Jul 12, 2023
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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