Pet Peeve: Negima

I have said before that I am a man that enjoys some clichés. I truly do. I have some limits of course, but for the most part I’m okay with them. Especially in Shounen. Some people may complain about stuff like endless power escalation and power ups but not me. I get a kick out of that stuff. Hazard is a Shounen Manga loving guy at heart.

Like I said, exceptions apply. Like Negima.

Negima was a rather decent manga. Nothing utterly spectacular. Nothing utterly horrible. Certainly better than average. It had cool fight scenes and a diverse cast of quirky characters.

Then the Magic World Arc happened. At least that’s what many would tell you if you asked them where it took a nosedive. It is true to a degree, but there is a point. A specific point that I believe should be highlighted.

It was the fight with Jack Rakan.

The Invincible Superhuman

Don’t get me wrong. I like Jack Rakan. He was one of the best things to come from the Magic World, but that fight was also the debut of Lightning Speed Negi.

Let Hazard set the scene for you, non-Negima readers… though I wonder why you read this if you aren't a Negima reader.  Anyway, our young magical prodigy is in a magical tournament he must win! His nest opponent? The World’s Strongest Man! Jack Rakan!

Someone insanely out of Negi’s league.

People called Jack Rakan a broken character in-story and with good reason. Speed. Toughness. Big magic blasts. All the stuff. So how does Negi beat him?

He uses a spell that allows him to go at 150 km/s.

To put this in perspective in the time it took for you to read up to here, Negi would have gone out, ran to a shop, bought some fries, ate them, cooked himself a light meal, dropped some eggs, ate more chips, picked up eggs that were still frozen in mid air because that’s just how fast he is now!

So yeah, fast.

My Invincibility is a Scientific Fact!

The fastest thing the Negima characters had dealt up to that point where bullets….

Back to the fight, Jack Rakan being totally awesome spots the weak spots of the technique.

Then Negi reveals the upgraded mode which fixes those weak spots…yeah…

The fight ends up in a tie because Jack Rakan is just that durable, but this marks the spot where Negi left all his other friends in the dust then his dust left them in the dust.

Akamatsu did in one fight what it took Akira Toriyama the entire manga to achieve. He made everyone else irrelevant.

Didn’t help that any contribution made by the girls from that point felt kinda superfluous. Hazard believes you can do endless power escalation as long as you remember to bring weaker mooks for the other guys to feel important. This kinda didn't happen here.

The main fighters of the group didn't get to do much. Long time characters got almost their entire fights skipped (Setsuna vs Tsukuyomi, also Mana). Characters that had been hyped up as villains ended up fighting people we did not care that much about (Fate girls jobbed so bad) in disappointing battles or just flat out got steamrolled by Negi.

Negi went into the enemy base backed by a team, but it was pretty damn clear he could have done so alone.

Bad power escalation.