, though.

Concerning the first time Touta saw Eva's real body, I'm not sure that aids much to the Touta/Eva case since, if romantic/sexual excitement was born from Touta the moment he first saw her in a child body... well, even if technically your protagonist is two years old himself, making him a pedophile usually isn't the way to go.

That'll always be a problem of sorts with Eva, of course, since her real physical self is childlike in appearance, and it's not like she should be ashamed of it, but... it's not a problem with a real clear cut solution, it takes a lot of relationship buildup to smooth it over narratively, and it's not the kind of thing that should be tossed on top of already existing mother/son issues. It only makes an already creepy coupling even creepier.

while both have legitimate arguments, I was just sitting there enjoying all the materials we've got.

I mean, I love the world of Negima, and UQ is a part of it.

One problem with this is Negima always was a romantic comedy. No matter how much action was thrown around and how big the stakes were, the series' core always was lighthearted even with the more serious and darker stuff added later in (some of which didn't even fit in that well itself even back then, because Akamatsu has always been better at lighter stuff than heavier material). Now, seeing characters being graphically killed on panel and Negi undergoing a long trip of dark misery... it's like reading one of those Ranma 1/2 Dark Fics again. Even if the story is well written (and in UQ's case it isn't), it's just not Ranma 1/2 anymore. Seeing Chisame getting reduced to a human pincushion through the gut and Nodoka the Undead Hollow Thing is the same as Psycho Mass Poisoner Akane or Rapist Ryouga or whatever else those writers did back then.

Mood changes for an ongoing saga may be pulled off, but it takes a whole lot of a hell of a talent, and while Akamatsu still has some talent, it's never been THAT MUCH. He's good at several things, but trying to paint a large dark scene while keeping a comedy undertone is beyond him. It's why we end up with jarring, ill-fitting combinations like a world of (politically pushed) distribution of poverty with most of the world reduced to a dystopia while we mostly focus on areas where they stage Loli Naked Water Races. It's why he can do a zombie apocalypse in a global level but end up reverting everything to status quo as if nothing had mattered at all (except the inclusion of a new character that soon is just as wasted as the others).

There's a limit to how many balls he can juggle at once before he drops them all.

Also, I think Evangeline is kind of like Wolverine. She works better with a mystery element to her past. I don't even mind Dana, she's a nice addition, but reveal too much about Eva's backstory and she loses a lot of mystique in favor of old tired vampire cliches (the poor, victimized vamped child who rises to uber power, the tragic love in her past, yadda, yadda, yadda) much like Too Much Past Wolverine ends up with tons of bad cliched spy and black ops comics and one awful movie where Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool isn't cool just yet.

In any case, if any part of Eva's past needs any attention that's what the hell is the exact deal between her and Karin and, again, where the funk was Karin supposed to be around Negima, where she was never mentioned or hinted at, not even freaking once.

[Ultragunner]

^ too much of Eva’s backstory? Did you mean her past with Touta, or the events in recent chapters?

even for Wolverine, we still get to see his interaction with the x-men. In Negima, I wouldn’t even include Eva among the main cast, her primary purpose was being Negi’s master and sometimes she showed up and kicked some major @ss.
For the Karin stuff, it is exactly like the Wolverine example you mentioned, it was probably Eva come across her while she was depressed or something.
The important thing for Eva’s character in UQ now is her relationship with Negi (and Fate), and we have seen just that.
”Why did she become the leader of UQ Holder?”, “Why does she want to kill Negi?”; “Why did she reject Touta while saying she wouldn’t be able to move on until Negi is dealt with?”

IMO, these questions are far more crucial, at least right now, than her past recruiting Karin and UQ member


here in UQ, Eva has been elevated to a main character, with proper backstory and struggles.

Should Ken have done a better job? absolutely, but I guess ending Negima prematurely really did have consequences

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Making Evangeline a protagonist was an extremely risky decision, and it seems to me it was taken just because she was that popular and being long lived she was available for a series set in the future back when Akamatsu wanted to move away from Negima's main cast.

You can't make her too powerful or you won't have any sense of threat for the heroes. You can't make her weak or she'll come off as pathetic. You should leave an element of humor to her (which was easier to do when she was more hands off things), but she's got to keep some dignity. She should be cruel in her own way, but also good hearted. Too hard a character to balance properly when she's not this really cool secondary old wise master, and that's even without accounting bringing up a whole new cast, building up a whole new world setting, and now juggling several plot lines hanging from a past time and mostly involving characters who are by now either dead or barely showing up anymore (Chachamaru, Zazie, Mana) or downright in the enemy camp (meaning that, even if we can still empathize with them, we shouldn't root for them as much as we root for the HEROES of the piece).

