Angel Beats! was definitely the best show of the Spring Season. Anyone surprised considering this s a Key series? Would the makers of Clannad, Clannad ~After Story~, Kanon and Air do something that isn’t the best show of any season? It hasn’t happened yet!

Yuzuru Otonashi wakes up lying on the ground, without any memories beside his last name. The only person beside himself is a girl who is pointing a Sniper Rifle at a defenseless girl on the schoolyard. According to the girl, Yuri, Otonashi is dead. Just like herself. Otonashi considers her to be completely nuts and walks over to the girl she was aiming at. The other girl, called Tenshi (“Angel” in Japanese), tells him the same thing Yuri did: that he is dead. Otonashi asks her to prove it, in reply Tenshi stabs him through the heart with a blade she summons out of her wrist. When he wakes up again (you can’t die if you’re already dead, you just collapse for an hour or so then wake up again, and any injuries or even teared-off body parts will have been restored), he is killed again, this time by a purple-haired lunatic called Noda. Third attempt results in him walking into a trap which makes a large hammer come down from the roof and knock him out of the window – from the 3rd level of the building. At the fourth attempt, he finds Yuri and a bunch of other people in the Principal’s office, where Yuri asks him to join their battlefront (which changes name about once every 5 minutes, some names include “The Afterlife Battlefront”, “Like-hell-I’m-dead Battlefront”, “Near-death Battlefront” and “Barnacle Battlefront”), and rebel against god since Yuri blames this world’s existence on him/her/it. Otonashi actually joins the battlefront, as they all try to “survive” in the world between life and death.

While this is original, the cast and the execution makes it even more so. If we start with the case, The Afterlife Battlefront (they use that name for most of the series) consists almost entirely of complete idiots, or undescribably weird people, with the exception of Otonashi and Yuri who are the only sane and somewhat intelligent. TK is constantly break-dancing, no matter if it’s appropriate or not, speaks only in short phrases, mostly in english catchlines from the 1990′s, for example “Trap”, “Whoa, dancing in the shadow!”, “Goodbye, wild heaven!”, “Knockin’ on heaven’s door…”, “Don’t stop dancing!”, “In the mountains.”, etc.; think Tiamat from Shakugan no Shana, but in english and without his phrases complementing anyone else’s. Shiina is a self-proclaimed Kunochi (female Ninja) who has terrible focus and is constantly balancing something on her fingers – even while doing something else, like balancing a broom on her fingers while playing baseball. Yui is the same kind of character as Rikku from Final Fantasy X, Kaolla Su from Love Hina, etc. who has too much energy and is constantly hyperactive. Yui is also not just a bit stupid, doing things (like accidentally strangling herself with a mic) about all the time,  she’s easily the funniest character in the entire series. She also has a demon tail for some reason, and may be based on Etna from the Disgaea series Kanade “Tenshi” Tachibana is initially pretty mysterious and an antagonist up to Episode 5, then becomes friends with Otonashi – and she’d also gets high on both my badassness and cuteness lists if I ever write them. Takeyama is a hacker and self-proclaimed genius (who is actually just as stupid as everyone else), who always wants everyone to call him “Christ” which no one does. Naoi is completely crazy and thinks he’s God, adores Otonashi and actually notices how stupid everyone else is, and he can also hypnitize people, which he demonstrates by for example making Hinata feel inferior to a clothesclip or making him think he’s a piece of toilet paper. And those are just the more notable ones.

