 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | DEL REY | | | ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: | | KEN AKAMATSU | | | ▪ | FORMAT: | | JAPANESE / B&W | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 208 | | | ▪ | RATING: | | OT | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 03/04/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 07/14/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | SCOTTT CAMPBELL |
Negi Springfield is sent to an all-girl's school in Japan to be a teacher. While he's there, he has to keep his magic status a secret, naturally, which isn't very easy when the school and the students are beset with fairies that send them plunging to an alternate dimension to do battle. Volume seventeen is the ultimate battle between good and evil! Boy wizard and high school teacher Negi is the only one who can stop Chao and her plans for world domination. But Chao–master magician, Martian warrior, and super genius–may be the most formidable opponent the boy wonder has ever faced. Who will survive their final clash? The visuals in Negima! are beyond awesome – this is manga art at a higher level, let me tell you. Each and every page is a work of art – an insane amount of detail, and action, and explosions, and text, and everything else that could possible required to give you a pleasant little manga-induced seizure as it were. Trying to explain to anyone in words as to just how cool Negima! is when it comes to the proficiency of the art is almost impossible. It really is like nothing else out there and it is no wonder that it is so popular. Other artists just aren’t willing or able to make their manga look this good – Negima! bursts with “cool factor,” no doubt about it. Just pick it up and give it a once over – I’m done trying to explain this! The back of the book has one of the most extensive extras sections that most of us will have ever seen. Everything from translation notes to explanations of particular spells used in the story are here for the reader to look over. There is also a large section of reader fan art and even some preliminary design work by the artist himself. When it comes to extras and gaining a better understanding of the manga we are reading, Negima! is the tops. Negima! is only Ken Akamatsu’s third manga, although he started working in the field in 1994 with Ai Ga Tomaranai (released in the United States with the title A.I. Love You). Like all of Akamatsu’s work to date, it was published in Kodansha’s Shonen Magazine. Ai Ga Tomaranai ran for five years before concluding in 1999. In 1998, however, Akamatsu began the work that would make him one of the most popular manga artists in Japan: Love Hina. Love Hina ran for four years, and before its conclusion in 2002, it would cause Akamatsu to be granted the prestigious Manga of the Year award from Kodansha, as well as going on to become one of the best-selling manga in the United States.
IN SUMMARY:
Negima! is just “wow.” The art is on a higher level than what most of us will have been used to and it’s just so much fun to read. It’s funny, and serious, and interesting, and involving – there’s just so much going on in Negima!
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