Reviews

Jul 13, 2015
Spoilers ahead.

The two previous OVA series may have had their flaws, but all the way through, you could tell they were building up to something great. They had to cut some material in favor of the larger story, and if you knew the manga, then you knew exactly what they were building up to... The climactic fight between Negi and his archenemy, Fate Averuncus. This long, epic, high stakes battle would not only justify any miss-step the OVAs might have made, but it would make the OVA collection stand out as the best Negima series since the manga. And if that’s what you want to see, get ready...

To see the finale of the Magical World story haphazardly condensed into one five minute sequence. I wish I was exaggerating. The film begins with Natsume using her artifact to sneak up on Fate with Kotarou and a few others in tow(WTF?!) and then blazes through the rest of the story at break neck speed, offering up no explanation for what happened since the last OVA OR what's happening presently on screen. Not only does it skip entire chapters, but it actually has the balls to list off the chapters it IS pulling material from... Needless to say, it goes from chapter 311 to chapter 330 in just over a minute.

Once this is done, we go straight back to Mahora Academy, and spend the rest of the movie there, and this is the point where the OVA’s strict adherence to the manga is thrown right out the window. The plot of this movie is that once Negi’s students graduate, his trial period will end, and he’ll be forced to pick one permanent partner out of them. Everyone else, barring a few exceptions, will instantly forget everything they know about magic.

And here’s the thing: The movie, itself, inadvertently points out just how absurd this premise is. Natsume, Setsuna and Konoka talk about being exempt from the rule because they’re all in contracts that don’t involve Negi, which is great... But what about Misora and Mana? They’re each involved in third party contracts too! And what about the eleven students who knew about magic before they met Negi? What about the ghost, or the robot who works for a magical vampire? Oh, and here’s a good one... What about the fact that Nagi Springfield, as an adult, has over a half-dozen contracts that are still active? Didn’t really think this through, did you?

The entire story from that point is of people moping around and contemplating their fate, or going through transformation scenes for no reason at all, or engaging in entirely stakes-free battles. Oh, but it’s okay, because at least we get to see Negi pick a partner, right? This would be the second entry in the franchise to do so, and it can’t do it any worse than the Neo manga did, can it? Well, I would normally avoid spoiling something like this, but I don’t want you to make the mistake of getting involved with the plot or getting your hopes up, so I’m just going to spill it: He picks his entire class, effectively rendering the entire conflict pointless.

They stand in a circle, they all get pactio cards, and... WHY DOES EVERY ANIMATED NEGIMA SERIES HAVE TO GIVE EVERYONE A PACTIO CARD?! In the manga, only seventeen of his students made contracts with him, and aside from the final one(Akira), none of them ever felt forced or meaningless, but don’t tell the animated incarnations about that! Hell, at least Negima?! found a way to do it that made sense to the plot! We then get a big dramatic magic catastrophe sequence that craps all over the original manga’s ending. Yeah, I’m not going to pretend the manga’s ending wasn’t disappointing, but it was better than this.

Oh, and Negi’s going to keep being a teacher, AND he’s going to follow his girls into high school, so where the hell did that deadline come from?

This isn’t just one of the worst entries in the Negima franchise. It’s also one of the worst anime movies I’ve ever seen. The plot makes absolutely no sense, half the material is some sort of fanservice filler, the ending is as fanficky as they come, and it tries to complete the story and wrap it up with a pretty bow, despite the fact that these OVAs have NEVER worried about telling a complete story before, so why break that trend just to put out the worst possible ending?

Would I recommend it? No. I would not. In fact, this movie’s very existence makes me want to reconsider recommending the previous OVAs. The entire movie should have been the finale to the magical world story, with Asuna’s time-traveling arc(Which was the only genuinely good part of the manga’s ending) occupying the film’s last ten minutes. As it is, this movie’s a piece of crap.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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