UQ Holder

Some more Eva X Touta too.

I stumbled upon a UQ Holder thread on /a/ and most there seem to like it. They don't seem too casual either, they actively discuss how the current events might relate to Negima's timelines and stuff. I don't know if this thread soured me (and rightfully so, because I do also think this series sucks), but it was surprising to see a part of the community like it. I guess it has its audience.

edited 29th Jun '15 5:38:51 PM by DOmen

I've kept an eye on /a/'s UQ threads for months. For the most part they were against it until the current wave of Eva shipping started, because golly, but is /a/ crazy over loli. Even the current threads are mostly about creaming their pants at the Eva teasing, which means I'll really laugh if I live to see my suspicions proved right and this is the Asuna-less timeline that ends up with Evangeline so forever alone she's forced to travel through dimensions for anything resembling closure.

I mean, that people learned fucking nothing from all the Negima ship sinking.

edited 29th Jun '15 6:19:38 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

I dunno, last time I was on /a/ it was mostly somewhere between "UQ Holder is shit" if you're not a fan of Eva to begin with, "Its boring as fuck", and "Its okay." Not exactly sterling praise, and pretty much consistent with the rest of the internet.

edited 29th Jun '15 8:51:02 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

Granted, saying you aren't an Eva fan in /a/ will pretty much get you lynched. Although Yukihime is mostly treated with the loving monicker of 'old hag'. Despite being actually as old as Eva, take or give a few eighty years.

I'm not a fan of lolis/shota. Just wanted to throw it out there.

chaps out.

Is it just me or does Touta look super broken on the last page?

Touta being broken is a foregone conclusion.

Not that kind of broken lol, like dull eyes of unhappiness, dark circles under the eyes, kind of broken.

Well, it's obvious Akamatsu wants to turn him into another doomed, My-Happiness-Given-For-Everyone's-Good, Too-Good-For-This-World Ain't-It-Tragic Martyr Purity Sue like he did to Negi (and in a way, to Nagi), because God forbid we may have any new ideas to end a character's arc.

Still calling this ends in the Touta-less 353 future where Eva is Forever Alone.

Ok. This chapter was actually pretty sweet. The last panel was particularly heartwarming.

....I ain't even surprised now.

Yeah, this chapter actually turned out to be very good. There's still that romantic undercurrent that I still don't like, but it goes more in the direction of showing Kitty as alone and looking for some form of companionship. Touta and Kitty's interactions are still very strong, and that final panel of Touta patting Kitty's head was a nice way to end.

The thing to highlight, however, is that all of what makes this relationship and this chapter work comes from Kitty. This little quasi-character-arc of her coming out of her shell and dropping her "loner" facade works for the recently-vampirized (for her lifespan) girl who has been stuck with Dana for a decade, who has taken up doll mastery to keep herself company, who comes to look forward to being with Touta as their time periods continue to dilate. How this will tie back to Yukihime and Evangeline's overall character are other matters entirely that will need to be addressed, and how those work out, if they are worked out at all, can either be heartwarming or just fall apart.

edited 1st Jul '15 9:10:24 AM by Watchtower

Touta's love develops Kitty into a better adjusted person.

As such, Evangeline never pursues Nagi that obsessively, and when he makes clear he wants her stop following him, she's sad, bt she respects his wishes.

Evangeline is never bound to Mahora, then.

So she never gets to train Negi.

So Negi never grows powerful enough for anyone to have an interest on cloning him.

So Touta never comes to be in the first place.

As Doc Brown warned us, paradoxes are to be avoided, and the Akamatsu universe is destroyed.

I know that's not the way time travel works here, but let me dream.

I'm half expecting Touta to meet Negima Eva at some point.

edited 1st Jul '15 10:42:08 AM by Archivist10

Yeah, that wouldn't be glaring at all.

"Why none of your classmates have any faces? It's kinda creepy..."

"I don't know. They used to have faces. I think."

The sword: "I've told you, they don't matter anyway."

"... what are you doing here?"

"At this point, does it still surprise you for characters to pop in and out at random?"

Somewhere, Negi has his own mausoleum that has the inscription somewhere that reads "Gone, but not forgotten."

Meanwhile 3-A is all buried in a single mass grave with a marker that just says "Gone".

Why would anyone bother to use a perfectly good marker for that?

edited 1st Jul '15 11:17:16 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Thanks for my daily dose of pessimism guys.

I could hear the screams of Eva fans all over the world reading this chap, but yeah, it's pretty sweet. Once again Watchtower summed up my thoughts. Touta-Eva scenes are by far my favorite parts of this arc, quite frankly.

…I think I get my paradoxical feelings towards UQ now. It's like a big puzzle where the individual pieces can be good but fail to form a pleasant or coherent general picture, or mess up the previous puzzle.

Its like Akamatsu realized that no one gives a crap about UQ Holder itself and is chugging along with the Eva bait to get back in peoples graces. He's going to try and milk this crap for all its worth.

See, I'd be "happy" (Using the term loosely here) if instead of focusing on a character who had her own time in Negima and focused on this new cast of characters who desperately need something, anything resembling development. But no, here we are, still leaching off of the feel goods from Negima. It literally makes the "sequel" part of the sequel series meaningless when no one is even bothering with those elements anymore.

The Touta and Kitty stuff is still really damn good, mere fan bait or not. And one could argue that this is taking a different path, focusing on Eva's origins and back when she was still fairly fresh as an immortal.

As for the new cast, Kuromaru's really the only character that seriously needs to be looked at. Karin, Ikkuu, and Kirie are all fairly Static Characters (though you could probably get some mileage off Karin's relationship with Yukihime), and Santa gets to be static after getting a whole arc to himself. Kuro meanwhile needs to develop past his gender identity issues and whatever it is he feels for Touta but keeps getting the brakes slammed on him. It'd be nice if at the very least he'd serve more as an Only Sane Man to the group so that he could at least do something.

Ugh, I really hate the whole Touta/"Kitty" thing. The whole relationship is awful on many levels and probably one of the worst things to happen in this series. At this point I'm really sick of it, and if it continues like that it might be the thing that will make me drop the manga, where all it other shortcomings failed to do so.

Huh. I expected pessimism here, but not quite this.

I think I've finally figured out my stance on this series: It would be fine as a standalone; Eva/Kitty are fine, but Yukihime doesn't have the same personality as her younger-looking form, and is annoyingly distant; The side characters are too far to the side unless the spotlight has been shone in their eyes for the present arc, but it's still tolerable. 5/10 will continue to read because I already started.

Eh, even if UQ Holder was its own thing and had no connection to any of Akamatsu's previous works, it still has no real pull that can get anyone interested on its own. Its more like something you bother to read just to pass the time as opposed to genuinely following it because you like the series. Not quite a stellar mark.