Recs for UQ Holder?

[One Vorlon]

Can anyone recommend Ken Akamatsu's UQ Holder? I just heard about it in another thread, and I'm wondering if its any good - and just how closely it ties in to Negima. Any thoughts?

Negi Springfield, the boy wizard of the manga Negima!, fought and won many battles. Now it is decades later and Negi's grandson, a little boy name Touta, dreams of leaving his quiet village and heading to the City. But first he must defeat his teacher... the immortal vampire, Evangeline!

[Sly05]

Re: Recs for UQ Holder?

Can anyone recommend Ken Akamatsu's UQ Holder? I just heard about it in another thread, and I'm wondering if its any good - and just how closely it ties in to Negima. Any thoughts?

I've read the first 5 volumes or so and wasn't able to get into it despite being a big fan of Negima. It is written following the shonen adventure style that Negima hit during the magic world arc, but is much more bro oriented. While there are female characters, this story is more about the guys being bros than the harem antics of Akamatsu's earlier work. That in itself is not a criticism as I have no problem with him branching out, but I think with the shift in focus, Akamatsu fails to bring much new to that well tread equation and UQ Holder is much more generic shonen adventure than Negima was. There's training and tournaments and typical shonen things with less of the character development and plot weight that made Negima so good. It felt like Akamatsu wants to get into the high level combat he depicted in the later volumes of Negima without sending the characters through the journey to give them gaining their powers meaning. UQ's Holders fights, at least in what I read, were shallow and uninteresting as a result.

The potentially most interesting thing about the series is its connections to Negima. UQ Holder is about Negi's grandson and some of the longer lived characters from Negima make appearances in the story. Evangeline was always one of my favourite Negima characters so it was great to see her playing a prominent role in the story. Given the mess of the ending Negima had, UQ Holder might provide a more satisfying conclusion to some of the unanswered questions in Negima and Negi's fate is definitely teased a few times. However, the story is definitely in no rush to provide any answers which combined with a boring lead makes it hard not to wish Akamatsu properly finished Negima rather than start on this. I think he accomplished much of what he is trying to do in this series with Negima, only better.

On the plus side, Akamatsu's art continues to be fantastic. His character designs are appealing as ever and I do think he has gotten quite good at drawing battle scenes even if I think he didn't do as good a job of making the story that supports them as interesting.

If you still want to give UQ Holder a shot, Crunchyroll is simul-publishing it through their manga service. If you already are subscribed to their anime streaming service, you can access all they chapters from the beginning through their website. From there you can decide if you like it enough to buy the volumes for your collection.