UQ Holder

Right up to his bout with Fate, more or less. I sort of cram that in with those four since everything happened in a pretty small span of time. It wasn't made explicit that he was truly immortal, but taking a direct punch to the face from Fate and still having a head sort of sealed it.

EDIT: "but then again he put it in danger in the first place."

I, uh...what? I mean, unless we're talking about UQ Holder, which is more Akamatsu stumbling around and trying to make everything dark and edgy (but not really), fine...but everything else? What?

edited 12th Dec '14 9:39:44 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

Mars might have been in danger already but Negi's actions in the film put Earth in danger is what I'm saying.

edited 13th Dec '14 3:17:33 AM by Archivist10

Its really best not to think too hard about the films Idiot Plot for all intents and purposes.

Who's thinking hard? Someone with a brain powered by a hamster wheel could see the obvious flaws in it.

Still I really wished they hadn't left so many things about Pactios up in the air. A lot of action shonen at least give some more details about their gimmicks (chakra, Gourmet cells, Spiral power,Life Fibres etc.).

There is a lot of info on pactios. The only things we don't know about it are the alternate methods (Which we know exist, and never became relevant), and whether or not permanent pactios have additional properties, if anything at all.

edited 13th Dec '14 9:09:19 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

That's still something rather important. Plus didn't Akamatsu reveal through Word of God that only exceptional Minister's Ministra get artifacts. That seem like something very important to point out in the manga.

But I guess we could never tell since the only Pactios we see are from Negi, Nagi and Fate. It would have given the tournament in MM something more interesting to see Negi and Kotaro fight people who use Pactio. Hell it's a tournament fought in teams of two, why the hell isn't there any fighters who use Pactios aside from Negi and Rakan?

Why couldn't we have seen the tigerman and the fairy have a Pactio? Was Akamatsu scared of the implications of a cat man and a fairy kissing?!

Edit;Oh yeah forgot about those guys. Then again two of those Pactio pairs (Takane, Mei and Misora, Cocone) have about as much impact on the plot as Tenten does in Naruto.

edited 13th Dec '14 9:45:26 AM by Archivist10

There have been more Pactios. Misora and Cocone. Takane and Mei. Kotaro and Natsumi. Mana's shown to have had one that no longer works because her Magister died. Setsuna has two, one from Negi and one from Konoka. Negi was on the receiving end of one with Theodora.

In fact, I always found it funny how it was noted that only powerful mages could give their Ministra artifacts, considering every Pactio shown in-series led to one.

edited 13th Dec '14 9:43:53 AM by Watchtower

Akamatsu had to do most of the tournament off-screen to make room for several more chapters of Ako mopping about. We wouldn't want to miss that.

Yeah, given that no one in-universe remarks that getting an artifact is unusual, I'm not entirely convinced that this is even the case. Seems to me to be a case of All There in the Manual directly clashing with what we see the series proper. Given that nothing really changes if you were to discard that little factoid, its not something to really worry about since "powerful mage" doesn't mean too much in the first place.

Also,Donnet Mc Guiness and Negi's old headmaster have a pactio IIRC. Akamatsu also stated the old man was on Konomons level, so she'd probably have an artifact as well.

I still didn't like that we got another tournament sub-plot. Even though it wasn't actually the focus and served as a backdrop for the eventual Negi-Rakan fight, I was hoping for a different change of pace given one was already in the previous arc.

edited 13th Dec '14 9:56:01 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

Actually, I believe it was mentioned in universe that one of Negi's ministra using an artifact was unusual and impressive. It doesn't really make sense though given how crappy Negi was at the start.

I think the only person who acted surprised at someone having an artifact was Emily.

Dear God, why have a tournament arc if you'r going to focus so much on one angsty teenager? We already have Negi, Setsuna, Natsumi and Yue. We didn't need another!

So he wanted to set up a fight between Negi and Rakan. There are other ways of doing it!

edited 13th Dec '14 10:08:59 AM by Archivist10

Negi had magical power, but he didn't have the magical training to tap into it enough, much like Konoka's being unable to tap into her massive reserves without sufficient training. But like I said, that still doesn't mean much when Takane can grant a Ministra one in the first place, and she's low-tier to begin with. If we take that into account, any mage taking to combative training could probably make one to begin with, so either the vast majority of Mage's are incredibly weak (Which is quite feasible), or what qualifies as powerful is in relation to a single cat on Rakans chart.

EDIT: Incidentally, while trying to find where it came up during Yue's little stint, I guess Yue's pactio went entirely blank when she got her memories zapped. That's...new.

