 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. While the first attempt at a Negima anime wasn't all that bad, someone clearly decided it could be done better, and this is the end result. While it's pitched as a second season, in reality it's a true reboot with the comedy aspect cranked up high, so let's see how it's turned out...
15 years ago, a vampire girl met the Thousand Master, the world's most famous magister magi who had mastered over 1,000 different kinds of magic. But he wasn't selfish with his powers, and travelled the world helping those less fortunate - until he disappeared, perhaps after losing a battle with that vampire. Now, his son Negi has graduated from magic school. His first assignment is a teaching post at a school in Japan, the all-girl Mahora Academy. Two things about this assignment, though, are going to make life difficult for Negi: one, he can't allow anyone to know that he's a magi, and two, the small detail that his students are all older than he is. Meanwhile, there are rumours that there's a vampire on campus - but that couldn't be true, could it..?
It could, and that vampire girl is the same one who had fought his father – and lost – 15 years previously. She's also one of his students – but Evangeline (for that is her name) is out for revenge. As it turns out, Negi is also hopeless at keeping his powers secret, which eventually leads to drastic consequences for the young wizard...
Right. The first season of Negima! (note the absense of the question mark in the title, as that's the only 'official' way of telling the two seasons apart) had a decent level of fanservice, laced with a little comedy – decent enough, but apparently not as entertaining as fans of the manga expected it to be. This incarnation of the series (which has an accompanying rehash of the manga to go with it) has a high level of comedy with just a dash of fanservice to spice it up – and the series works a lot better that way around. All of the characters are still here, but for those new to the Negima!? universe, a few quick introductions would be in order. Negi is our diminutive hero, just 10 years old but possessing impressive magical powers for one so young – that'll be the influence of his father. As well as being the teacher of all our girls, he's also room-mate to feisty Asuna, whose temper is not to be trifled with, and playful Konoha, grand-daughter of the school principal. Other important characters include Nodoka, the "bookstore girl", who loves nothing more than being buried in books (well, apart from spending time with Negi), and vampire Evangeline, who mellows a bit towards Negi as the series goes on.
That's just a small sample, though – there are over 30 girls in Negi's class, all of whom get at least some screentime, and it's fair to say that it's hard to keep track of who they all are. That may be frustrating if you take a shine to one of the lesser characters, but there's so much else going on that you won't get much time to let it annoy you too much.
The show takes a fast-and-furious approach – each episode has a main storyline, with Negi tackling the threats facing him, but there are also usually a few sub-plots looking at what some of the girls are up to. The focus shifts quickly back and forth between the different threads, barely giving you time to take in what's happening before shifting back again. There are many scenes with what can best be described as grafitti in the background, writing that changes from shot to shot and almost insists that you try to read it, another way of distracting you - especially if you're using the Japanese-language audio and trying to keep up with subtitles as well. It's almost as though the show is going out of its way to try and prevent you from keeping track of what's happening – and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just frantic slapstick comedy, quickly moving from one gag to another and keeping you entertained. It's all wrapped around a more serious storyline, dealing with the theft of a powerful magical artefact from the magic school, that would be something you could get your teeth into – if there wasn't so much else going on.
It's also a little predictable in places – in almost every episode during the first half of the season, there's a scene with one of the girls seeing Negi use his magic, followed inevitably by them becoming his latest 'probationary contract' partner as a way of making sure they keep his secret. Sure, that adds a certain magical girl aspect to the show that's fun in its own way (and provides most of the show's fanservice), but by the halfway point of the series it starts getting a bit tiresome. Fortunately the writers have seemed to realise this themselves, and move onto other things for the second half of the season, as Negi and the girls had been transported to an alternate version of Mahora Academy by the Darkness (or whatever entity is controlling it), while Negi himself is stripped of his powers.
Cue threatening music. The gang remain stuck in the alternate world up until episode 24 – which is also the end of the story proper, with the final two episodes feeling very much like non-essential bolt-ons. Moon Phase tried a similar approach a while back – the let-down that you feel from having the series hit its climax too soon didn't impress me then, and it doesn't impress me now, but that's something to look at later. For now, let's look at the alternate world 'arc'.
The first thing that strikes you here is that there's actually a sense of threat from it, that the first half of the season never really had even when the Darkness appeared. Now, when Negi and his partners go into battle, you feel like they mean it – and then, 30 seconds later, we're dropped into an entirely unrelated scene with some of the other girls up to their hi-jinks, and the feeling is lost. You could almost insert the sound of a needle, scratching across a record, and that would give you a good idea of how the scene jumps often feel. "WTF!?" wouldn't be a bad description, either. A lot of the time the comic side of the show just doesn't fit with the alternate world setting, and that did spoil my enjoyment of the episodes set there.
Add in an unhealthy dose of joke repetition (there's only so many times I can take the class rep calling poor Makie a failure, for starters), some issues with the alternate world that would drive a nitpicker – like me – mad, and the old problem of too many characters with not enough time to cover them all, and it's clear that the series has some problems.
It's just as well, then, that the characters that get most of the focus in the alternate world are the ones you want to see – and I'm not talking about Negi and Asuna. Evangeline gets more screentime than probably any other of Negi's students, and thanks to the way that you're never quite sure if she's one of the good guys or bad guys she's someone I could watch for hours, with Chachamaru making a good comedy partner for her. The best moments come from the new characters, though, in the form of Nekane – a complete space cadet who brightens up any scene she appears in – and Anya, Negi's childhood friend whose over-competitive urges turn out to be the cause of all his problems. Anya's one of those characters who you just want to give a big hug to – even if her natural selfishness causes more trouble than it's worth. Between them, these characters make the show worth watching – just about.
As mentioned, the show's main story ends at episode 24, leaving the final two episodes to follow on in rather anti-climactic fashion. The first focusses on Anya, and how she settles into life at Mahora Academy once the gang have returned to the real world; while the second sees Negi try to track down his father – something the girls are going to help him with, whether he likes it or not. I much prefer shows to end on a high, and this "extended epilogue" really doesn't work for me (especially with Negi's search for his father ending on something of a downer), but in a way they do bring a sense of closure to the show that it may not otherwise have had, so it's not all bad news.
If the series proper disappoints, though, the two OVA episodes that are also included in this set may make amends, especially if you're partial to some blatant fanservice. The "story" elements of these two episodes can be summed up in about three lines: Negi and his class go to places that give the girls an excuse to wear very little, and get involved in adventures that give plenty of opportunity for fanservice. And I do mean plenty. The first episode in particular really goes overboard, with most of the girls wearing swimsuits or less throughout the episode (and with the character designs being noticeably more curvy than they ever were in the TV series – I wonder why that might be). It's shallow, mindless fluff, but it makes no bones of that, and to be honest sometimes something with zero plot is just what you want.
Negima!? ends, though, not really knowing if it wanted to be a comedy or a drama, and that almost ends up being its downfall as the show's two aspects don't quite manage to mesh together. It's saved from being a mess by two interesting new characters introduced late in the game, and some wise choices made in deciding who to focus on – but after a first half that was great fun to watch, the alternate world falls flat in comparison, and the series ends up as something of a disappointment overall.
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check out the reviews of the original releases:
» Volume 1
» Volume 2
» Spring & Summer Specials
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