It’s not too often you find yourself watching a manga adaptation and saying “they should have cut more”, but I sort of feel that way about UQ Holder.  I just have a hard time believing anybody who hasn’t read the manga could follow what was happening this week (not to mention needing knowledge of the predecessor series, though many anime are guilty of that).  It was fine for me, but the truth is, the anime is materially following the manga’s latest arc to a large extent while having skipped over a lot of what came before it.  I can’t help but think it would have been better to dedicate more of the prior 10 episodes to material directly related to the finale, if the intention was to end the adaptation by presenting this arc largely unedited.

I guess it’s OK to be selfish here, because I love the stuff the anime didn’t skip – the ecchi comedy and the side-character buildup which makes Akamatsu Ken who he is.  I would have been fine with UQ Holder if it had skipped becoming a Mahou Sensei Negima sequel altogether, in fact, but I’m also OK with the route it did choose to follow – I just wish the anime could have taken more time following it.  At this point, though, the bridge to the original series has fully been crossed, and UQ Holder has looped in almost every major character in the mythology now.

Hardly a thing happens in this episode that doesn’t bring back warm and fuzzy memories, starting with Negi-sensei sneezing the clothes off the entire stadium (I would explain the mechanics of how the whole sneeze thing works – Ken does, believe me – but it’d take too long).  There’s a lot that surely needs explaining if a viewer hasn’t read both manga, in fact – Inverse Mars, alternate timelines, all of that – but what’s clear is that this effectively a showdown between the original Team Negi and UQ Holder – old vs. new, with Evangeline having basically changed sides.

Intervening in this showdown is Ku:nel Sanders, AKA Alberio Imma (the creator of Touta-kun’s gravity blade) – another Negima crossover.  He’s on Team Negi (AKA Team Mage of the Beginning), and his kidnapping of Touta is all part of the campaign to convince him to join up (considering how powerful these people are, they seem awfully keen to have Touta join them of his own free will).  Touta has just been informed that he was the only one of 71 attempts to combine Negi and Kagurazaka Asuna (AKA Grandma), and is in no mood to be anyone’s tool – and Ku:nel’s attempt to persuade him by showing Touta glimpses of Kitty’s past – including her meeting with Nagi Springfield – seems to backfire.

If there’s any one element of UQ Holder that I wish had gotten more anime attention, it’s the relationship between Yukihime and Touta (there is the OVA, but that’s just not enough).  It’s central to the whole story, and especially to what happens in this arc.  I’m afraid to anime viewers a love story between a busty immortal vampire and an eternally-14 bochan might seem absurd, but there’s real depth to this – and when Kitty says stuff like “I’ve loved 3 men in 700 years – I”d say that’s pretty faithful!” it’s more than just a clever throwaway line.  The bond between Evangeline and the three generations of Springfield-Konoe men is the emotional underpinning of UQ Holder.

But in terms of this episode, the real headliner is certainly the appearance of the aforementioned Kagurazaka Asuna – again explanations would take too long, but she was the most important female character in Negima for a reason (many reasons, in fact).  And she’s also possessed of an extraordinary magic-cancelling ability – on display here, and obviously of extraordinary value in this mythology.  One couldn’t even hope to understand the relationship between Asuna and Negi without having read the original manga, but rest assured that no one ever had Negi’s interests at heart more than Asuna did, which would be a good thing to keep in mind as this final arc of the anime plays out…

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