Negima 26 (END)

  
  

After Nagi made his exit last time, leaving Asuna behind, demons once again come after her. She's pretty much ready to give up on things, but Negi saves her (apparently magic cancel doesn't work on flying spells) then they go where the rest of the class is waiting. But there are more demons coming... so there's only one way left, and that's to make pactio -- with EVERYONE. So all the girls kiss Negi and gain their respective pactio powers (see Yosaba-san's entry for caps of all of them). And even Zazie and Yotsuba get some good screentime and some more lines in. It seems Zazie has watched Kaleido Star ("Welcome to my stage!") and Mermaid Melody ("How about an encore?") (^^;;) However, a huge demon comes and grabs Asuna.. it's the one that she made the contract with. The demon uses her as a shield to guard against Negi's magic, but Negi grabs the staff Asuna's holding and poof, the demon's gone. Everyone bids farewell to Asuna for now, and it's back to the present.

Back to the present at Asuna's birthday party. It seems only Eva, Chachamaru, Negi, and Asuna remember what happened in Germany. However, this time Asuna decides to rely on her friends and tells everyone what's going on with her, remembering their words from 9 years ago. They all gather at the World Tree where Chao and Hakase have made a device that will anull Asuna's contract with that demon, and with all their power combined it's gone. So with that resolved... Negi wonders if he'll be able to become a good teacher. Asuna says yes, so long as he doesn't give up.

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I don't really know what to say about this last episode... I guess I'm glad that the director finally saw fit to show us some pactio action that was long overdue, and I'm very glad that Zazie and Yotsuba got their chance to shine, but other than that... I don't really know what the staff wanted to do, so I'm not going to try and explain what went on and the issues with time travel and such since I feel it'd be a waste of my time. See the forum for that discussion ;)

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Negima Wrap-Up

So with Negima's tumultuous run now over I suppose it would time to point fingers and assign blame for what happened. But I can't really single out a single person -- everybody's at fault in some way or another, be it the directors, or the character designer, or the person who did colors, or the animation director, etc., etc. It seems a case of poor planning and people not fulfilling their jobs. Something very much wrong must have happened between the wonderful "Introduction" videos being put out and the show going on-air.

But even if there weren't any technical issues, the treatment of the original work has to be the biggest disappointment for me. In stark contrast to the Mahoraba staff, the Negima staff seemed to have little respect for Akamatsu-sensei's work. A few episodes did stand out as deserving praise for being wonderful adaptations or great original ideas -- see the Negi and Konoka episode along with the Sayo episode -- but most seemed to use the original material rather haphazardly and without direction, losing the charm and feel of the manga, with the very much reduced trip to Kyoto probably being the most egregious offense to manga fans. I suppose some of these issues arise from the fact that they had to cram 9+ volumes of an ongoing manga into 26 episodes, which given Negima's content was an impossible task to do. And while I can appreciate the effort the staff put into the last few episodes, it came much too late to really change things overall, and with a resolution that leaves me scratching my head trying to figure out what all the shocker developments were for.

So in the end I can't say anything other than that I'm very disappointed that XEBEC couldn't deliver the goods, even though they had wonderful source material to work with. Negima stands out as the perfect example of how NOT to adapt a manga for a TV anime. Akamatsu-sensei is due a very big apology from them. But if watching the anime makes people pick up the manga then I suppose it's served its purpose.

Speaking of the manga, it continues on, now on its 100th chapter -- I'm very much behind so I'll have to catch up with the latest developments ;) It'll be interesting to see whether any of the elements in the last few episodes really turn out to be from the manga setting -- it seems that Asuna was traveling with Nagi, from reading Nanami-san's entry about chapter 100 -- so we'll see. I will be picking up the manga (in Japanese, of course) when I can, but I'm going to have to take a pass on the anime DVDs :P