Description
Wizard Negi Springfield may be a boy, but he has a man-sized job to do! Fresh from the Academy of Magic, Negi continues his training as an instructor at Mahora Academy in Japan. But before he can get his Master’s in magic, the 31 schoolgirls of Class 3-A are gonna keep him up all night cramming for a final exam in will power. Temptation aside, Negi has more on his syllabus than flirting and spells. Darkness is closing in, and Negi is gonna need help from his student bodies to drive the ghouls from their school. These girls want to prove that they’re best in class, and extra credit is available to the cuties that aren’t afraid of after hours phantom fighting – especially if it means more time with their favorite… More >>
Negima!? The Complete Series
The original Negima series, while not particularly outstanding, had many touching and enjoyable moments. With this series, the assemblers (you can’t call them creators) have decided to travel the same path, but in dung-covered boots. If your IQ has dropped 50 points since you saw the first series, you might enjoy this rehashing with additional screeching and irrelevant digression and repetition.
As one by no means exceptional example, compare the handling of Sayo the Ghost in the first and second series. In the first series, the diligent work of the class reporter Kazumi uncovers a typically Japanese story of sacrifice and love, leading to the class being able to see and include Sayo in their activities. In the second series, the reporter behaves ridiculously, sort of like an US Weekly boor, and no background story ever emerges.
At one point, a character in one episode says “I don’t know what this episode is about”. How true! And I don’t know why anyone would have spent the money to package this tiresome drivel when so many better series, like the second season of Moonlight Mile, are waiting to be brought to North America.
You don’t have to waste your money like I did. Rating: 1 / 5
This anime is a new series – different from the previous “Negima!” series that ran. You can call this series a “reboot” of either the previous anime or the manga due to the vastly different storyline. Also different is the animation and art of the series.
Possible sticking points for some people may be the accelerated nature of the plot (the Evangeline arc is over very quickly in this series), the lack of certain trademark Negima plot points (particularly Asuna, who no longer has those mysterious qualities that she possesses in the manga), and the decision by Funimation to do the openeing and closing songs in English (while not bad by any means, some would undoubtedly still prefer to have the original Japanese versions).
However, I would like to say that this anime should be taken for its own merits. It is an anime that does not take itself too seriously, making this series fun to watch even in some of the more dramatic moments. The style is a refreshing interpretation of the orignal material’s art style that utilizes rather dynamic coloring, making the bright moments more vivid and the darker moments more dramatic.
Ultimately, it may be far from the greatest anime ever seen, but it is definitely a very likeable one. Rating: 4 / 5
While I truly enjoyed the first season set of Negima this second one while not the worst anime season I’ve seen does reach close to it. The series does give you a retelling somewhat of the arrival of ten year old wizard in training Negi Springfield to the all girl school to take over a class and the rest of the characters are in the series most of their personalities for the most part are changed somewhat, and while I grew to greatly enjoy the situations and shenanigans the girl students would get into in the Negima! series sadly I just couldn’t care less for them in this season re-make. The animation also was a headache for me turning from an almost dramatic look to a seemingly childish cartoonish scenes and while that can look good on some series here it just looked awful. The series also tries to tone it down with the more dramatic storyline the first season had near its last few episodes and keep it more light-hearted and humorous but it just seemed to fall flat where you couldn’t even bother watching a whole episode through to the end which is somewhat sad considering the great voice cast you had for the English and Japanese actors and actresses for the series season. So is it for Negima fans?, from what I’ve heard if you’re a fan of the manga series than it probably is but if you’re like me and have just seen the first season than stick with that one and forget this season set entirely… Rating: 2 / 5
Negima!? is the second series loosely based off of Ken Akamatsu’s manga of the same name (thought without the question mark). This series is a complete reboot, beginning anew and taking the plot in a totally different direction than the first anime.
This time it’s brought to us from the fine people at Studio Shaft, makers of such anime as Pani Poni Dash, Maria Holic and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. As any viewer of these series can tell you, they have a very distinct animation style which often features stylistic changes during specific events which could be anything from a color change to complete transformation of the drawing style. This may annoy some viewers, but fans of the studio would be disappointed without it (I know I sure would).
I won’t go into much of the details on the plot, as it has already been well described by another reviewer, but I will say that the series is very funny, enjoyable and at times rather clever. Having never read the manga, but knowing that many details were changed, I can not say whether this is due to Ken Akamatsu or the studio. Probably a combination of the two.
The high point for me though is actually the ending theme song. I’ve honestly put on the DVD just to listen to it again and it’s interesting to compare the different versions (each closing credits is sung by a different group of students).
So in closing, fun show, delightful ending theme… though I would suggest avoiding the dub. Rating: 4 / 5
Well, a lot of people critisised the first anime about it’s crappy animation and bland artwork. The exact opposite of that is displayed in Negima!? though. Negima!? is packed full of vibrant colors, and precise animation. The artwork is spectacular, and the humor is absolutely spectacular.
Then there’s the plot. It’s a but hard to follow every place this anime jumps to, and trust me, it jumps around ALOT. You can randomly go from a class to some weird place in the middle of England, where you see a bunch of characters that don’t make any sense at all. I suppose this is the biggest fault to the anime.
Also, they added 2 new characters, which I thought were absolutely adorable. A little cat thing, and a frog, both of whom are mean, stuck up, and strict. They follow Negi around trying to get him to spill the beans of his magic to anybody he can so that he’ll be turned into a Chupacabra.
Most of the humor is during the Chupacabra club lessons taught by Asuna, who is absolutely obsessed with them. She buys hundreds of shirts which she finds out later she doesn’t need, and tries to get anybody she sees to buy one.
Unlike the first one, this anime doesn’t really follow the manga at all. What people should understand though, is that if it did, we would have just had an amped up version of the first one.
One more thing I feel like I should add is that they totally switched around the style of Nodoka’s hair. Not sure why, but everytime I see Nodoka on this I feel like shouting “Use a cob, stupid!”.
Overall, I give Negima **** out of five, one missing due to the crappiness of the plot. Rating: 4 / 5