The first review of an anime I truly hated and it’s ironic because I really do like this series. The manga version of the series, the anime not so much. So the premise of this series is that Negi a 10 year old kid from England who is really a mage goes to Japan to teach a class of middle school girls as part of his test to graduate from magic school. However, he has to keep the fact that he’s a mage a secret from everyone or fail his test. After his first day of teaching a girl named Asuna discovers his secret but vows to keep it a secret as long as Negi helps her with her romance with another teacher and from there we have all kinds of supernatural adventures with Negi and his students who start to discover his secret.
This series has often been compared to Harry Potter with some calling it Japan’s version of the series and yeah I can see that it definitely does give off that Harry Potter feel except it’s more light-hearted. The anime takes a huge divergence from the source material. In the first half it does follow some of the events of the manga but it shows all of these events out of order or they don’t stay truthful to them. Then in the second half they just stop following the manga all together and creating confusing ending where they travel back in time to save Asuna or some shit that just pisses me. Why didn’t these guys just follow the manga? There’s was plenty of material at this point of the anime’s creation to go on. They could have easily covered up to the Kyoto arc, took a few months off or a year if they wanted to and resumed the anime with the school festival which would have easily covered another 24 episodes of the series. The direction the anime went was terrible, it completely downplayed the manga, was a slap in the face to anyone who was a fan of the series, and was just a disappointment. And that’s why I got so mad in my review. I really did want to like this anime. The characters are good. Negi is smart for a kid his age and is quite mature as he understands the responsibilities of being a teacher and takes his job seriously. They downplay Asuna in the anime because in the anime she’s sort of flanderize her stupidity a little. In the manga she’s quite caring of Negi and really does look after him a lot like a big sister. The rest of the characters that the anime focus on are pretty much the same in the manga with a few of them being a lot more developed and playing a more pivotal part as the series goes on. Now that I think about this was a rush series that came out sooner than it should have. I’ve heard that a good number of people do like this anime and that’s fine but for me I hated it with a passion and still do to thIis day and nothing will convince me otherwise. I gave this anime a 2/10 I think that still holds up as they try at a few parts but overall it’s still a bad anime. My advice, buy the manga first, it’s way better than the anime, trust me.