UQ Holder

@Damage: Maybe it's just a question of preference, I guess. I prefer my magic with mysticism - the chants, magic circles, and so on in Negima were very influential on me in that sense. Tying that kind of power and that mystic presentation to 'slide the arrow UP to cast Sagitta Magica! and the absolute certainty of 99-cent shitty knockoff spells... just doesn't sit right.

The really magical stuff still works that way.

Magic apps just let normal people do barriers and basic spells.

Yeah, magic apps have only really come up in critical moments like a couple times such as when they used that de-pretrification app. Other than that they haven't been featured at all, and our main character can't even use them in his fighting style even if he wanted to.

There's getting new abilities, and then there's literally getting the two most powerful arts that exist in the entire franchise on your power trip fantasy character. And this is already on top of being able to be decapitated and chopped into itty bitty bits without having to suffer much for it. When you have to make it so the enemies are the ones that have to overcome near impossible odds and contrivances to defeat the hero's instead of the other way around, something went wrong.

I literally made a joke about just shoving Magic Cancel on Touta a couple of years before we found out he had it, because why the hell not. Jokes on me, they made it even worse. That's to say nothing he'll always be the inferior of what were two more interesting and somewhat more nuanced characters.

Magic-apps are okay. I wish it was done in a more elegant and well thought out manner of Magitek, but its honestly an excuse because Akamatsu doesn't have anyone to do any real incantations for him anymore. I hated the de-petrification app, but that's only by extension of me hating Kirie since she was introduced.

edited 25th Jul '17 12:45:49 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

Magic apps are pure and utter bullshit specifically because Kirie had the damn de-petrify app. Seriously, that was another worst-case scenario that was resolved by Ass Pull.

I said it roughly a thousand years ago in reading-this-fucking-manga time—they could have salvaged her introduction story line if showed her preparing for shit. But instead she just calls Touta an idiot for not psychically knowing about events she knows about and then just has the relevant app instead of taking a five-minute break to at acquire it somehow.

It also could have worked if they established she was Crazy-Prepared. They didn't.

Don't forget, this is also the story where they brought Fate to the caverns under their base...and fucking literally said "OH YEAH, the earth-wizard is stronger here because he's surrounded by magic earth".

This fucking manga. It ages you. You experience that eight-year period that Touta skipped, because of Mary Sue powers, every time you read a chapter

How is it an Ass-Pull to use a de-petrification app when fighting an individual that specializes in petrification?

Wasn't healing petrification once so difficult that it took one of the most promising healers in Negima years of study and practice to reverse?

And now you can download it from the iTunes app store?

Jesus.

Well, there was a time where it was hard to heal a mere cold. I guess it's the same thing.

I thought the uber-healing was only needed to reverse "Eternal Petrification", which is a higher level petrification spell that even Fate doesn't just use at the drop of a hat.

Or did he use Aionion Petrosios on Kirie? I forget.

edited 25th Jul '17 5:59:32 PM by DarkHunter

Except those abilities are not that powerful in Touta's hands. He can't cast spells, so he can't use Magia Erebea to its fullest potential, like Negi could.

He needs to spin a hula hoop of all things, to use Magic Cancel, and even then it's a far cry from what Asuna could do.

Hers was permanently active with no cost or effort from her, it was active on her whole body, and she could use it area of effect or long range. Touta's works on just a hand for as long as he can keep spinning the hula hoop.

Big difference.

edited 25th Jul '17 8:27:10 PM by Chaosjunction

Do you think for a moment that Mary Sue Touta won't improve those abilities? I'm surprised there aren't idiots crawling out from under rocks offering to teach him, that happens regularly on this manga.

@ Damage

Kirie's app is an Ass Pull because she's a fucking idiot, too stupid to tell other people that they're getting jumped by enemies. How many times did she and Touta just walk into an assassin, despite her knowing about it? And the only reason he found out is because he held her hand before she died and reset and she had to explain it to him? Oh, and then there's the fact that petrification is one of the few counters to her power and of course she just counters that effortlessly.

Surprised she also didn't have some soul-purification app for the following story. You remember that one right, when she went to the school for absolutely no reason, just so they had the power to reset the world-wide zombie apocalypse?

