All Purpose Negima Fanfiction Thread

Yup, definitely just looked at the pictures if he thinks Natsumi hardly developed.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:00:12 PM by SCMof2814

I doubt going from a background character to a bad version of your archetypal Tsundere love interest only with insecurities regarding her body counts.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:02:00 PM by Archivist10

APOLOGIZE TO KOSAKA CHIHIRO!!!!!!

And if that's what you think Natsumi's character arc is... yeah, definitely only looked at the pretty pictures.

To whom?

See, here's the thing:

You're reading Negima like you would any random Shonen Action series, and that's basically why it looks to us as if you've never actually read the manga.

When it comes down to it, most shonen series? They don't want you to stop and think, because when you stop to think, in most of them, you'll start finding yourself having moments of Fridge Logic, you'll start questioning things, you'll start finding What An Idiot reaction moments to the things the characters do, you'll start finding the frequently blatant asspulls and questioning just how much plot convenience goes into facilitating the story.

Your standard shonen action series really only works if you do not stop to think about the plot. You just take things at face value and move on, because when you go beyond just a shallow look, it all falls apart.

Negima doesn't work like that though. Negima won't throw the shit it wants you to know at your face. Well, it did at the end, but that's because it degenerated into a standard shonen action series by the end. The reason you don't think that the characters had development is because the series doesn't throw it in your face, so you don't notice it.

You don't go looking for it, because that is not your reading style.

In other words, Negima is just not the series for you. Basically, you're the perfect reader for a shonen action series, and I envy your ability to enjoy them while not really working your brain, it'd certainly make me less of a cynic.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:15:42 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

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

I, on the other hand, can turn my brain on and off at will for the purpose of consuming media.

Best of both worlds, I am.

That... doesn't make you come of as well as you seem to think. Were you in the off position just then?

So your defence to me saying that those characters haven't developed is saying that it doesn't need to show me that they've developed?

Actually, yeah. I think I kind of was. Fuck, I thought I was done with being the thread moron....

In any case, I've finally realized how to do the next update for Walking the Path of Heaven.

Namely, training studying montage.

Any requests/suggestions for an appropriately 80s BGM? (in addition to/aside from Gonna Fly Now or Eye of the Tiger?)

edited 25th Aug '16 5:50:27 PM by EvaUnit01

The characters of Negima do change more than the overall characters in most other action Shounen or harems, where they, at best, tend to become Flanderized versions of themselves (hello, Goku), to become otherwise one-note, or to devolve into meaningless background noise (if they happen to be secondaries).

And really, most of the development flaws come from late in the series, when Akamatsu had dropped half of the original cast and made other bad moves that marked his overall decay as a writer (to become more of the average Shounen writer already mentioned. Most shounen writers are big time hacks and it shows). Before that, his character work was actually quite commendable for the genre, even if the seeds of the downfall were already planted in Negi and Setsuna's insistent refusal to get over their core issues even after they were supposed to be doing progress. Still, Akamatsu only grew awful at it much later.

UQ Holder, for instance, has had 100 + chapters, with a much smaller cast, and yet it's advanced the characters much less than Negima did in the same span. The only characters who have changed over the course of the series have been Santa (best character growth, but seems to have already peaked and left with nowhere to go anymore) and Kuromaru (who only changed for the way worse, devolving rather than evolving by turning into Touta's pathetic accesory).

Touta may give the impression of growth, but as a matter of fact he's pretty much the same inconsistent, erratically written mess of cliches he was at the start. He goes back and forth from being happy go lucky to angst ridden, from dumb as a plank to perceptive, as it fits the plot, and he's been that way from the start. The only difference is he keeps getting more ridiculously broken, but he's bound by Contractual Stupidity and retarded enemy power scalation to fail at making quick use of that. Karin's only change is being 'cured' from lusting after Eva to lusting after Touta's dick, and turning into way more of a jobber, which is all kinds of fucked up. Kirie is the same generic tsundere she started as. Fate and Eva have 'cheated' by basically having their changes happen off panel, and then only to become Flanderized versions of their respective worst traits, devoid of their respective amusing and humanizing quirks. Everyone else is a complete non factor.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:51:54 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

I, on the other hand, can turn my brain on and off at will for the purpose of consuming media

The thing with turning your brain off is, do it often enough and it'll stay turned off.

I doubt going from a background character to a bad version of your archetypal Tsundere love interest only with insecurities regarding her body counts.

I find this funny coming from an UQ fan, as you've basically just described Kirie.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:50:53 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Hey, it's not like I do it that often.

'Nuther abrupt non-sequitur, but... is it just me, or is there some potential in the idea of Ku Fei trying to apprentice herself to Saitama? Crossover Ship optional.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:53:04 PM by EvaUnit01

In UQ, the most developed character is the space elevator.

Nah, it's Santa. The space elevator barely shows up.

Honor where honor is due, Santa's character arc was decent, Sincerity Mode, but again, it feels like he's hit a wall after that.

edited 25th Aug '16 5:53:28 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

He did not say that it doesn't need to show you. He's saying that what it shows you is not always the kind of "so immediately obvious that the only way you wouldn't notice it on first glance without even needing to look for it is that you're a complete dumbass" stuff that is typical in your run-of-the-mill shounen anime/manga. You need to be actually attentive to detail to notice the bits and pieces you're supposed to notice, use your damn mind to put them together, and correctly analyze them.

And no, it's not as complicated as I've just explained; in practice, I usually do it without consciously thinking about it at all, and I'm pretty sure it's more or less the same for IANCE, Eva Unit 01, and the others.

edited 25th Aug '16 6:14:17 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

@EvaUnit01

Before Mundus Magicus, she might. After Mundus Magicus, she would probably take a gander at it... only to balk at discovering just how boring being Saitama can be, since nothing would ever be a decent challenge. In other words, she would want to be strong, but not if it made her one passion in life completely boring.

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

Well, Naturally. He's gone through the standard ghost storyline as Sayo, and then some. He has no unfinished business, nothing he needs to do, no unfulfilled anythings... basically, it's all over he just needs to move and and go to heaven or reincarnate of whatever. At best, his hanging around will let him help with Karin's issues, but he has no chemistry or interaction with Karin, and she doesn't seem to want to deal with her issues except when the plot wants to force Touta on her, so it's moot.

The ideal position for her is either 2nd best martial artist in the world, so she can enjoy herself going after the top spot, and working on other 2nd placers, or top martial artist in the world about to be supplanted by the promising new generation.

edited 25th Aug '16 6:19:42 PM by SCMof2814

To be fair, in UQ, nobody is relevant unless it's about Touta.

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

And Touta himself is so irrelevant they had to visibly shoehorn in a 'we need you in our faction to save the world' pseudo-conflict/plot to get him involved.

Yeah, that's the thing. In Negima, for most of the run you were given the impression these people might have lives if Negi weren't there, one way or another. In UQ Holder, it literally feels like everyone was just waiting for Touta to show up to actually go anywhere with their lives... and then do nothing but trailing after Touta, waiting for his super duper hyper Specialness to finally kick in and save the world. It's especially glaring in that most of the cast are immortals, many of them who've been around for centuries... and yet they've spent those centuries doing nothing, or mattering so little you could take them out and the world would stay the exact same. Even Karin's being Judas matters little as the world would be the exact same had she just died when she hung herself. Certainly she didn't seem to matter anything at all for Eva all through Negima.

Plot Bunny: Devilman vs. Guyver! Or rather, demons vs. Chronos! After the demons in Devilman sealed themselves away, aliens came to Earth and manipulated evolution on it, eventually creating mankind. Aliens leave, backstory of Guyver happens, and Chronos starts to build power. And then the demons reawaken, only to find mankind has taken over their world. Lucifer/Satan does his gambit, only to end up discovering Chronos. Cue Demons vs. Zoanoids. Maybe have Akira Fudo become Guyver I and/or Sho Fukamachi become Devilman.

Nevermind, this is getting stupid.

Nononononono keep going, you've totally got me all ears, man!

edited 25th Aug '16 7:04:20 PM by EvaUnit01

Well, the cleanest way to have both Lucifer/Ryo find out about Zoanoids and have Akira become Guyver I would be to just have the Guyver unit land in front of them instead of Sho and Tetsuro. Akira becomes Guyver I, Ryo encounters Zoanoids, Lucifer recognizes they're not demons, and the crossover is started.

Making Sho into Devilman is harder. For one thing, Akira only merged with Amon because Satan stacked the deck, so to speak. Even with just Ryo's actions, they had to set up a Sabbath, not something that normally occurs, and definitely not something Sho and Tetsuro would normally be involved in.

On the other hand, Tetsuro is known to do foolish things when he thinks he's got a good reason to do so, and he does write for the sci-fi club. Sneaking into a night club as research for a scene is something I could see him doing. For one thing, it's relatively harmless. On the other hand, it's about as close to a Sabbath as you're going to get without deliberately setting one up.

Unfortunately, you're not likely to see a lot of blood or people completely losing their reason en mass at a night club. Meaning demons aren't going to invade it. Not normally.

However, I was imagining that a zoanoid happened to be attending, and got drunk enough to transform in public. This would cause panic, and once it realized what it had done, the zoanoid would drunkenly conclude that the best way to maintain cover would be to kill everyone present. This would provide ample blood and loss of reason, especially if other members of Chronos tried to block the doors. This would provide an ideal environment for demonic possession, which could simultaneously reveal the existence of demons to Chronos (although they would probably conclude that someone else was creating Zoanoids) and allow Sho to become a Devilman. Although probably not with Amon, since again, that only happened because Satan stacked the deck.

That was about as far as I got before I started re-evaluating what I'd come up with and decided the idea was contrived. For one thing, prior to Chronos conquering the world, all Zoanoids were trained soldiers.

...

Okay, maybe a few Zoanoids going to a night club and getting smashed, only for one of them to be a moron and the others to try to cover his ass isn't as far fetched as I was thinking. Chronos does have a history of commiting mass murder and covering it up with fake terrorist attacks in order to keep themselves secret, and this fits right in with that.

Edit: Just realized that Chronos will probably spot Ryo as a fake almost immediately once they start looking into him. At which point he suddenly goes from looking like a bystander who happened to be where the Guyver unit landed to an enemy operative deliberately moving to intercept it. Fun.

edited 25th Aug '16 10:41:56 PM by Hyp3rB14d3

Hey OM, was just reading the SZS character page. Apparently, Kiri is a freelance computer programmer. Does she and Chisame know each other online in URAE?

Aye!

Er... Just woke up.

To be fair, I believe that IANCE is unjustifiably exaggerating his wrath and/or disgust and/or other people's flaws in most cases.

Rather than smart, I'd prefer to be wise. It would let me be silly more often.