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

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

Narratively, using Rakan as a pawn is a bad decision, if you aren't making the character act or sound like Rakan at all. It's not worth the try. If you at least were making him act like an 'evil Rakan' and troll the Numbers in over the top ways there'd be at least some merit to the idea.

Except he does act and behave like Rakan; we saw that the first time he fought Karin. We didn't see it this time around because he appeared in exactly one scene.

Negima Rakan would just start chafing at seeing his friends brainwashed around him, eventually try to resist, and Ialda would put him down. This is just another 'Because Reasons' bit of cheap effortless fanservice.

If you want to talk about narratives, seeing Rakan repeat the same scene for a third time when it isn't the climax of a battle or to help out the main character doesn't actually make sense.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

Oh, for the love of God. Rakan has appeared several times in UQ Holder already and only acted REMOTELY like Rakan at all in one, and even that one is highly debatable.

If you want to talk about narratives, seeing Rakan repeat the same scene for a third time when it isn't the climax of a battle or to help out the main character doesn't actually make sense.

It can be done if you actually are creative enough to play it all in a different manner.

You might as well ask why Touta repeats the same beats of saving the day over and over, or even better, why Karin constantly repeats the same beats of jobbing miserably.

[SilverGlavenus]

Akamatsu should just introduce a new OP character out of nowhere, who proceeds to solve everything, then make a new series about that character's origin.

[EvI]

Well 190 ending was freaking epic. Really didn't expect that.

[RDNexus]

I actually managed to skip ~70% of the dialogues, give or take.
As of late, I've been following this only because it's almost over.
It sure started on a high note, only to end with a whimper...

[Dargor]

Yeah, the giant walls of text are jarring. I don't remember Negima being so bad about it, and Holder really stepped up its ranting that gets resolved in like two panels. I mentally checked out once Asuna got one-shot straight to hell, so I'm just waiting for this whole thing to wrap up.

[Shippuu]

"Look! It's Negi being badass! Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here? As long as I give the easily impressed idiots something positive right at the end they'll forget all about what a shitshow this entire manga was!"

- Akamatsu, probably.

• Negi introducing himself to Ialda (with his own title no less) gave me secondhand embarrassment. It's so unnatural I could feel Akamatsu winking at me from across the planet.
  
  
• Touta uses Kirie's Pactio card to summon Karin. It's no surprise UQ Holder turned out like this when neither the author nor the editor give a shit. At least their artifacts will finally get some use, I suppose, but I can smell the bullshit already. How convenient that Akamatsu never explained their abilities so he can pull anything he wants out of his ass. Assuming we even get to see it happen. And how did Negi come up with a strategy involving the artifacts of people he never met anyway?
  
  
• Your shallow last-minute attempts to develop this group of strangers do not interest me, Akamatsu. You had years to do this and it has no place in the middle of the final battle while Negi is struggling to fight the Antichrist by himself.
  
  
• What happened to Chisame?
  
  
• It didn't occur to me last time, but why does Touta's transformation make him older? Negi uses illusion magic/pills but Touta's aging seems to be part of his transformation. For some reason.
  
  
• Looks like Akamatsu finally remembered that Evangeline can actually use Magia Erebea. Sure would have been useful in previous battles. I suppose he wanted to withhold it for dramatic impact but it's stupid all the same.
  
  
• Nagi is back! But actually not! How convenient that Ialda could never do this before but now can because of Evangeline.... For some reason. Why not summon Zect as well? Or another Negi? It's not like they're the real people. Did Negi somehow delete his data from Ialda's database when he left? I guess Akamatsu wanted to bring back Negi but didn't want him to get in the way of Yukihime and Touta so now we get a rehashed Father-Son battle. But because only two chapters remain it also means we're now going to get two half-assed battles instead of one. Who cares! Heeeeere's Nagiii! Things! Excitement!
  
  
• Poor Asuna. Despite being the female protagonist of Negima she became increasingly irrelevant until her role got usurped entirely by Chisame. We never got much insight into her past, she never had a real fight and spent the second half of the story as a damsel who needed to be rescued. By the end of the story she was more plot device than character and she didn't even appear in the ending. And after spending the entirety of UQ Holder being even more irrelevant than she was in Negima she got cut and gunned down like filler fodder during the final battle, which took place only 2 or so years before she would have woken up and could have participated. And to add insult to injury her genderbent Chinese bootleg version actually gets to fight with Negi while in her own version of the final battle she was only allowed to provide token female support. It's almost comical how much Akamatsu hates her.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by Shippuu

Looks like Akamatsu finally remembered that Evangeline can actually use Magia Erebea. Sure would have been useful in previous battles. I suppose he wanted to withhold it for dramatic impact but it's stupid all the same.

