Story: 7
I'm torn between a 6 and 7, because the story starts off as a usual fanservice harem with a tsundere female lead. Then the fantasy action begins around volume 3 or so, and starts to ramp up towards the middle and later parts of the series. And amidst it all, it still has time for middle school fanservice. How odd is this?
The story has quite some genuinely surprising twists that definitely caught me off guard, and I really wanted to rate it higher for that. Unfortunately, it goes downhill towards the end, as certain things are wrapped up quickly with not much explanation, as well as certain unresolved plot lines with other characters. That's a problem you're going to have with a series that has as many characters as this. More on that later.
Art: 8
The artwork is nice, as standard for Ken Akamatsu. You can slowly see the morph from moe harem to shonen action with each new volume. The fights are pretty fantastic and the abilities have very creative names. It would definitely be a feast for the eyes if we could get a full on anime series (and no, I'm not talking about that AWFUL first Negima adaptation).
Character: 6
So many characters, not enough time to write a decent plot to wrap it all up. The writers sure tried their best, however, but they had to add on more and more characters, and it was just too much after a certain point. The ones that they did focus on had some great character growth (Setsuna and Chisame are excellent examples), but many exist only as fluff with brief screen time.
Enjoyment: 7
I must say I did enjoy Negima for as long as it lasted. The plot twists and the growth of Negi's power and character was very fulfilling to read, even though the fanservice got a bit too aggravating and some things about the final boss character could've made more sense.
Overall: 7
It's a pretty long series with more ups than downs. You can see Akamatsu slowly trying to grow out of his usual harem genre and try something new, and yet it's apparent that something is holding him back. He did pretty well with Negima as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping to see him dip his pen into more action manga in the future.
