Pete just sent me an email:

I wish you made some kind of executive summary about Negima, because I see the copious fanboi writing... read it all... and cannot grasp just what is good about the show.

Another thing, the original has a thumb down mark in Quick Takes 3, and ends with: "There were too many characters and none of them really appealed to me."

Is it actually good? Or you are just running out of things to watch?

Well, it's true that the well of things to watch is getting pretty seriously low, but my interest in Negima!? isn't due to desperation.

Understand that the comparison is based on how much of each I've watched, which is to say a couple of eps of the first series, and 14 eps of the second one.

They did a lot of things right, better, the second time. The most important thing they did was to reconsider the character art. One of the problems in the first series is that aside hair color and style all the girls look exactly the same. The character designs look like they were created combinatorially.

And that's what it looked like in the animation, too. Generally speaking I thought the animation in the first series was distinctly sub-par.

For the second series they changed that a lot. The characters are still recognizably the same, but they're a lot more varied. I also think they're used a lot better.

I'm using some pictures I grabbed from the first series when I watched it, because I'm not sure where my copy of that DVD is and don't want to hunt for it. Anyway, the girl on the right is Kaede, the ninja.

And that blonde is Evangeline, the vampire. No, no, no; they're entirely wrong. This is Evangeline:

And this is Kaede:

So one of the reasons that the ? series is better is the character designs. Another reason is that they did a better job of differentiating the characters. In the first series they all kind of blended together, but that wasn't the case for the second one.

One of the biggest things that is different is that they changed the character of Asuna, who is the most important character in the series besides Negi. In the first series the defining characteristic of Asuna is that she's got a crush on Takamichi. She's also a tsundere and keeps beating up Negi. Finally, she's a complete airhead.

In the second series she's a loon but not an airhead. The whole business with her crush on Takamichi they mentioned in passing about five minutes into the first episode and then dropped entirely. She does sometimes get mad at Negi but we don't get classic tsundere comedic violence. In the first series I really hated her. I liked her in the second one.

While Nodoka has a classic crush on Negi, Asuna's feelings about him are more complex. It's more like a big-sister thing. Yes, I know that recently the manga has been hinting that they really are siblings. I don't think that's a factor in this, however. And after she becomes his first partner, there's clearly a bond that forms, a feeling of loyalty and responsibility on her part. I didn't get any such vibes in the first series.

Cute sassy animal sidekicks can be hit-or-miss. I thought that Chamo, Negi's ferret, was a major asset in the second series.

I really liked the 3-modes crapshoot regarding the partners. That was nicely handled. And that was something that was created for the second series. In the first series and the manga, the partners only have one mode.

There are other differences. The part of the first series that I watched rapidly settled into "girl of the week" mode, where we got shown a story about how Negi gets to know one of his students. The second series mostly avoided that; there are only a couple of those, at least in the first half of the series.

Instead, what they do is to tell stories about Negi and the strange attacks that keep targeting him (at first, by Eva, then later by the mystery opponent) and the girls of the class get introduced to the audience because they get caught up in what's going on.

The part of the first series I watched took place entirely at the academy. The second series includes a lot of sequences elsewhere, mainly in magically-created spaces. There was more of a sense of wonder, of larger vistas. And even those parts of the second series that did take place at the academy, the academy itself seemed like a much more interesting place, larger, more varied, more wonderful.

The magical partnerships exist in both series. Or so I am told. It never happened in the part of the first series that I watched, whereas they kicked right in to that in the second series starting with the second episode. And in general there's a lot more magic, and more spectacular magic, in the second series. That's a plus.

The very first story they tell in the second series is the Evangeline arc of three episodes, and I think that was an excellent decision. At first I wondered if it was contrived, but now I know it was not. That was necessary in order to establish the Evangeline character, because she's an important influence in what comes later. The first story arc establishes why Evangeline starts helping Negi, and why she seems conflicted about doing so, and that's a major story point.

One of the first girls to become a major presence was Konoka (Negi's other roommate) but along with her came Setsuna, and the vibes between them are wonderful. Setsuna has a huge yuri crush on Konoka, but she also feels a strong sense of duty towards her because of family history.

Konoka knows all this, and sometimes she teases Setsuna about it. For instance, when Konoka was trying to convince Setsuna to become one of Negi's partners. The process requires the new partner to kiss Negi on the lips, and Setsuna was grossed out. Since Konoka had already done it, she mentioned to Setsuna that it would be like a "second-hand kiss" with Konoka herself, after which Setsuna got hot and bothered thinking about it.

Konoka isn't cruel about it, which is nice. And mostly she ignores it. But sometimes she teases Setsuna, and it's always funny when she does.

There's a nice ambiguity here because it's not at all clear whether Konoka feels yuri attraction to Setsuna. She might. What is clear is that she wants Setsuna to loosen up.

The second series seized my imagination in a way that the first did not. The first series seemed to be screaming, "HEY! LOOK AT ALL THESE GIRLS!" The second series doesn't seem to think that "31 girls and one guy" is the main selling point. Instead they're telling a real story about magic, which all 32 of them (AND several other characters) get caught up in.

With a cast that large it's impossible that all the characters should play a major part, but they're doing a surprising job of allowing a good percentage of them to make a difference.

I bought two DVDs of the first series, watched two eps, and then shelved it forever. I bought the first half of the second season, breezed through it all easily, watched it again a few days later, and am eagerly waiting the rest of it. Yeah, there's a lot of difference between the two.

The word "magical" has multiple meanings. One of those is "relating to magic" and this series obviously is about a magician. But another meaning is "Inspiring a sense of wonder". In that sense, the second series is magical for me. The first series wasn't.

UPDATE: Pete responds, and points out the similarity between the two Negi series and the two Haunakyo Maid Team series, and I think that's really a good comparison. In both cases the second series isn't a sequel so much as a reimagining, which uses the same situation and the same basic characters but tells a different story. In both cases the second series had better art and more interesting and better realized characters.

The second Negi series is identifiably a product of its director, an up-and-comer and workaholic that I'm going to be keeping an eye on. He also directed Pani Poni Dash, which I really disliked. Nonetheless, the stylistic similarities are obvious. The difference is that all the characters in PPD were repulsive, whereas the characters in Negi!? are sympathetic and fun.

What they have in common is density, a feeling of richness. Some series feel like thin broth. Negima!? is more like stew, and I think it owes more to Shinbo than it does to Akamatsu. Shinbo took Akamatsu's characters and basic scenario, and told an entirely different story about it, one only loosely based (if at all) on the story Akamatsu told (and continues to tell).

His latest series is Maria+holic. He was also the director of Hidamari Sketch.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:29 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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