Mahou Sensei Negima

And that's ignoring the fact that most everyone assumed Asuna's personality was not going to come out intact from the whole ordeal. What's worse is that they seemingly left her with zero support upon waking up. Eva and Chao asspull aside, you'd think Ayaka would've left some precautions should she wake up, as opposed to stumbling on the family by chance.

You'd think she'd wake up in a very highly controlled environment, not out on her own where there's nobody to greet her.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

I think Negi probably would accept the necessity of sacrificing Asuna to save a billion people if there were absolutely no other options but having him come up with the plan himself is a bit of a sticking point. I'm wondering if that was a last minute change on Akamatsu's part given how pleased with himself and confident Negi looked. Having to ask his surrogate big sister/love interest to do that should have left him pretty broken up.

Oh yeah, he looks way to pleased with his clever idea for someone who's planning something so messed up. It's likely was retconed in.

I'm thinking the whole sealing mess was a last minute addition to add some "drama" to the end of the story after Akamatsu realized the climax happened several dozen chapter earlier and he didn't put much though in how horrible it is and how badly it reflects upon Negi.

I'll bet on retconned in too.

@Arha

Negi would do anything and everything in his power to find an alternate plan. Even if the only solution was to surrender his body to the Lifemaker so it can fix Mundus Magicus, Negi would do it willingly and eagerly, in order to spare Asuna from having to do it.

Kid's got a martyr complex, he never grew out of it, and he's always been incredibly overprotective of his class even after he accepted that they can hold their own.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

No he wouldn't because the Lifemaker couldn't do jack that it wasn't already doing.

Then again, I don't have much problem with CE's plan in the first place.

Dood, I'm talking hypotheticals here. As in, "if he had to choose between putting Asuna to sleep for a hundred years and death, he'd choose death every time".

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

For himself maybe, but not for a billion people.

Yes.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Except neither plan is a guarantee, and given the time frame for MM's supposed destruction, there's no way Negi would stick with a plan he cobbled together in the span of twenty seconds over actually pursuing other avenues of approach.

Besides, we already know what choice he'd make if it meant between choosing his students well being versus a hypothetical global catastrophe. That was the entire point of the Mahorafest arc.

edited 1st Oct '16 1:11:59 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

This one isn't hypothetical. The only reason he opposed Chao is because he didn't know what she was trying to do. Without any assurance that it was anything more than her own problem, he prioritized himself and his class over her plan. That's why I find it funny when Yue is like 'If Chao came back to stop something like WWII we'd be obligated to help her but she hasn't said that so we have to assume it's nothing important in the grand scheme of things.'

I think that establishes Negi's priorities, especially after Asuna interrupted his negotiations with Fate to make sure he didn't prioritize his class over the world.

Fair enough. Still, its jarring that the entire issue is glossed over on Negi's part without addressing how gut wrenching it should be for him, or that he never even bothered to try anything else, something that the Lifemaker is also guilty of.

And in the end, it doesn't even matter for that timeline, because the earth still gets screwed over by a interplanetary war.

"So my plan is to put you in a coma for a hundred years, and with lots of luck your personality might even survive this."

"Are you out of your fucking mind? Hell no!"

"Whelp, back to the drawing board then."

To be fair, the Lifemaker probably doesn't give a shit about resetting the world. The Lifemaker is basically sending everyone to paradise while at the same time shutting down the shittily programmed server for the first ever MMORPG. It's basically the best plan to deal with the whole "the server is coming apart".

edited 1st Oct '16 2:24:59 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Oh no, Asuna would do it in a heart beat. Despite her harping at Negi, she's a lot like him when it comes to trying to deal with personal issues alone. She's basically doing it out of some sense of self-obligation for everything Nagi and co have done for her.

The Lifemakers motives are...iffy. There's next to nothing about it in Negima, but Holder paints it in a slightly more...I dunno, selfish light I guess?

edited 1st Oct '16 2:29:38 PM by SkormSnow-Strider

So because Nagi and others worked so hard for her to live a happy life where she isn't used by people for her power, she feels obligated to throw away that happy life and let herself be used for her power?

Apparently. Like I said, she's not much better then Negi when it comes to personal problems.

No wonder they got along so good.

Oh, totally. Ayaka should have had a building constructed on the site with round-the-clock staff to make sure there's someone to welcome Asuna back and call her a gorilla.

She would've even left explicit instructions on what to call her and the proper dialect to use when doing so.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Honestly, I've never been sure whether the Lifemaker was still supposed to have the magic cancel ability or if they lost it at some point. I don't think Asuna was under CE control at any point before the present, meaning the Lifemaker should have been an adequate substitute as well for the grand ritual, right? And therefore also able to stabilize the Magic World while Negi did whatever?

Why didn't they use the sealed Lifemaker as the cornerstone of the magic world and let Asuna continue delivering papers or whatever? People in giant crystal thingies can't really resist you.

edited 1st Oct '16 4:42:21 PM by Arha

I'm not sure it's possible at all to use the Lifemaker for it, and I'm not sure it has to do with Asuna's magic cancel - could just as well be using her for Administrator access or something.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Yeah, the whole thing about putting Asuna to sleep seems to have been a retcon— after all, the movie was supposed to follow the originally planned ending to some degree, and there wasn't anything in the movie about sacrificing Asuna. I'm giving Akamatsu the benefit of doubt in that, when Negi was smiling saying he had a plan, the author didn't have in mind that plan would involve screwing Asuna over yet.

The thing that frustrated me the most about it is we never got to see the actual moment when Negi tells Asuna that. It should have been a key moment for both protagonists, probably the most important turning point in their relationship, and it just gets glossed over. It's this ugly flaw that keeps recurring in Akamatsu's later work, that he decides compromising himself to include harsh, hard hitting turns in his stories but he won't actually show them, just the aftermath.

So the actual decisive events are dealt with off panel, and we're expected to accept them as dramatic and meaningful, but instead of actually seeing them, we are dealt Sports Festivals and Naked Loli Races on Water Speedsters. It ruins both the supposed drama and the supposed comedy, because the stories don't commit themselves to either— it's like putting the world's ugliest frame on the Mona Lisa, or having Adam Sandler staging farcical moments with lots of farts in the middle of an alleged tragedy set in a concentration camp.

Ultimately you're left with the feeling the drama doesn't work because we aren't shown the dramatic moments themselves, and the comedy doesn't work either because it's surrounded from all flanks by implied displeasant, morbid and nihilistic events like world devastation and ruined lives. The series don't settle with one thing or the other and end up being neither.

edited 1st Oct '16 5:34:38 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

So anyway Saiga is reading the manga but is trying to avoid spoilers. Could we put up spoiler tags for now? The page is going to turn over soon so it shouldn't be much effort or anything.

... Should he?

He is ready for the shitty ending right? While I don't think we should tell him what it is, him keeping his expectations down can only be a good thing.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari