- A good chunk of the "Undercover" arc falls under this, given that it's about a supernatural serial killer. Some highlights:
- The general concept of the arc: an immortal serial killer who's been active for eighty years and has yet to be caught.
- The murder scenes are incredibly gruesome. The killer kills their victims by either dropping them from extremely high up, or by phasing them into objects and leaving them there. A particularly creepy panel shows a group of half a dozen victims all dangling from the ceiling of a classroom.
- The murderer is revealed to be an undead necromancer who spends most of her screentime switching between Generic Cuteness and the depths of the Uncanny Valley. Later, her human form starts to deteriorate and she turns into a cross between a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl and a spider...
- Remember when Akamatsu was known for characters who look like this
? Well, UQ Holder has a global Zombie Apocalypse only stopped through Set Right What Once Went Wrong minutes away from engulfing the world. And he pulls no punches making it look downright horrific.
- Dana's Super Mode is a walking pile of nightmare, complete with Nightmare Face, More Teeth than the Osmond Family, Glowing Eyes of Doom, and Multi-Armed and Dangerous. Fortunately she does not destroy Touta but makes it believe that she would.
- Ialda Negi's appearance, just his mere presence was enough to silence an entire stadium due to his killing potential and the pressure he exudes is strong enough to make people faint.
- If that's not bad enough, his followers are revealed: Jack Rakan, Albireo Imma, Yue Ayase and Nodoka Miyazaki. Their appearance is enough to make Eva explicitly tell Touta and the rest to run from them.
- The entire Final Boss Preview against the Mage of the Beginning is this from start to finish. Not only are Touta and Evangeline facing a Person of Mass Destruction who far outclasses them both, destroying Eva's humongous tower in seconds, but a master of Mind Rape who plays their every button to break their body and spirit. She taunts Eva with the aspect of her loved ones, culminating in reducing her to ashes, and having spectral caricatures of his friends dragging Touta under a sea of corpses and blood, while moaning about despair and pain. If not for a certain someone's Big Damn Heroes, the story would have ended there and then.
- The fight between UQ Holder and Negi's team quickly devolves into a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as they try to stall the 37 seconds that Asuna asked them to. Not only are they overwhelmed one by one with little effort from their enemies, but their fight eventually generates explicit collateral damage in the city. Luckily, there are no casualties thanks to some quick work behind scenes.
- Cutlass stabbing Kirie out of nowhere, in contrast with the previous scene, but also showing how screwed the heroes actually are. Then she nonchalantly rips out Kirie's teeth and probably breaks her jaw to prevent her from using her cyanide pills.
- The Mage of the Beginning's true form, a deeply disturbing Angelic Abomination made of Light Is Not Good, mixing divine imagery with twisted, horrific features that would have made H. P. Lovecraft proud.
- Dana's description of the past: She reveals that Asuna's absence caused a ripple effect in which far from the Happily Ever After of Negima! problems could not be solved, turning Earth into a Crapsaccharine World that looks high tech and wonderful but is totally rotten, full of disasters, strife, inequality, war, famine, terrorism and Global Warming consequences. The very same thing we are trying to avert in Real Life. Warning much?
- Negi's team getting annihilated, Rakan, Albireo, Nodoka and Yue getting assimilated, most of his allies including the girl he is pinning for getting killed is an outright punch in the gut. Watching Negi being broken past his usual Stepford Smiler to a straight out Heroic BSoD / Heroic RRoD is quite a shock. Double as a giant Tear Jerker.
- The entire Agartha asteroid being covered by the Big Bad's darkness Combat Tentacles, hideous monster faces and Sinister Scythes, as anyone Negi knows are being killed one after another with him feeling their death, culminating in The Hero's Heroic Sacrifice.
- Karin's origin story. Enough said. My God, What Have I Done?, My Greatest Failure, Driven to Suicide and Cursed with Awesome only begin to describe it.
- Ba'al, just Ba'al... Uncanny Valley meets Creepy Child, into a character whose first action is to deliver a downright vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the heroes.
- Speaking of Ba'al, there is the subject of his Super Mode. Extra Eyes all over his head, and a shadow he can expand at will full of Combat Tentacles, Eyes Do Not Belong There and demonic mouths with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, not to mention monstrous giant arms and demonic faces; all drawn is an abundance of scary details. The result is something making Pride himself look like a cutesy fluffy stuffed bunny, with a dash of Alucard's Familiars.
- Having a team-mate whose Implausible Fencing Powers are ranked so Beyond the Impossible that he can cut down even concepts and curse and effortlessly lay a smackdown even on people with Complete Immortality should be neat, right? Except when the current Arc Villain put them into More than Mind Control and removed all inhibitions and sense of right and wrong, leaving only The Unfettered, obsessed with cutting whoever stands in his way, especially his former comrades and beloved mentor.
- Thought the most powerful UQ Number being controlled by the Arc Villain and unleashing his full might against his former comrades was bad? Well, how about the monstrously overpowered Physical God, Greater-Scope Paragon Dana? Given how nightmarish she can be when in control, HER going all-out against her students means that sh*t has really hit the fan.
- Ba'al, yes, him again, seems dead-set on setting a new record of creepiness with each appearance. This time it's his One-Winged Angel. A skyscrapper-sized atrocity made of fused tentacles, with fanged tentacles of variable sizes and a gigantic demon's mouth in his belly, inside which he stands. And it can cover the entire sky with gargantuan, draconic tentacles that could destroy a city in no time. Say what you will about Ken Akamatsu, but he really gets his kicks in designing Final Boss after Final Boss, each with profusion of gloomy details. And he is really good at this.
Chapter 182
- Want to see Who Wants to Live Forever? in the vacuum of space? Karin was left there, floating for forty four years, naked and unable to speak. At first, she decides to hone her martial arts skills and work on her backlog of books, but once her mana battery runs out and she's all but perfected her martial arts by herself, she immediately gives into despair and realizes she has no one left. She then spends her remaining thirty one years curled up in a ball, already having given up on rescue until she comes across the next nearest sun. She freaks out even further upon realizing that she's being pulled into its gravitational field, meaning that she'll likely be burned by the ultra hot star for eons, and she'll never be able to become numb to the pain because her flesh regenerates. She at least comments that it's more than fitting a fate for the world's most notorious traitor.