I mean we saw her use this exact Armament ages ago when she fought Fate back in chapter 41, but sure.

[Shippuu]

Originally Posted by Endscape

I mean we saw her use this exact Armament ages ago when she fought Fate back in chapter 41, but sure.

And then never again until now. Not in their first encounter with Negi-Ialda, not during their battle with Nagi-Ialda in the flashback, not in their first encounter with Baal in which she mysteriously disappeared once the battle started, not in their little Avengers rip-off operation and not in their second encounter with Baal.

[Dargor]

I still think the outfit is dumb, since Negi, and even when Eva used it at the end of the series never gave them new clothes. Granted, I never liked Yukihime's look compared even to OG Eva's older form, so that probably doesn't help.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by Dargor

I still think the outfit is dumb, since Negi, and even when Eva used it at the end of the series never gave them new clothes. Granted, I never liked Yukihime's look compared even to OG Eva's older form, so that probably doesn't help.

OG Eva's adult form was literally a kid's face on an older body, so I find the Yukihime look far superior.

Speaking of outfits, I quite like Negi's outfit here, it's like a fusion of his Mahorafest and Gladiator Nagi outfits.

[Dargor]

Eh, to each their own. I hate the hair probably most of all.

[Shippuu]

At least she stopped dressing like a whore after chapter 126.

[Dargor]

Its been said before, but its really her personality that bugs me the most. I get the idea that Eva is older and a marginally more functioning person via character development so on and so forth, but it made her so bland now. I miss the bombast, the unrepentant hamminess, the slapstick, the feral kid energy whenever she gets riled up. Those were all my favorite things about her character, and getting replaced by this watered down version of her is just a major bummer.

[TnAdct1]

Originally Posted by Shippuu

Poor Asuna. Despite being the female protagonist of Negima she became increasingly irrelevant until her role got usurped entirely by Chisame. We never got much insight into her past, she never had a real fight and spent the second half of the story as a damsel who needed to be rescued. By the end of the story she was more plot device than character and she didn't even appear in the ending.

In response to this:

• Both Asuna and Chisame are the "expy of Ken Akamatsu's hot wife" character in Negima, so it's not surprising to see Chisame take up some of Asuna's role come the Magic World Arc.
  
• At least Asuna got character development during the Magic World arc. Ako also spent a good chunk of time as a damsel in distress in the Magic World, and rather than giving readers more of her backstory (especially considering her scar), all of her focus was instead towards her having feelings for Negi's older self.

[Dargor]

While it does make sense to separate the two characters who occupy basically the same narrative niche, I always felt it was a pretty lousy thing to do, especially since the MW was basically supposed to be the crux of the myth arc. Shoving one of the characters who was basically crucial to the entire conceit of the backstory and having her do virtually NOTHING even away from the main cast always left a bad taste in my mouth. Her last fight that didn't last for about two pages was...what, fake Takahata back in Mahorafest? The character with the giant sword basically got zilch once they hit the MW. In hindsight with where Negima was ending, I get it, its not like there's time to expound on anything meaninful what with her memories being forcibly returned to her, but that felt cheap.

I'll make it no secret that Asuna was probably my favorite character from Negima and Chisame ostensibly is my least favorite in 3-A, but I felt like just because Chisame was with Negi doesn't make it much of an excuse to kind of just have her fall off the map entirely.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by Dargor

Its been said before, but its really her personality that bugs me the most. I get the idea that Eva is older and a marginally more functioning person via character development so on and so forth, but it made her so bland now. I miss the bombast, the unrepentant hamminess, the slapstick, the feral kid energy whenever she gets riled up. Those were all my favorite things about her character, and getting replaced by this watered down version of her is just a major bummer.

I always assumed most of that was a result of her having to spend years locked in a middle school. Yukihime on the other hand is more mature by virtue of having to do stuff like raise a kid, hold down a job, lead an organization, etc.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

"Leading an organization" is kind of not so accurate since she was an extremely hands off leader for most of its run from all we get to see.
She literally cuts all contact with UQ Holder for years, after kicking the other leader into an abyss and leaving him there, effectively leaving the oh-so-important organization headless without her ever seeming to care. Granted, that is also Jinbei's own fault for being so unmotivated as a leader and not putting a real effort on pulling himself back out and going back to his people. It is consistent with Jinbei, I guess, the same guy who later implied to Touta that letting hundreds of mere humans die was an acceptable loss, but that just begs the question of why to put someone like that at the head to begin with.
Part of the problem with that, I think, is that at first UQ Holder seemed intended to be a more relaxed, carefree organization like the Fairy Tail guild, complete with minor, colorful secondary members wih wacky quirks (remember when Vasago existed? Remember that UQ Holder was supposed to have dozens of operative goons in suits?)
But then all of the team became about the ordeal of the Springfield family and Evangeline, after that period where they instead were about running a freaking bath house, and... much like its manga, the titular team never seemed to have a consistent motif or feeling until they became All About Fulfilling Eva's Agenda, Which Is the Only Thing that Matters.