And don't forget UQ Holder is so stupid that they classified precognition as immortality, and then had no procedure for "Kirie can see the future, obey her when she does". There shouldn't have been a reason why she couldn't warn them even if she wanted to keep the actual reset power a secret.

edited 25th Jul '17 9:31:21 PM by Rotpar

Why should she bother telling Touta? Her power could let her repeat that encounter with the assassin a hundred times without risk, and in fact she's done something like that before like when they fought Cutlass for the first time.

Also, I don't the problem is her 'countering petrification easily'. First she needed to kill herself just in time to stop the petrification fully the first time it was used against her, then she needed to prepare by getting the appropriate counter-measures for the second encounter.

That's just a basic application of her own ability and a bit of planning. It's kinda obvious.

Yes. Kinda. Konoka managed to stop Fate's petrification on Negi before it could consume him, and later on managed to heal Negi's village. Oh, and fixed Kotaro when half of him got petrified. It seems that undoing a complete petrification was far more difficult (or nigh impossible) until Konoka healed Negi's village. Bare in mind, she has a unfathomable magical capacity that apparently outstrips Nagi's, so that could also be a factor in the potency of her healing abilities.

The Magic Apps on the other hand...I dunno. You could pull the excuse of technology somehow advancing far enough to make it possible, but if so, where are all the other uber tier apps at? They're prohibitively expensive, but even semi-competent mooks can afford what are only decent abilities. And again, why are Mages somehow still upper class citizens when compared to others if Apps can supposedly level that playing field? Personally, I think its an asspull too. No matter how much cash Kirie has, escaping something of that level still seems far beyond the limits of what Magic Apps in universe should be capable of.

The only thing that comes close is Blind Samurai Guy's "TO THE MOOOOON" dagger thingy. Bare in mind, warping is not a unfathomable and uber-tiered ability and is already a pretty established practice.

edited 27th Jul '17 9:51:33 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

Not all petrification is the nigh-unbreakable kind used on Negi's village. Bunch of Class A were petrified in the Kyoto arc and Chamo's reaction was "that's high-level but the chief will definitely be able to reverse it." So it's powerful, but not necessarily legendary.

Having an magic app that can undo the signature spell of "the most powerful mage in solar system" is pretty silly. Especially since it came out of nowhere.

And if such an app is a thing why didn't Fate take it into account while fighting people from an organization who would have great inlet about his fighting style?

I'm pretty sure Negi's signature spell is the anti-clothes Expellimarus. A spell being some badass's go-to doesn't necessitate that the spell itself is badass. Kirie having the anti-petrification app could certainly have been set up better, though.

And I'm not sure what you'd even do to counter someone curing your favorite status effect. Besides hitting them with it again, at least.

Hope your enemy is dumb enough to send you to a cave where your powers are buffed. Which again is why Kirie is a complete dumbass.

Right, I forgot about 3A being petrified. Though, Fate also does have the power of effective eternal petrification, so the point seems moot to me. Given that Fate knows explicitly of UQ Holder's shtick, there isn't a good reason why he wouldn't use try and use it. It also requires physical contact, unlike the gas and eye beam versions of the spell, which is what I'm guessing he used on Kirie to begin with.

edited 28th Jul '17 2:38:54 AM by SkormSnow-Strider

Having stupid enemies is truly the best of strategies. I'm pretty sure that's in Art of War.

So I read all of Negima!, and liked it pretty much.

...reading through this thread though, there is a lot of negativity...

For Negima, or Holder? For all its faults, Negima was a pretty good series.

UQ Holder doesn't really hold up to...any kind of scrutiny very well.

Form your own opinions, don't let the hatefest that is this thread weigh you down.

Yeah, I'd say form your own opinions on UQ Holder. Do keep in mind the environment and the expectations we came into it with ourselves, though - things were very negative in the Negima thread around the ending, and UQ Holder looked like it might be a chance to get things back on track. For a lot of us, it wasn't.

Yeah considering everything, I'll give it a try - I liked Negima! enough...

Just, all the same, this fills me with a bit of worry as a writer, considering I intend my work to get an anime adaptation. Like, I'll sign on and go "wonder if New Dawn has a thread..." and it'll just all be a massive hatefest like with UQ Holder.

Akamatsu is a leagues better writer than me, so if this could happen with him...

As a wise man once said, "if you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time." I'm not sure if that's strictly applicable to you, who may or may not be in a cabin, but still. Just focus on making something that you're proud of having created, and then no matter what random schmucks on the internet think you can still be proud of your thing.

There's a trailer for the anime I guess. Animation looks decent, so it at least has that going for it.