HammerOfJustice
Since: Apr, 2013
09/04/2018 00:00:00
Expecting development for all of them was a little delusional, but you\'re aware the author torched it and ran because of a fight with his publisher, aren\'t you?
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Even the Best Trip is Worthless if It Ends in a Crash
Mahou Sensei Negima! is, through 33 of its 38 volumes, my favorite manga ever, boasting several of my favorite characters and moments in all of fiction.
And yet, I can't really recommend Mahou Sensei Negima! to anyone, because it completely fails at generating any satisfying payoff for anything of what it ever built for over years. It's one of the most egregious wastes of potential ever published, and it starts with a major Jump The Shark moment near the end of the (admittedly far too long for the series' own good) Mundus Magicus mega-arc. And it only grows worse and worse from there, ending in one of the most disgusting and intelligence-insulting ways to ever finish a series.
If the series had remained as episodic at it was at first, that wouldn't be that much of an issue, like it wasn't for Ranma, but once it tries growing the beard and relying on arcs and mysteries to answer, the lack of resolution cripples it fatally.
Look, I get there were serious problems between the author and the publisher, but fandom often tends to use that as an all too easy and convenient free pass for all the problems with the end. Akamatsu Ken's next work, UQ Holder, starting from a mostly clean slate, has most of the same narrative and characterization issues Late Negima had, so it's clear it's more of a case of overall Author Decay at work here. Additionally, UQ Holder's use of Negima canon proves Akamatsu is able to keep using the Negima lore along Kodansha if he wants to, yet he chooses starting over a new set of mythos without properly adressing the previous, hanging ones first.
The characters start great, making a good use of their archetypic nature, and sporting tons of solid humor, both of the clever and broad yet sincere varieties, but all of them, even the lead, end up underdeveloped and truncated, their character arcs savagely chopped down, so anyone looking for actual resolutions will be sorely disappointed. At first, the author does a great job at handling a very big cast, alternating their turns at the spotlight, but once he effectively drops almost half of the cast for the Mundus Magicus arc, the series starts slowly going downhill, although that isn't impossible to salvage until the last few volumes.
The artwork remains gorgeous from the first to the last page, however, evolving very nicely.