Negima was OK, it's funny, and it's entertaining but it got aborted mid-way by the publisher, the romance isn't very romantic, and the plot makes no sense and there are too many characters. By the end, I was agreeing with the guy who called this the greatest let down in manga history. In fact, if you don't want to read my rambling rant, just read his eight reviews down → ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
The first problem with Negima is probably that THERE ARE TOO MANY CHARACTERS, and that's not a complaint like "oh, I can't keep track of all these people" I mean Akamatsu-sensei introduced too many for himself to be able to handle, and he starts quietly killing subplots and ditching long before his publisher cut him off.
Negima starts as a sort of shotacon-ish romcom, with a ten year old teacher being put in charge of a class at an all-girls highschool. He ends up being forced to share a dorm room with a girl who hates him because he replaced a teacher she had a crush on, because this is Akamatsu-sensei you know there will be a lot of (funny) parodies of other series but also some heartfelt moments. There are a lot of good Negi-Asuna chapters early on.
The first problem, of course, is that his class is 30 students and Akamatsu-sensei makes clear he wants some sort of character-development for all 30 of them, which again, might not even have been too hard if this was a manga about a mage who was a highschool teacher.
Yes, the problems don't even start appearing until Akamatus-sensei abruptly leaves the romcom genre 50 chapters into his manga, quickly Akamatsu-sensei starts making up excuses to shoehorn his romcom with 31+ characters into a shounen action-adventure... with over 31 major characters. So everybody in this class, for a totally insane and nonsensical reason, are all given magical powers and put into one of those gumdrop-and-lollipop type shounen adventures, several people's personalities are completely revamped, and this new manga is vastly different than the first 50 chapters.
Oh, and another expansive cast of characters are introduced, including some character who is introduced as some-sort of Naruto parody that isn't funny and then somehow gets grandfathered into the main-plotline where he then spends the next 250 chapters as the most pointless character in a manga with a lot of pointless characters, aimlessly following Negi around since Akamatsu-sensei apparently forgot exactly what he was doing with him. Eventually a romantic subplot for him is introduced, that is neither romantic or has much of a plot actually.
I realize this might sound like it makes no sense, but that's because, from this point on, the manga makes no sense.
It's like that big, aggravating final battle in a shounen manga where each chapter so little happens because the mangaka has to switch between all the different characters all the time, only here we switch among 31+ characters. Crazily little happens every chapter.
The second problem is that "plot-development" for female characters, since this is Akamatsu-sensei after all, involves them falling passionately in love with the main character. Did mention there were over 30 female characters? This not only gets boring, since he recycles some version of the same thing every time, but also seems... I don't know, unfair I guess? They're romances are doomed from the start and you know, Negi is a fine chap but he's not that great. It seems cheap.
The third problem is that Akamatsu-sensei won't do Yuri, if you're going to do a romance with such a huge female to male ratio in the cast you should be prepared to do a few yuri couples. He does one, and it's mainly done for comedy, which is a shame because the lesbians are some of the nicest characters in this manga and they get treated like crap and are the but of a lot of his cheap jokes, which sells them short.
Fourth, is that he was running out of time even when he thought he had 700 chapters. For example, some characters crushes/romances/story lines are simply abandoned or cut off [looks at Ako] in various miserable ways long before Akamatsu thought he would have anything but his 700 chapters, subplots are killed [looks pointedly at Johnny], ect. et. al. because there's simply that many characters.
Eventually just as Akamatsu-sensei get into the groove of things, and it looks like things are looking up the manga is axed, a bizarre, rushed ending is shoved in which solves nothing and leaves every single romantic subplot hanging, including negis. Yes, after 355 chapters we don't get ANY SORT OF ROMANTIC CONCLUSION WITH NEGI. THANKS FOR NOTHING KODANSHA, YOU @#$%^!
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By the end the only real thing I'm getting out of the manga is that the NEA is right and class sizes need to be reduced because not being able to finish any manga is 355 chapters is insane.
(-6)