Angel Beats also manages to make a big deal of the slightest of things, in completely ridiculous ways (think Yotsuba&!), such as “Operation Monster Stream”, which is also known as River Fishing to everyone else (I don’t want to explain that one in too much detail, since it’d spoil a lot), Lifting Food Tickets from NPC-students which means to literally lift them using a large fan to blow them away, or visiting their weapon manufacturer “Guild” past an Indiana Jones-style trap labyrinth

Towards the end, the entire series seems to have changed without you even noticing. About EP11, the plot starts actually reaching the climax, and EP12 is an epic Fantasy-Action episode. The last episode are vastly different, really dramatic and actually very sad. Still, they manage to put a Clannad ~After Story~ happy end to it, something I actually thought was impossible to do with a scene of 5 seconds. The last episode also uses what Divine at Random Curiosity calls “The Jun Maeda Emotional Sneak Attack”, first lowering the viewers emotional guard by putting a lot of light-hearted comedy first (Naoi and Hinata fighting over who was out of tune, Kanade writing a serious school anthem revolving around praising Mabu Doofu (a kind of very spicy dish), Hinata dressing up as Principal with a bald wig and hitler-mustache, etc.), then putting in an emotional scene where the viewers last expect it. The resulting ending is both very sad and happy at the same time. And actually very good, it fits this series more to have a more speculating ending than a complete Clannad ~After Story~style ending.

Visually, Angel Beats! is possibly the best series ever made. It’s sharp, has a really unique animation, extemely detailed both character designs, backgrounds and locations, and plenty of eye-candy. Just look at the animation, and tell me one series that could possibly even compare to this visual masterpiece! And since this is a Key series, it has all the music composed by the director and story writer Jun Maeda himself. And he’s a really good composer, something he has already demonstrated with Clannad’s masterful soundtrack, and now Angel Beats! isn’t that much after. It’s not better than Clannad, but certainly not far from it. About the only thing it lacks is a really emotional theme like Clannad’s “Nagisa ~Farewell at the foot of a hill~” (okay, unfair comparisation since that’s just about the saddest theme ever, but still… it doesn’t have anything like the themes Existence, Illusions, The Place where Wishes comes true or Roaring Tides either). The Opening Theme, “My Soul, Your Beats” by Lia (there’s also a remix by LiSA used in EP3, but it’s not as good) is simply a masterpiece despite it’s nonsensical lyrics – but it still doesn’t beat Clannad ~After Story~‘s “Toki wo Kizamu Uta“. The kind of hopeful sadness that Toki wo Kizamu Uta contains is completely impossible to replicate, even for it’s own composer apparently. The ending theme “Brave Song” is really good too (not as good as the Opening though), and the image shown during it is updated almost every episode to show new characters, or excluse “dead” characters – the image at the top is the one from the final episode.

Angel Beats! is a bit hard to classify in just one overbearing genre, since it has about even parts Slice of Life, Drama, Fantasy-Action and Comedy, and also touches the Psychological and Supernatural genres. It’s hilarious, yet keeps serious, a bit like Ken Akamatsu’s stories (Love Hina and Mahou Sensei Negima! are excellent examples of his stories that keeps serious yet on the side doesn’t take itself seriously at all – you have to read them to see how that’s even possible), a bit like what Fruits Basket tries to do, only Angel Beats! does it right.

You want to watch this now right here. You don’t want to see it because of the description? Yes you do! The description is completely pulled out of the air and has hardly anything with the actual series to do.

Yeah! Go get her, Negi! No one is gonna miss her!

Here it is! The first Single Chapter coverage on this site! And also, it is a chapter in the middle of a story arc so if you haven’t read the past chapters, this post (and the chapter) will make no sense. If you actually haven’t read Negima, I really recommend you start since it’s a real masterpiece.