Chisame ostensibly is my least favorite in 3-A

Pistols. In the field of honor. At dawn.
It's worth mentioning that it's not like Chisame was treated much better than Asuna in the big scheme of things. Her final hookup with Negi seemed like so much of an afterthought the author even taunts it by saying he had no time to explain how they ended up marrying after she rejected him, which is a horrible way to resolve a years-long (in universe and in real life) romantic arc.
In the end, Akamatsu showed he actually didn't care about any of the Negima characters.
Chisame, Asuna, Nodoka and Yue are all fridged without a care.
Konoka, Setsuna, Rakan and Albireo are turned into dull OOC drones and odds are they're about to be fridged too, probably off panel and that's the last we'll ever see of any of them.
Zazie, Mana and Chachamaru could be completely cut off UQ Holder without affecting the plot in the slightest. All of the character interaction and playing off each other Chachamaru had with Evangeline in Negima ended up mattering absolutely nothing at all, completely wasting what could have been interesting interplays with Karin and Ikkuu. Same thing for Zazie's role as a demon princess and major mover and shaker, both in the battlefield and off it.
Even Evangeline was completely kicked out of the final battle in the Good Timeline and made a distressed damsel and possesed puppet in this one.
Kotaro, Kaede, Takahata, Ku Fei, et all, it's as if they never existed or mattered at all.
And UQ Holder's own cast don't fare much better either. Karin is one of the biggest jobbers in manga ever, Kuromaru was constantly primed to be important only for that to keep being forgotten, Santa is ocassionally thrown a bone so we pretend he's actually relevant, Nikitis' tremendous potential was wasted. Juzo, Jinbei and Gengooru were pretty much walking plot devices with personality mild grafts. Nanao is a non entity.
Dana was great fun for a while but her existence as a game breaker was always narratively problematic (at least Rakan and Eva in Negima had agreeable handicaps like being unable to leave Mundus Magicus/Mahora respectively, while the only reason why Dana doesn't become an insta-win card is "I don't want to, until I want to"). But even she is then just tossed away and forgotten about, too.
Ikkuu had a terribly handled Heel turn, and by the time he dies he just looks like a schizo who flips back and forth on his views on humanity until he goes away and does us all a favor. Baal and Chao were awful caricatures of villains who never worked at all. And so on.
My point? Akamatsu, I think, has trascended beyond not caring about any single character. He doesn't care about any of them or giving them closure.
He just wants to be a publishing advocate and be heard around the world, but to that world he'll keep on being just "the author of Love Hina", that series that ended up like twenty years ago. Just look at whenever a headline will refer to him, that's what they'll call him. "The author of Love Hina".
He could have become a real manga superstar with actual saying power if he hadn't wasted his fame away by screwing Negima over, but by now he's just a has been, and the industry will keep treating him as such whenever he speaks, ignoring him and just keeping on doing whatever they re doing at the time.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by NapoleonDeCheese

"Leading an organization" is kind of not so accurate since she was an extremely hands off leader for most of its run from all we get to see.

She was presumably doing her job before she took her sabbatical and has been doing it since she came back.

that just begs the question of why to put someone like that at the head to begin with.

Jinbei's one of the oldest people there and he seems to have his head on straight for the most part, plus the other two people who could take over would both defer to him anyway.

[NapoleonDeCheese]

'Presumably' is an assumption, but all in all we never see her actually helming the organization in any matter not related to the Touta plot. Show don't Tell. Flashbacks and such show that for the most part of the gap between Negima and Holder she was pursuing matters related to Negi over anything else. Which, okay, is her right but doesn't make her any better as an actual leader. Fate had the same overall drive but the narrative doesn't try to paint him as a wise mentor figure to the people under him, he doesn't bother with those pretenses and the story just makes it clear that his forces are only hired hands to him.
In Negima Fate had an actual emotional link to his girls so it wasn't the same thing, and even so he always was shown as having issues being human, yet also overcoming them in his own way.
Eva only takes an active interest on UQ Holder again when it suits her personal affair with the Springfields (and while that affair ends up affecting the whole world, she'd have acted the same even if it hadn't) and she has no choice but bringing Touta in contact with her world.