EDIT 2: Found it, Emily refers to it as a "legendary item that's granted to only a chosen few". Yeeeeeah...probably shouldn't say something like that in a series where the vast majority of fighters in the series have one, even if it were to hold true in universe.

edited 13th Dec '14 10:12:31 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

It would help if we actually saw someone with a Pactio but no artefact. Without artefacts, to me, Pactios have no point. Why waste energy giving energy to a comrade when you could just find a comrade who was strong already in their own right?

It worked for Negi and Kotaro!

Because by passing along energy you aren't using you buff the physical abilities of your partner so that they're faster and stronger. Someone like, say, Konoka who is just a massive reserve of energy that she otherwise won't use has no reason not to pass the energy to an ally.

That makes sense for Konoka she's a support mage. But for someone like Negi who clearly wants to be on the front lines and should preserve his energy for strong attack, if Pactios didn't give out artefacts then it's just easier to find an ally who can fight on their own.

Also, a lot of Negi's decisions of what he wants to do at first are very based on what his father did. What if someone just trolled him and kept lying about what Nagi did?

edited 13th Dec '14 10:39:46 AM by Archivist10

Konoka's setup is not unusual in universe, though. However, even setting that aside, someone like Negi often has more energy than they can productively use in a single fight. If he has a capacity of 100000 magic units, for example, it doesn't really matter if he drains away 50 every minute to make his ministra twice as strong or whatever. That's not really much of an exaggeration of the facts, either, considering Negi only really had to worry about his reserves a few times, most of them early on.

Besides, in Negi's case for the most part, buffing is a non-issue. Half of them are either going to be nowhere near the battlefieldand be more of a liability in direct combat, or cannot be buffed to begin with. Given how many of them rely on Ki, buffing someone like say, Setsuna, would require for her to suppress her own Ki in order for the magical energy not to conflict, and the buffs aren't significant enough to make it preferable over just having Setsuna continue as she is, and makes a unnecessary drain on his magic. In reality, its only truly useful for someone like Asuna who did not know how to tap into either energy at first, and that eventually becomes moot when she learns how to coax both energies out and use Kanka.

It may be useful for your bog standard Magister/Ministra setup at the lowest level of combat, but that becomes less of an issue once the Ministra learns how to fight without relying completely on said buffs. And chances are that's rarely an issue, since those who run around getting into fights are probably uncommon in the first place.

Eva went over that when the topic came up. Big, devastating spells are for the mage style of fighting, when they don't have to worry about buffing themselves, whereas the magic swordsman trades big AOE's for versatility, and being able to fight along side their comrades. As she herself notes, the distinctions become moot once you become so powerful.

edited 13th Dec '14 11:20:34 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

Also, a lot of Negi's decisions of what he wants to do at first are very based on what his father did. What if someone just trolled him and kept lying about what Nagi did?

Then that person better get ready to have their head caved in as soon as Takahata/Eva/Eishun/probably Rakan or Konoemon, if the lie is too nasty and they are nearby, learn they have been spreading misinformation about Nagi.

If it's before Negi hits Mahora, it's generally assumed Nekane and the Merdiana Headmaster knew Nagi well enough to misspell any gross misinformation Negi could be given on the subject.

edited 13th Dec '14 1:58:38 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

That, and Negi's a pretty smart kid. Despite not knowing his father was an idiot (At least, this was the impression I got before the MM arc), he probably suspected he was a close range fighter to begin with. Seeing him in action with his own eyes probably helps.

Personally I would have preferred if Negi had become a long distance fighter. It'd had given him an interesting fighting style as well as giving more time for is ministra to shine.

Nah, Negi's style of kung-fu wizardry was fine for awhile, since he obviously still had to fight with caution since his "stats" were pretty nominal across the board, and having 3-A fighting along side him is not mutually exclusive to either style. The MM arc putting most everyone on a bus for the most part and RT II mitigating any shortcoming he might have (save Shinmeiryuu swordsman) was a unfortunate mistake, but it alone isn't a tragedy unto itself.

True Raiten II was kinda cool, but like you said it mitigated all his shortcomings (he even found a way to avoid Shimmeryu IIRCP). It would have been better if they focused on him being a Fragile Speedster. That would have made him more interesting in his later fights rather than seeing him brute force everything.

Despite not knowing his father was an idiot (At least, this was the impression I got before the MM arc)

No, he definitely didn't know his father was an idiot. Hence why he was so shocked when he saw how Nagi acted in Evangeline's memories.

A breather chapter at last, that's not bad. I don't really care that much about Kuro's issues, but heh, I'll take it.

… so is Akamatsu going for a reverse Negima after all?

Also, Sayoko died in 2003…? But didn't Santa say he was born in 2001?

edited 16th Dec '14 12:41:34 PM by Lyendith

I have just given up on trying to make sense of this freaking timeline.