All in all, no matter how popular and crowd pandering she is, I think promoting her to main character was another mistake the series made from the start. Maybe another type of series might have pulled it off. Dance in the Vampire Bund mostly managed doing it with a somewhat similar character, but it's a very different series with very different goals and style.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by AstroNerdBoy

He saw Eva in her true form for the first time in chapter 2. Then when getting Kuroumaru to help him win Eva's challenge at the onsen, Touta was repulsed by Eva's old lady body, resulting in Eva punishing him hard. There was zero indication of Touta being attracted to Eva until the Eva flashback sub-arc of the Dana training arc.

Tota was clearly attracted to Eva's loli body (her real body, let's not forget the obasan look is just an illusion). I don't know about you, but at that moment I knew there would be something between Tota and Eva at some point down the line.

Haha. And yet as you prove, even the harem ending pisses off a part of the fansbase. So in fact, in a harem setting, ANY ending will piss off part of the fanbase.

You can't please everyone, but the harem ending is the safest route.

As to harem endings, in a pure romance (or romcom) story, sure, pick a single girl. But as is the case with the canon Tenchi Muyo! part of the franchise, the harem ending is justified in terms of story.

If it was actually part of the story, sure. But UQ Holder wasn't a harem manga. It started adding harem hijinks after the Dana arc, and the "harem arc" literally stalled the plot. Once the plot started to move again, the harem hijinks decrease and all the romcom elements were mostly focused on Kirie instead. In fact, she's the only serious love interest Tota has right now besides Eva. You've gotta be blind not to notice that.

from a story perspective, Touta having a battle harem makes sense.

No it doesn't. There's no development to support it. Only Eva and Kirie are credible love interests.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

If you can't see the importance of time in a serialized storytelling and the different approaches one must follow when tackling a monthly schedule (especially since you don't have to take only the narrative laws themselves into account, but also those of the market, in a quickly changing environment and with UQ already being a niche series as it is, with an anime and multimedia push that pretty much went under the radar), I don't know what to tell you.

I know all of that. I simply don't think Akamatsu should compromise his storytelling simply to speed things up. That's putting the cart before the horse.

By this point 'the best story he can' is simply sweeping the Negima leftovers under the rug as much as possible and trying for a new approach, though, which is the exact opposite of what he's doing here. This is like Spider-Man trying to move away from The Clone Saga by mentioning it in every story from then on.

... by adding more of the already defective materials, in this case. What this story needs is more fresh stuff to finally stand on its own, not more of what we saw already, but twisted and darkened in a way that doesn't satisfy fans of the old OR the new unless they're that desperate for Muh Eva Shipping.

He has to actually finish what he started before moving on to other things. He can't just skip on proper storytelling just to move on to something else

Again, he's already done enough of that. You know what's the Negima stuff he has left to deal with? Kicking the Lifemaker's ass and be done with it already so this finally can get a life of its own.

He needs to deal with all the lingering plot threads he's brought up before that. He can't just start the next chapter by saying "Lifemaker's dead!" and just move on.

[wuhugm]

F*** Kirie and Eva, Karin's Route all the way bros!

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

F*** Kirie and Eva, Karin's Route all the way bros!

Sadly there's no development to support it. Heck, she's pretty much rooting for Kirie now.

[Sixth]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

F*** Kirie and Eva, Karin's Route all the way bros!

Karin is a joke but then there wasn't a better girl in UQ holder at this moment...so yeah, Karin's route all the way.

And also, harem solution is probably the worse solution to do especially for a romance genre manga. Harem solution only works on battle manga or wish-fulfillment LN because it doesn't focus on the romance-drama part. Plus, most of those girls from that genres are usually incapable to feel jealous, anger and extremely simple-minded. MC being poor = Check. MC not being an alpha = Check. MC can't even make 1 simple decision = Check. Ok, let's have harem and we will be living together in a small wooden hut. Because why not? It is fiction after all.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Sixth

Karin is a joke but then there wasn't a better girl in UQ holder at this moment...so yeah, Karin's route all the way.

And also, harem solution is probably the worse solution to do especially for a romance genre manga. Harem solution only works on battle manga or wish-fulfillment LN because it doesn't focus on the romance-drama part. Plus, most of those girls from that genres are usually incapable to feel jealous, anger and extremely simple-minded. MC being poor = Check. MC not being an alpha = Check. MC can't even make 1 simple decision = Check. Ok, let's have harem and we will be living together in a small wooden hut. Because why not? It is fiction after all.

The only ones with girls and MC's like that are the retarded ones that don't pick the harem solution. The entire situation is literally nothing but "who's he going to pick" and the girls own characterization is defined entirely by how much and in what way they love the MC, who in turn has to be some generic insert because romance apparently isn't allowed to have interesting characters.

[Sixth]

Originally Posted by XFire

The only ones with girls and MC's like that are the retarded ones that don't pick the harem solution. The entire situation is literally nothing but "who's he going to pick" and the girls own characterization is defined entirely by how much and in what way they love the MC, who in turn has to be some generic insert because romance apparently isn't allowed to have interesting characters.

Better than "look, a new girl, let's sex...oh wait, another new girl, let's sex...oh no, more girls, let's sex, hey a strong girl, let's sex and domestic her...OMG a hot mother..let's sex".

At this point, you should just go to read harem hentai or pokemon.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Sixth

Better than "look, a new girl, let's sex...oh wait, another new girl, let's sex...oh no, more girls, let's sex, hey a strong girl, let's sex and domestic her...OMG a hot mother..let's sex".

At this point, you should just go to read harem hentai or pokemon.

That's just as, if not more so, common in the ones where the MC chooses only one at the end, in this case after fucking everyone sideways.

And the other half is the same thing but the MC is a wimp who dies from looking at boobs.

[Malicre]

To be fair, i would be happy with touta x anyone but eva at this point

[NapoleonDeCheese]

That's putting the cart before the horse.

Sadly, the cart has been before the horse from the start already.

Re: Best girls- Here, Kuromaru is the best girl. Maybe Shinobu is the only real competition, but she's freaking useless and pointless. Honestly, he's the one who treats Touta the best, he's the one who understands him the most, he's the most loyal and he's the one least likely to ever make him feel bad in a moment of despair, something Karin, Kirie and Yukihime have all been guilty of in the past and something they hadn't given special signs of having grown out of yet, meaning odds are they'd do it again under similar circumstances.

That doesn't mean he's the most interesting character, or the one with the most potential for a story (I think that'd be Karin, maybe Jinbei) or the most entertaining one (Dana, hands down), but he's the best choice for Touta. Just like in Negima I liked Chisame way better but you had to admit Asuna was the most steady, loyal and supporting girl deserving of Negi's attentions.

The thing with a harem ending is you have to get EVERYONE involved agree with it, and that's something you have to work HELLA HARD to justify it. Overall, I think most harems should stop zeroing on a single male lead so much and leave alternate options for the girls who aren't going to be picked. Older harems gained a lot from the 'rival' and 'bro' figures, and that's something sdaly missing from most modern harem, maybe because authors are afraid it'll make readers who insert themselves into the lead feel insecure if there's a potentially better or more assertive male around. Nowadays a girl in the 'harem' can't even look at another guy without the fandom cries of "NTR! NTR!" starting.

[AstroNerdBoy]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

TThere's no development to support it (harem). Only Eva and Kirie are credible love interests.

There was no development for a harem either, but Akamatsu-sensei changed things. And yes, there is plenty of development for it. Touta goes spouting his love for all of the characters. The only reason that Touta and Kirie have an advantage is because Akamatsu-sensei has pushed Kirie so hard of late. If Touta had a lengthy arc with Karin, we'd see Karin added to the mix. If Touta knew the truth of Kuroumaru, Kuroumaru would be added to the mix.

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

The thing with a harem ending is you have to get EVERYONE involved agree with it, and that's something you have to work HELLA HARD to justify it.

I agree. And from a story perspective, I like the idea of Touta having a battle harem. If the pactio system were more in focus in UQ Holder, and Touta could provide magical power to partners even without being a mage (Kotatou paving the way for that to happen), then there could be a proper story reason for Touta to have a battle harem.

Akamatsu-sensei likes harem hijinks, and he likes the megane girl, so he's never going to do a harem ending. It is Kirie or bust, with Eva taking second place, only because she's a character Akamatsu-sensei has a soft spot for. But I'd still like a battle harem ending.

[SilverGlavenus]

There is nothing inherently wrong with harem, as long as the mc is not a wimp, and can decide which is best for himself, rather than being passive and letting the girls take the initiatives. If the girls are the ones doing all the work, then the "NTR" thing is bound to happen.

I personally root for UQ's harem end tho. So far Touta has proved himself to be capable of taking care of others and letting them know of his feelings straight away. The two things that he needs are to get the fuck out of Negi's shadow and a push to become more mature.

So far, every mistake he made is fixed with the help of his companions. Touta needs to seriously fall once and becomes a better man. I think Cutlass' death is a step in that direction.