Tsukyomi is caught by the neck by Negi, who has turned into his Dark Lightning form(Come on! Break her neck! No one will miss her!). She tries to cut his arm off with her Zanmaken-ni-no-Tacchi attack, but Negi dodges it by turning his arm into lightning. She instead attacks him directly with Resshuuzan-ni-no-Tacchi, which he can’t block in time, and drops her. She then threatens to “slice up” Nodoka, something that actually makes Negi angry and he fires his arm, again turned into lightning, into her stomach, unleashes a violent series of Lightning-Powered attacks which actually blows a rock outside the ship to pieces, and tells her to quit if she’s just a mercenary hired by Fate. Tsukyomi just laughs at him, saying that she doesn’t do this for money, but instead just for the fun of killing (something here also seems to turn her on completely), and delivers a message from Fate: “I’ll be waiting”. She then pulls out Code of the Lifemaker, and uses it to summon a huge bunch of Shadow Demons. Negi stays behind to stop the demons, while the others escape in Paru and Johnny’s airships – something that actually even gets Asuna (actually Luna) worrying about him. The rest of the chapter is spent on a long, unfinished scene where the two airships escape from Tsukyomi and the Shadow Demons, protected by Ku-Fei, the Battle Maiden Squad(Yue, Collette and Bea), Saiyo (still playing with the Sagitta Magica-Turret Gun), Mana(who is for the first time in the series actually getting worried, and seeing our cool and collected mercenary sniper actually worry is not just a bit odd), Kaede, Koutarou and Yuuna, the latter mostly experimenting with her Twin Gun Artifact and seemingly not helping that much – her similarity with Yuna from Final Fantasy X and X-2 is getting even more prominent here.

My feeling that Negima is turning a bit too much towards Dragonball is getting even stronger now with Negi’s Dark Lightning Form (named by me, the actual name is a very long phrase of mixed Japanese and Latin). But, knowing Ken Akamatsu, he’ll probably find some way to correct this. Unlike Dragon Ball, Negima still has side characters (a whole lot of them, and they’re all quite capable on their own) and, more importantly, a Story. A good story at that. Dragonball stopped haing a story after book 17, Negima has been announced to be at least 400-500 chapters long so he can’t really let it slip out of his grip this early. My guess is that Negi will be unable to use Magica Erebea outside of the Magic World, since the normal world has much less magic power in the air, as someone explained a few chapters ago, or something along the lines of that. I also wonder why there hasn’t been much comedy in a while, but I guess it’ll be more of that soon enough…

Next chapter: Enter the Gravekeeper’s Palace!

After having read all 292 currently released chapters of Mahou Sensei Negima!, I’ve decided to cover the new chapters released every week. These posts will contain  a summary of the plot, a commentary and a couple of screenshots taken from the chapter. I’ll do this just because I want to write something about just about every chapter, and this is the perfect excuse to do so!

The next chapter should be out by wednesday, and my first Chapter coverage will be published then as well.

The reason why I started reading Negima can be summarized in two words: Ken Akamatsu. The guy who wrote my all-time favorite Manga “Love Hina”, Ken Akamatsu, is back as the author of a still running (since 2002!) fantasy series involving a 10 years old english teacher of an all-girls middle school, who is actually a mage-in-training. Ken Akamatsu is the only one I know of who can make a this weird plot make a jack of sense.

Negi Springfield is a 10 years old mage, newly graduated from a magic school. He hopes to become a great mage to search for his father, the Thousand Master – one of the most powerful mages who ever lived, and he’s so mysterious so that no one even knows where the Thousand in his nickname stands for, and who has a seriously weird sense of humor. Instead, he is appointed as the new english teacher of an all-girls middle school, and the homeroom teacher of class 2-A.

This could have turned out to some kind of slice of life series, or a sick harem series due to the 10 years old main character. Instead, it’s a great fantasy-comedy that picks the best out of all it’s genres.

