10 Second Anime - UQ Holder! - Episode 12 [END]

Touta's side fights to delay Negi for 37 seconds to activate Asuna's miracle. Season Finale.

Episode 12 - "Adeat! Everlasting Love"

Hmm.

Negima! harem ending confirmed! Ahem. So, Touta may be the genetic clone of a Negi and Asuna pairing, answering the wishes of those following their OTP (one true pair), but he's also the magical hybrid of Negi and the entire Class 3-A. Talk about a miracle. Magic in the Negima! universe has never been about making sense; it's only ever been about having a great name, looking cool, and being unleashed at the right moment. I won't even try to figure out why it would take 37 seconds to activate that Mahora Academy reunion. It's just some random number that may as well be forever while battling Negi and Jack Rakan.

Also, I can't believe these 12 episodes caught up to last chapters of the manga. And it referenced the OVA that was released in September. Time travel is a weird thing in this universe too, so just accept that it happens. The point of the OVA, and the appearance of the fat lady (vampire, if you must know) at the resolution of the big fight scene was to point to Touta's training arc in a magical dimension. This training just so happened to occur when Evangeline was living there and only two hundred years old. Her first love was not Nagi Springfield, but some boy with wild black hair!

Touta's request for marriage was indeed 500 years too late. This same scene was played out in the OVA, but instead of the whole Touta harem watching from the doorway like in the episode, we only had kiriE and Kuromaru. This shows how far ahead Ken Akamatsu planned the story of this adaptation and how its streamlined storytelling was on purpose. The fans of the manga will just have to wait for the other OVA's (two more are planned) to animate the fun side stories that the anime left behind.

For fans of the original Negima!, like me, I loved the whole reunion with Class 3-A. Every girl got their moment, and each one was represented at their best. Even Lingshen Chao, as if that whole time traveling thing from Mars never happened. Well, they did explain they were the beloved memories Asuna and Negi shared of all their friends, so it all made sense in an emotional way. I'm glad we got even just a little bit of Chisame, who became so important to Negi's story in the late chapters of the original manga. Ending up with Chisame totally would have been one of those almost-everything happy endings the Japanese love so much after Asuna was frozen in a crystal to save Mars and Earth.

Heh.

Jack Rakan, still not afraid to talk about teenage girl body parts to their faces.

Well, of course Fate was going to be their at the final battle.

What does it mean that Fate and Negi's spirit forms are their 10 year old selves? Eva and Touta's made sense. Is Fate just taking on an adult body too? And Negi?

Why do Fate's plans always end up affecting everyone worldwide? Can't he think smaller? Also, Ialda draws strength from people dying, so if nobody ever died, she'd just get weaker. That's terrible logic, Fate Averruncus! And Negi was right. She'd still be stuck inside his body.

From how they're talking, self-sacrificing Negi pushed Fate out of the way to take Ialda's possession. I think Negi did the right thing, judging from Fate's slightly off-kilter sensibilities.

Aw. Eva gets to see the real Negi after all this time.

We've caught up to the manga, so we still don't have an explanation for why Jack, Yue, and Nodoka tolerate such evil behavior from their compatriots like Cutlass. We'll have to wait another 145 chapters or so to find out...

Wow. Touta does learn fast. He took on Negi's final form, (really, it's his final form) Great Thunder in Heaven, on instinct, just like with the Dark Magic. I always liked the idea of how it took the opposite of the dark and evil magic he used most of the time and turned it into an angelic form, which Eva never was able to complete.

Whoops. All this fighting is destroying the city. I guess that was important in the manga. In the anime, not so much.

One thing Negima! never shied away from was beating up little girls. It was easier to tell who the bad guys were that way. Cutlass is bad. She's totally torturing kiriE to keep her alive. Jack Rakan is bad too, but in a different way...

Ialda really needs Touta to die for some reason, even as she's asking him to come to the top of the Tower. I hope that means there is still a real wrestling match with Negi going on where it only looks like she's winning.

Welp, that was way more than 37 seconds. Let's go see what Asuna did.

Ah! Haha! It's the entire class! Even Yue and Nodoka! Asuna did a thing! A big thing!

This is too short! They're all here, getting their special moments. But it's too short!

Sayo Beam! Sayo Rokketto Panchi! No effect!

Chachamaru nyaa! Chisame hacking! Everybody naked! Konoka teases Setsuna! Ah! It's too good!

Oh ho! Touta is the product of the harem ending! No wonder he's so rambunctious and a little dumb. I thought that came from Asuna...

Aw. This is the real Negi. His face doesn't have those strain lines and his eyes are big and brown.

Stalemate. Ialda took back the body. I guess we know the stakes, but we don't know the particulars from Negi's side. Fate is back to fighting on his own. I hope he comes up with something else that doesn't involve the whole world.

Huh. Jinbei did a thing to save the city, but I guess we have to read the manga to find out what it was.

Yay. Epilogue funny time. Let's get married! No. He asked 500 years too late. Well, if that thing with Negi doesn't work out...

Final Thoughts.

Ken Akamatsu struck again. I was there when they adapted the first anime to the Negima! manga, and instead of being faithful to the plot, and only going for 12 episodes, they went for 24, and made up an anime only ending involving Asuna dying. That was not well-received at the time, but funnily enough, it was the germ of the actual conclusion of the manga, which in itself was ended abruptly.

That was due to the cultural zeitgeist at the time of not tolerating fictional 15 year old girls fighting in their underwear. Why do you think UQ Holder! had all these young looking women, or mature looking women in Yukihime's case, that were hundreds of years old? Well, that prudery subsided, and Akamatsu decided to turn UQ Holder! into a real sequel of Negi's story instead of a spin-off. This anime reflected that attitude.

Sadly, if you were a fan of the characters in the manga, this anime was not going to be for you. Luckily for me, I never read the manga past where the first episode ended. This anime adaptation was intended for me, a fan of Negima! who never read UQ Holder!. This pretty much means this kind of audience can ignore the first 140 chapters of the manga. It's a pretty big gamble on Akamatsu's part. He's trying to get back the old fans who want to read the story that he never finished to his satisfaction, but without alienating the current fans who like the characters they saw for the first 80 to 100 chapters.

This anime ignored all those characters. We saw some of the other UQ Holders in the second and third episodes, but they didn't matter after that if they weren't going to join Touta's harem. Seriously, I applaud that. This is Ken Akamatsu, we're talking about. He's all about the cute girls showing us their underwear. I don't care about some cool looking guys in aprons. The anime didn't either.

So, as a nostalgia piece for the original manga and a way to apologize for the abysmal anime adaptation seasons (the OVA's were good and so was the live action show, but no pantsu in that one, obviously), the anime for UQ Holder! worked. As a specific adaptation for the UQ Holder! manga, fans should be gnashing their teeth. Sucks to be you. Ken Akamatsu loves Negima! more than UQ Holder!. I do too, so this anime was a net positive.