A long rambling post in which I discuss things related to the Negima?! TV series…
A year or so ago, during TJ Han’s Animé Demotivational Poster Contest, someone suggested that the appropriate picture would be Negi’s entire class, and the caption “Negima?!: When a 30-girl harem just isn’t enough.” Yes, that’s right — the show has one guy, and thirty-one girls. Actually, the total is 33 girls, as his older sister and childhood friend occasionally appear. Obviously, the manga-ka (Ken Akamatsu, the guy who did Love Hina) set out to create a harem with every possible stereotype in it, and then some new ones. (Although, if they’re new, I guess they’re not stereotypes, but we’ll just overlook that little detail for now.) Naturally, the best way to ensure 31 girls are all in one place to become a harem is to place them in a school, and the best way to insert the guy is to make him the teacher! But hey, a hentai lolicon fantasy might not make it even on Japanese TV, so the teacher had to be younger than the students.
Enter Negi Springfield, genius 10-year old English teacher at a Japanese school. Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be an improvement, when you stop to think about it — reverse the sexes, and make it a 10 year old girl with a class full of 9th grade guys, and it’s almost hentai in concept. But it’s “shotacon” instead of “lolicon” so that’s ok. (Deshou? Deshou?) Unsurprisingly, each of the 31 girls is just a little weird — one’s a vampire, one’s a ninja, one’s a ghost, one’s an android, one’s a hacker/internet diva, one sits in class polishing her firearms, one has ki powers and is a fanatically loyal bodyguard to yet another….and these are the straightforward ones! You get the idea.
Continue reading →