Just like Love Hina, Negima’s main strength lies in it’s characters. 3-A consists mostly of weird people – Some examples are a Robot(whom no one seems to notice is a robot despite the highly visible joints on her knees and her antennas), an immortal 10 years old vampire who uses an illusion to look older, an anonymous web celebrity, a ninja, a ghost, a mad scientist and a girl obsessed with all kinds of exploration. Ken also reused a lot of the character designs from Love Hina, Nodoka is Shinobu(Yay!) with longer bangs and who uses a book that reads minds, Asuna is Naru with bells in her hair and uses a giant folding fan that works like Touma’s Imagine Breaker ability in Toaru Majutsu no Index(apparently it can become a huge sword too) and Sakurazaki has Motoko’s personality and even uses the same Shinmeryuu skillset as she did(the main character almost getting his head chopped off by a Zanganken attack, sounds familiar?) with Angel Wings she normally keeps hidden(I love Angel Wings!), Ku-Fei is my favorite character Kaolla Su but a lot less silly(not good) and her obsession with huge guns put onto another character, etc. Almost all of these girls also somehow gets pulled into the magic world, some by accident, some due to a certain obsession with exploration, some were already there and some came by their own choice. The so far most notable character outside of the class is Kamo, the talking ferret who “organizes” most Pacts, has a tendency to pull cigarrettes out of nowhere pretty often and who fled his land to escape being sued for 2000 counts of stealing underwear. With a main cast consisting of over 35-40 characters, do I need to mention there are a lot of names? Fortunately, this isn’t that hard since there are a lot of character-focused chapters/chapters told from someone else’s viewpoint, Profiles, and they introduce one character at a time so it doesn’t feel like you are drowning in names. Most of these characters also has their own unique personalities and backstories, and it doesn’t feel like a class full of nameless nobodies. It’s not as well as Fairy Tail, though, where all the over 100 clan members had some kind of personality. But Fairy Tail is an exception, and Negima’s cast feels more living than most Animes and Mangas ever made.

You are constantly picking up tons of references to Love Hina, but also to several other series such as Clannad. I already mentioned the character designs, but there are also a visit to Kyoto where both Motoko in Love Hina and Sakurazaki trained for example. Ken Akamatsu also wrote himself that Nodoka was based on Shinobu on the cover of the first volume.

There is a bit of fanservice/ecchi in here as well, but unlike parts of Love Hina, Negima knows where the line between acceptable and tasteless goes. There are underwear showing a lot, and an occasional butt, but no more than that. The ecchi is a quite a lot less than Love Hina, generally just sightly more than The Familiar of Zero. Just like Love Hina, there are a lot of jokes centering around personality clashes and people not taking each others seriously or making fun of each others, mixed in with a bit of slapstick making a really nice mix that never feels repetitive despite many jokes are used numerous times. The action scenes in here are also more over-the-top than even those towards the end of Love Hina, but still not like Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou where you in some episodes(EP10 for example) had to really put some effort into finding anything not extremely over-the-top and/or overkill. There are several enemies that turns into allies(Evangeline and Koutarou so far), but they don’t make the mistake of putting extremely powerful villains on the good party like for example Dragonball does, but they down-power them significantly similarily to how Soul Eater does when Crona joins, by shrinking down Ragnarok from 3 meters tall to 30 cm. Evangeline who is at just a few percent of her full power due to a curse and Koutarou who lost his ability to use Wolf Spirits and his transformation. This also helps saving from the feeling that they’re just piling more and more powerful villains after each others, since that tend to make the story disappear, again like Dragonball. So far Negima’s story quality has just been getting better and better, as expected of Ken.

You can read the so far 291 chapters that has been released(it’s still in production with a new chapter every week, each chapter being about 20 pages) here, as well as getting an RSS feed that notifies you each time a new chapter is released. In order to get all the references, you should also have read Love Hina here, but it’s just heavily recommended – even if you don’t want to get all the references, it’s a really good Manga – the Anime wasn’t anywhere near though so if you only watch that you can’t expect to get all the references. Currently it is about to get a 10/10 rating from me, and I sure hope it doesn’t drop that score anytime soon.

(Extra Comment: Come on, Nodoka! Get Negi and avenge Shinobu’s broken heart from Love Hina!)

Some screenshots are sightly edited to remove unnecessary content
(such as overlapping boxes and talk bubbles) and focus on the actual content

Screenshots taken using an iPhone 3GS, so they are fairly small