Story: So the story is 10 year old genius, Negi Springfield, who is assigned to teach a all girls middle school in order to become a proper mage whilst keeping it a secret (Spoiler alert: He's found out within the first episode. "How does that add up" you ask. No clue, but still sounds fun. As far as the story goes, the anime pretty much is just one huge set up for the remainder of the series. It sucks that in the beginning of this series, nothing really happens and everything that does happen is just the tip of the iceberg of something very important later in the series that you will never see in the anime. For example the introduction to the character Fate Averruncus (If you had read the manga, you know how much of a big deal he is). The anime is underwhelming due to this problem. Another problem I have with this anime is the action is just awful. It's just a bunch of still images that are panned, tilted, or both. Whereas in the manga, many of the fight scenes that anime does depict, are intense and entertaining. The anime fails to live up to the standards of the manga in that regard and does genuinely disappoint me.
Art: The art is rather standard and does have a little charm to it, but it's also very boring to stare at. It was created by Funimation, so that may be a huge factor into why it looks like every other anime that came out from 2000 to 2007. It's not like the art is bad, but it's so generic to its time period that if you were to throw any character into the world of Chobits, you wouldn't be thrown off that something was off.
Sound/Music: The sounds all made sense in this series. The voice acting in both the sub and dub are actually pretty good. The dub is better than expected especially for when it came out. The soundtrack is very nice and used very appropriately. Don't even get me started on the opening and ending theme.
Character: Let's talk about Negi, he's okay. I don't really have high expectations out of him because he's only 10. Yes, he's a genius, but still lacks maturity which makes sense. As for the anime goes, his character development isn't to bad and is actually done in a proper manner and so do the other characters as well. Asuna is your typical Tsundere like character who has no romantic interest in Negi which is rather refreshing; rather she takes on the big sister role since she looks similar to Negi's actual sister. The main love interest, Nodoka, also had pretty decent character development as well. I wish I could go about and talk about the other characters properly, but unfortunately the anime doesn't really have the time to go through the cast and to give the development each student deserves. It doesn't help that the anime changed a few things from the manga which drastically reduced a lot of other character's development.
Enjoyment: I enjoyed the show, but after reading the manga then coming back to it, I was really bummed out with how many changes Funimation Studios made and had a realization with how lazy the studio was producing this. It's one of the few shows I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to love growing up. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but it's a show that was done so dirty in my opinion. It had so much potential and it just got he shaft because of who it was handed to to do the work for it. If it was another company that had worked on it, I'm confident that the show would get the justice it deserves.
Overall this show is straight down the middle and just okay. I can't recommend this show to anyone unless you want to look at a bunch of cute girls trying to decide who's wifey af (btw the most wifey character is Satsuki Yotsuba. Don't agree? Fight me). The fan service is also very tamed, it's basically softcore ecchi, which makes sense because dude, it's a bunch of middle schoolers. You can only do oh so much with them before we look at you in a negative light. In conclusion, this series is painfully average. Just read the manga, it handles the characters and story much better. The action will always keep you at the edge of your seat and you'll be glad you went for the ride. Once again, go check out my manga review of this series because you will definitely see a difference on how I feel about the series.
