In our first installment of Badaptations, we'll be tackling Ken Akamatsu's ongoing Mahou Sensei Negima series and its first of several anime incarnations. I'm tossing up a SPOILER WARNING for this article, if you haven't read Negima read at your own peril!
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| The art from the anime, first chapter and chapter 240 respectively. |
The Manga:
Ken Akamatsu's works are highly regarded in the manga world. A.I. Love You, Love Hina, and Negima have all been long lasting and well-received works -- despite any personal opinions you or I may have of them -- and Negima itself is an ongoing story on its 314th chapter in Japan. The story is centered around Negi Springfield, a 10 year old mage who, after graduating from the magic academy, is assigned to be a teacher for a girls boarding school in Japan, Mahora Academy. There he immediatly meets Kagurazaka Asuna who soon discovers his secret. Negi is a mage. And not just any mage, he's a hugely talented mage and the son of Nagi springfield, the Thousand Master, the most famous mage of all time. The magic world has been hidden from humans and unless she keeps his secret he'll be turned into an Ermine. The first 15 chapters of the manga are similar to this, comedic in nature and all in all meant for fun. At the end of that time begins the first major story arc and the manga picks up speed.
Around the school girls have been falling unconcious and when they awaken they have marks on their neck resembling bite marks. Rumors begin floating around that it's the work of a vampire and Negi, the idealistic young chap that he is, feels the need to protect his students against this threat and begins investigating. Upon catching the offender in the act, he pursues her, discovering soon that she is Evangeline McDowell, one of his students. She also happens to be a Shino, the highest class of vampire. She is weak because her powers were sealed and she was bound to the school by none other than Negi's father, Nagi. Negi finds himself unable to defeat her and Chachamaru, another student of his who is a robot powered by Eva's magic. To combat this foe Negi begrudgingly recruits Asuna and they form a pactio, essentially a contract that grants the contractor with a portion of the mage's power to enhance combat ability and a user specific item to assist in combat. The partner in turn protects the mage while s/he is casting. Asuna receives a "sword" (initially it always takes the form of a paper fan) that cancels magic and as a result can banish demons as well. Negi and Asuna are able to defeat Eva and Chachamaru and force a stop to the vampiric incidents.
The next major arc takes place on a school trip to Kyoto where Konoka, Asuna' best friend and roommate, comes under attack due to her powerful mage lineage. It is during this arc that Nodoka receives her own pactio and item, a diary that reads the thoughts of whoever's name she writes into it. Thus she becomes informed of Negi's status as a mage. This trip is also when Negi first meets his longtime and current best friend and rival, Inugami Kotaro a dog half demon. He also combats one of the series' main antagonists, Fate Averuncus. Basically this arc is hugely important story-wise and is exciting all the same with a massive demon appearing and the reader finally getting to see Eva at full power.
It's also at the end of this arc that Yue, Nodoka's best friend, discovers Negi's secret as well and becomes closer with him. This becomes a very big turning point as she, despite knowing Nodoka is in love with him, also falls for Negi. And hates herself for it. She rejects her feelings for Nodoka's sake.
The two arcs above are covered in the time-line of the anime series. My favorite arc personally is the tournament subarc of the currently ongoing magic kingdom arc. It's just awesome to see Negi using Magic Erebea, it's an interesting story component to have the main character in a shounen series choose the darkness for power knowing full well that's it's, as Jack Rackan put it, your "single player" as opposed to the light's "merry co-op mode". Shounen manga tend to push camaraderie, and while this does do that in many ways it also shows that solitude and inner darkness are two other very true realities of the world, even for our 10 year old protagonist. Seriously, a good manga. If you haven't, read it.
The Anime:
What's different:
The beginning is notably different, almost instantly defining Asuna as the main character instead of Negi by showing her first and foremost doing an odd ritual in a fish costume that never existed in the original work. Negi's name isn't even said until 12 minutes into the first episode! The major arcs, or at least the two that are featured, are drastically cut and watered down. It isn't until episode 6 that you get your first taste of the Evangeline arc which lasts through episode 8. So far it's pretty faithful to the original work, although it spends a lot less time proportionally on the arc than the manga did (1/4 of the total rather than 2/5).
The main focus of the anime is on the romantic comedy/harem aspect of the manga while that's a footnote in the original. They take up 11 Episodes, nearly half of the series, on the time spent in between the Evangeline and the next major arc, the Kyoto Arc. And they spend 2 episodes on the arc. The manga takes 26 chapters. It doubled its length on this arc and the anime takes 2 episodes for it. Everything seems to be following the storyline progression of the source material at least, even if it is doing this poor of a job. But then, all of a sudden, in the third to last episode they change the storyline. Unlike in the original, which I won't spoil, Asuna's Magic Cancelling ability stems from a contract she made with a demon when she was 5 that would keep her alive for 10 years before the demon comes to claim her soul. He does. She dies.
Then Yue, who fell in love with Negi in addition to Nodoka (This happens in the manga, too, albeit much, much later and she refuses to make a move for the sake of Nodoka) forcibly kisses Negi in front of Nodoka because Nodoka won't make a move. The entire ending where he pactio's everyone and they retcon Asuna's death by killing the demon is also out of left field. They do, she lives, anime ends. They created an entirely new storyline at the end, they changed the pacing and entire focus of the series.
Why it sucks:
Well immediately you see that the animation quality is subpar. The colors are an odd mixture of desaturated, semi-realistic tones and overly bright colors -- primarily in the hair of the students and teachers, which for the record are all the wrong goddamn colors -- and there is a distinct lack of shading in the art.
The animation is choppy, especially in the OP which sucks even beyond that. Seriously, the song is annoying, the animation is terrible, they're playing with a beachball for some reason then it does a montage of the girls kissing him one by one. There's no effort put in and it's just not interesting. Brings me to my next point, though, the sound in general is terrible in this anime. There's a ton of dead noise and when there isn't it's unfitting ambiance music or the most whiny voice actors they could possibly find.
The pacing is terrible and the storytelling is fairly random as about half the show is fucking filler and the episodes that aren't are watered down shells of the manga's versions. Seriously, they spend nearly as much time on the Walking Club as they do fighting Eva or in Kyoto, let alone all the arcs they left out of it. The complexity of the source material is all stripped away and you're left with a shallow, generic, and boring display, barely any of the characters have the depth they had in the original, certianly not Negi who's entire backstory is cut out save the essential parts about his father, Asuna suffers from a similar situation to Negi as well, despite being essentially the real central focus of the show. Kotaro doesn't even appear!
Scale of Suck:
Honestly? It's not tje worst badaptation in the world, I think we all can name at least two or three worse than it. But it's still a disgrace and in all honesty, watching this is like going on a plane with an ear infection. Just don't do it if you know what's good for you.
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