UQ Holder!

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Although the story has some ups and downs, it was a nice ride.
Art was always great, story was always full of surprises and it delivered a lot of good moments towards the end.
While it goes way apart from Negima to validate a new name, it's nice to see a lot of the previous series material be present in this one since it's in the same universe/storyline.

Of course, there are flaws, plot holes and such, but, in my opinion, not nearly as much to dim all the shining moments this manga has.

I'd not recommend it to those who are jumping directly into it, there a lot ... of Negima references that are crucial and won't be fully explained here. Also, not for those who finished Negima without thirsting for more. It's a clear expansion of Negima's universe.

COMING IN ALL THE WAY FROM 2024 WITH THIS ONE! WOW!
Ok lets get this stuff out of the way first. I didn't even know there was a previous series to this until I read the reviews here and I never felt like I was missing out on any references except for 1 that was all the way at the end (A pilot mentions how she understands that the MCs distant relative had greatly helped her great great grandma or something along those lines) pretty much everything else is explained.

The other part fan service/romance aspect. At first I found it non intrusive and sometimes funny. But ... it happened so much and did so little to advance the story and in the end had zero impact on the story overall. It was there simply to be there. There is quite a bit of spicy content on offer as well. It is funny when girls get their clothes blown away by accident but after the 50th time of this its charm is gone. One volume had a part where they were doing a bike race. It was literally 3/4 of the entire volume of them just blowing away their clothes as they raced. The race and all aspects of it were pointless and if it wasnt for a semi big reveal at the end of the volume I would have just said skip the whole book.

Lastly a bit of my own personal taste. The action (which is a huge plus for reading this manga imo) goes from this really awesome magically infused physical action style and changes into a mostly magical berserk/claymore art style with crazy fantasy beast/alien designs. I really didnt like this. I wish it had stayed more rooted in the physical aspect like it did in the beginning. The end was very abrupt and the main villian was barely featured in it at all which seems like an odd decision to me. Also, the story in general kind of overstayed its welcome, while I enjoyed it overall, I was very much ready to be done with it by its end.

Now if you made it this far into this review, you are probably thinking why did you give this an 7? Well despite the above the overarching storyline and themes were pretty cool. There are some moments that really make you stop and think about immortality. The art is quite good and the action scenes manage to really emphasize the action in the scene and display power, motion and strength quite well. Ken Akamatsu is a skilled mangaka imo and it shows here. Character development does happen and there are some twists and turns but the development of them are kind of all over the place. This is just one of those things were for almost all positives I can think of a negative to go with it. That is why its mixed feelings. I think if you enjoy the story you are going to be giving a 7-8 on it. If you dont enjoy it you will pretty much greatly dislike it. I dont think there is a huge on the fence with this. My biggest thing is if the story had stayed in line more with how it was in the first half and dropped 80% of the lewdness and romance aspect thus shortening the overall story significantly I think this could have been a solid 9/10. Anyways, I hope this made sense and in some way helps you decide if you want to jump in on this.

If you all haven't heard, Ken Akamatsu finally won a senate seat not too long ago. Akamatsu-sensei has been a part of my life since more than a decade back, and seeing that he was holding firm on this copyright thing even back then, it just opened my eyes to how passionate this guy has been about all of this all along. It also saddens me that Negima got axed early for this very reason, squashing what could've been an all-time great shonen before it ever had its time in the limelight. But if nothing else, we should all pay some respect to the fact ... that he was willing to abandon his lifetime work not once-but twice for his politics.

Okay, now, guess what manga ended months before the 2022 election? Yeah, no coincidence there. Well, I can’t exactly say I expected him to pioneer the mangaka to politician pipeline, but it was always evident that his heart was somewhere else for the entirety of UQ Holder’s serialization, and I guess this was it. And like, it was glaringly evident. Minor spoiler, but near the epilogue, the entire Negima cast pulled up out of absolutely nowhere. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the Love Hina girls came flying out of the battle bus next, because that’s how poorly the writing had developed by the end of this series.

UQ Holder took a serious nosedive at just around the halfway point, and then again in its last few years. Whatever good ideas were had were forgotten or turned into softcore hentai-I hate to say it, but that's not a joke. Its cast of generic-but-cute-enough girls more or less became Touta's Pokémon. Even the battles are ruined by characters repeatedly pulling out the newest rule-bending trick out of their asses, including (but not limited to) immortality, immortality cancellation, total magic nullification, spatial manipulation, several weapons that can destroy anything, concept "deletion", time travel, and a handy gadget that can literally brainwash anyone into fighting for Touta's team without any reason or character development whatsoever. With so many impossibly overpowered superhumans around, the story should have been long over before it started had they not been AFK for thousands of years.

If anyone who's finished this picked up the first chapter now, they would see that the original point of the series was completely forgotten somewhere along the way. The manga has now concluded with none of the central questions being answered, and major characters like Fate and Baal were still tossed to the side with little to no explanation. Despite having a similar amount of raw material to Negima after accounting for chapter length, it is astounding how little ground this series has managed to cover over its decade-long run.

UQ Holder holds very little of substance behind the visual spectacle of its battle scenes. Readers coming out of Negima will be disappointed at its treatment of beloved characters (read ch. 137-140 only, the canon Negima epilogue, if you must), and readers wanting the shonen experience must work through a good amount of seemingly aimless exposition only to be massively disappointed by the harem ending. Yes, it's a harem ending, and let's just say no one was surprised when Touta started dual-wielding in the final battle. Well, at least Negima came full circle, I guess.