Mahou Sensei Negima

Information of Anime

Negi Springfield, a ten year boy from England, goes to Japan to teach English at an all-girls school called Mahora Academy Middle School Campus.  The class he teaches is 2-A.  However, being an English teacher in part of his training in being a wizard, which he keeps a secret from the students.  Asuna Kagurazaka, a student of Negi, hates him from the start when they first meet on their way to school.  He replaces Takamichi T. Takahata as Class 2-A's homeroom teacher.  Because she has a secret crush on Takahata, she hates Negi for replacing him.  Also, they share a room together since the dorm had no room left.

When Asuna learns that Negi is a wizard, she uses him to help her confess her love to Takahata.  However, they end up fight together in many situations.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show has many arcs of the students of Class 2-A with Negi helping them out.  Many of the students have feelings for Negi & have unique backgrounds.  Ayaka Yukihiro, the class president, is a high classed rich girl with an obsession for Negi, Nodoka Miyazaki who has a fear of men falls in love with Negi, Evangeline A.K. McDowell, an old witch with a magic seal that Negi's father did to her, sucks blood out of people, etc.  Many of the arcs show each girl's background with their personal troubles with either Negi or someone else solving them.  Not all of Class 2-A student's background are covered due to the number of students in the class & the number of episodes in this series.  Overall, Negi wants to protect his students with his magic.  However, we see Asuna & Negi get along very well as the series progresses.

In the last arc, Asuna is about to die on a certain day due to a curse from a monster that invaded her hometown when she was a child.  Because it was her last day to live, she tries to confess Takahata her feelings, but pulls out when she tells him she was just kidding.  Seeing her calendar circled for tomorrow, Negi assumed it was her birthday since she never talked about it.  Pulling a surprise birthday party a day earlier, the students of class 2-A were shocked when Asuna told her it wasn't her birthday.  But they went with the party anyways.  At midnight, Negi finds out that Asuna is dead when he catches her falling from the top of a tree.  From there, a funeral was held for Asuna with the students of Mahora Academy Middle School Campus mourning for her.  Negi tries to be strong to his students about how life should go on after Asuna's death, but fails when he sees one of Asuna's bells rusted in a box in the principal's office.  From there, Negi tries to find a way to revive Asuna.

Negi learns that Asun as cursed by a demon king ten years ago.  The curse was placing a magic canceller spell on her that repels all magic for en years.  After that, you know what the result is.  Negi discovers a way to save Asuna when he learns that one of his students, Chaos, developed a time machine.  At the same time, Chaos knows that Negi is a magician.  In order for the machine to work, magic is required.  Meanwhile, class 2-A are concern about Negi & starts looking for him.  When they finally find him, he's already in the process of finishing the time machine's requirements & everyone from class 2-A goes back in time, ten years ago in Germany.

Negi is separated from the class is finds a young Asuna & Nagi, his father.  During this time, he spends time with them & learns from Nagi that he is looking for a way to remove Asuna's curse.  Meanwhile, everyone in class 2-A are wondering what's going on.  When they catch Kamio talking, Evangeline talks them the truth about Negi.  The next day while Negi fetches water from a lake, Nagi is fighting off a demon that was going to attack Asuna.  Getting wounded, Nagi casts a spell that sends both of them somewhere.  Asuna breaks into tears as she fears that her curse has cause another misfortune to someone close to her by summoning demons.  Running away, Negi chases her & finds everyone from class 2-A who were looking for him.

Class 2-A tells Negi that they know everything now & is willing to help Negi fight off a horde of demons that were coming from behind him & Asuna.  In the process, they each become warriors to Negi & gain magical powers.  Near the end of the battle, the demon king appears & takes Asuna.  However, Negi wins the battle in saving Asuna.  After saving Asuna, everyone from class 2-A says farewell to Asuna as they return back to their own time & that they will all meet again in the future.  Fast forward to the present where everyone is celebrating Asuna's birthday.  No one recalls what they did back in Germany except Negi & Evangeline.  Instead of enjoying the party, Asuna asks for help & everyone supports her.  The show ends with everyone in class 2-A helping to remove the curse from the demon king as they now have a solution.

My Personal Review

Mahou Sensei Negima was originally planned for 52 episodes, but got cut to 26 for some reason.  I heard that this doesn't have the same impact as the manga.  I admit that series is fun to watch at times, but wasn't something that I would get excited for.

Animation

The character designs are what you would expect from Ken Akamatsu's designs.  They are drawn the same way as his past works.  They are cute.

The colours here are pretty bright as in colourful.  It creates a cheerful mood.  The dark night scenes are bright in colour tone, which may disrupt the mood a bit.  It doesn't create much tension to it.  But this isn't a horror series.  It's light comedy.

The animation movement is okay.  The flow looks natural with no weird motions like flying into the air from being punched in the face.

Sound       

The sound effects are clean but fuzzy at times.  Explosions have a slight crackling fuzzy when it hits its peak.

The voice actors are good.  They matched their characters quite well.  Negi's voice was a bit too feminine personally.  But he's a ten year old, so no one should expect his voice to be so manly.

The music is pretty up-tempo, especially the theme songs.  I felt the opening theme songs got remixed too much & a totally new song should have been used.  It got really tiring quickly when I heard it in different versions.  The ending theme songs almost sounded the same to me for some reason even though they have different names.  I felt the singing/melody is the same as the others with different lyrics used instead.  The background music is pretty good though in those light moments.  It made the mood relaxing to me.  It was cute & catchy.  But a lot of the songs won't really stick to your head as they can be easily forgotten, especially the opening theme songs.

Story

There are a lot of arcs in this anime due to the large number of characters.  Most of them are around two episodes on average.  The most I've seen is around four if I remember correctly.  A lot of those stories involve a student's background & the writers make an issue behind it.  For example, the class president's love for Negi due to her wanting a little brother.  Some of these arcs can be quite boring since they are plain with little surprises or twists in them.  But they do hit an emotional chord at times as the story have the viewers understand the problems & pain that character is experience.

Another thing to mention about is the anime's pace.  Because it tries to introduce & explain each character's background from class 2-A , the paces of the arcs can be quick & can leave some unexplained mysteries that would make you wonder more about the character's background.  Luckily, some of it is cleared up in later arcs as side dishes.  But, they tend to go back as a loop.  This includes Nodoka's feelings for Negi.  She finally has the courage to confess her feelings to him, but backs out, then goes at it again.  The anime doesn't manage to get all the students of class 2-A in, so I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing personally.

Overall Conclusion

Mahou Sensei Negima is an average series to watch if you want something to laugh about.  But the idea of high school girls falling in love with a ten year old boy can be a turn off for some people.  Personally, it's a strange harem anime.  I would suggest watching this as a side dish when you got some free time to spare.

Mahou Sensei receives a grade of seven out of ten.  The anime is enjoyable to an extend in terms of it's humour.  However, the show tends to drag a lot due to it's massive amount of characters.  Plus, gets old quite quickly for some reason.  It might be that I thinking of it like a Love Hina comedy series involving a ten year boy living in harem.  The anime does have some ecchi moments, but I think some of the jokes are just a little too stretched out.  One of them involves Asuna's breast going incredibly huge due to Negi's magic slip up & Kamio crazy obsession for panties.  Luckily, this anime series is only 26 episodes instead of 52 which was originally what was planned for the show.  It would have lost a lot of viewers if it was running for that long with this sort of story writing.

Last updated on January 14, 2008