UQ Holder

So, spoilers.

Its bath scene time.

Spoilers over at ANB.

Horribly cliched-sounding onsen antics, complete with Touta morphing into Keitaro and being slapped by Shinobu over a 'hilarious misunderstanding'. Right after he rescues her. Yeah, that'll make her more endearing. None of the Negima characters we just got introduced to or their clones is showing up again yet because yay continuity. Also, apparently is preferable for immortals to pair up with people they'll soon outlive than with other immortals, which makes complete perfect sense and is surely not there just to add forced We Are Like Butterflies forced drama along the way and oh dear why this parade of bullshit never stops.

edited 10th Oct '15 6:28:20 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Maybe it's like dating in the workplace. You're not supposed to do it because if you break up you'll still be around that asshole.

Characters usually end up in a Mayfly–December Romance if longevity is in play, buuuuuut these are immortals we're talking about. Stagnation and falling into a very humdrum routine is sorta their thing. Hell, if UQ Holder is as wealthy as we think they are, and some of their methods of immortality could be passed on to others...well, yeah. Only thing stopping them is if the mortal in question gives consent, maybe.

All of the characters are either boring or nauseating in Holder though, so who cares? The best thing we got is Necro-Girl and Santa, and she's a irredeemable monster.

I haven't been reading this, just checking in on this thread from time to time.

It's like reverse Negima, which started as a romantic comedy and turned into action series, UQ holder is now doing the opposite. As it turns out it doesn't work nearly as well in the other direction.

What matters is less the idea itself, but rather the authors (in)ability to execute it properly. You can have a pretty cliche set up and still end up with a something you can present in the daylight, or have what could have been a rather novel twist on old conventions but have it fall flat on its face.

It's as if Akamatsu forgot how to write romance, though. As clumsy as the power escalation is, the action parts are still better executed than the attempted 'love' teasing. Which may be the point if Akamatsu only wants a pure action manga, but then he shouldn't try to bring 'romance' into the equation at all. It's just going through the motions without even trying.

Well, Akamatsu can still draw. He's pretty good at doing action scenes in of themselves, even if the context of what's happening is as horrible as everything here. Romance by its nature necessitates the ability to come up with a story that's not bad, and Akamatsu has proven himself incapable of that thus far.

edited 12th Oct '15 9:43:37 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

The execution is what counts, yes, but some ideas are harder to execute than others.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Chapter's out.

So what Not!Eva was getting at is that it's easier to put off pushing a relationship with an immortal to the next level because you literally have an eternity to make that choice rather than a human, where the clock is ticking. It wasn't to say that "mortalximmortal" are more compatible than immortal pairings.

That's...rather pragmatic. In a metasense, its a good excuse to keep romance floundering around ad nausem and never bother to address it at any point or time. Which is kind of amusing by itself.

Still though, weird friggin time to introduce a romance element. None of the characters gathered are even interesting, let alone Akamatsu's performance here has ranged from "meh" to completely terrible.

edited 13th Oct '15 6:46:23 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

"Well, it's better than a certain junior high class..."

The damn fucker is just taking cheap shots on purpose by now. Just confess you hate them already in the next interview break, Ken.

edited 13th Oct '15 7:00:34 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

...

Why did this just turn into Love Hina? Please don't bring Love Hina up in this manga, it's bad enough having to associate Negima! through the lens of UQ Holder.

edited 13th Oct '15 9:00:25 PM by Rotpar

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

No one will be spared from the wrath of UQ Holder. A.I Love You, you're next.

edited 13th Oct '15 10:02:53 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

Ah well. It's only A.I.. No one cares about it anymore.

Ha ha, the sequence with Shinobu in the bath and then trying to run away was lifted panel-for-panel from the first chapter of Love Hina. Now this is nostalgia pandering I can get behind since it doesn't actually ruin previous series.

Oh, so Shinobu was a girl after all. It's kind of annoying though. Why do the Ambiguous Gender characters always turn out to be girls when their gender is revealed in these series (and that includes Kurōmaru I guess)? Couldn't we have the "girlish-looking character is actually a guy" variant once in a while? Like in Genshiken. Or Shimoneta.

…And why does an anti-gravity vehicle have wheels?

edited 14th Oct '15 2:55:13 AM by Lyendith

I can think of a few possibilities.

1. Landing gear
2. It's upgraded from a boring land vehicle
3. They aren't wheels, they're gravitic whatchamacallits
4. Style, motherfucker

Which is funny, given it comes in a chapter where Kirie noted that at least Touta manned up and expressed his (Oedipus-tastic) feelings instead of beating around the bush for thirty volumes.

Whenever a manga character is open about their feelings instead of beating around the bush, the plot punishes them for it.

The moral is we never should be open with our feelings.

edited 14th Oct '15 5:24:10 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yukihime: Well, it's better than a certain junior high class..

Ayaka: Oh, come on Eva-san, we were never that bad...

Yukihime: Sports Festival.

Ayaka:...

But yeah, I don't think there was really any malice intended behind that sentence on Akamatu's part.

TBH Kirie's comment about not being slow and wishy washy felt more like a jab at Negi and Keitaro and maybe how Akamatsu was tired of writing those character types.

edited 14th Oct '15 10:19:29 AM by Archivist10

Yukihime: Sports Festival.

No, Ayaka's answer wouldn't be "..." It'd be along the lines of "Oh, you mean the same incident you were one of the most active and meaner participants on, the same one I wasn't an active part of, by the way?" Shows how much you know of/remember about/want to portray/all the prior the characters. If anyone shouldn't be talking about the Sports Festival, that's Evangeline. At least the others had the excuse of being young and teenage-foolish. She doesn't even have that.

The 'lack of malice' from Akamatsu might even be believable if at some point anything good at all had been said about the original 3-A or Ala Alba beyond 'they followed Negi around' (with no mention of how effective they were or their INDIVIDUAL merits. But of course, in this universe you only can achieve to be an appendage of the Springfield lineage if you weren't born into it). Otherwise, every other mention they get is along the lines of this or the sword's 'That name doesn't matter anymore'. Narrative economy means every sentence put in a story that doesn't feature a lot of varied viewpoints from many players (and UQ doesn't have that, since the focus is always narrowly placed around Touta's journey) is there because it reflects the author's thoughts in some way or another, especially when they are recurring.

The closest would be Yue and Ku Fei having one panel fights in a token tournament that apparently doesn't change anything in the big picture one way or another, and even that is only what the visuals are telling us, not the other characters paying any respect to them specifically. Even when Mana introduces herself, all she basically says about herself before disappearing just as sudden and pointlessly as she arrived is she was Negi's friend and much weaker than him— because again, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE has to be defined around the Gary Stue trinity of Nagi, Negi and Touta. The only time when Ala Alba is defined as 'world saving' on its own, Non-Negi terms is when the current team, the villains at the time, talk about themselves.

edited 14th Oct '15 10:53:33 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

So uh as a person who's never read Negima can I ask what the hell happened at the school festival?

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Character Trainwreck. That's all I will be able to say without raging.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Rage man. Cmon I want a good laugh with a little education on the side.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."