What is the Mun's opinion on Ken Akamatsu?
(Hoooooooooo boy.)
(I could go on a long, long essay for my feelings in respect to Akamatsu and his works. I’ll try and keep this a little short so I don’t rile myself up too much.)
(Before UQ Holder, I really liked the guy. Negima is my favorite manga for a couple of reasons. The world building is absolutely fantastic and top notch, with the magic system being more deeply developed than almost any other manga/anime out there, with few giving it a run for its money. The characters are also great, Negi being a refreshing take on the usual shounen protag and archetypes that dominate the market now, and, despite the HUGE cast size, a lot of them still get a good amount of development and focus. There’s obviously some people who get more than others and are the main characters, but even most of the small time people get decent development. Hell, there’s also the surprisingly good usage of things like Latin and SANSKRIT in the manga, all seem to be accurate. That’s some impressive dedication. Despite the ending, I blamed the editors more than Akamatsu at the time, given the legal stuff going on at the time and Akamatsu didn’t want to give up his manga, which I supposed, because of how BAD all the other adaptations have been. Negima would’ve gone to hell.)
(And theeeeeeeeeeen UQ Holder happened. I. HATE that manga. It was a tremendous step backwards in overall story telling and utterly ASSASSINATED Evangeline’s character, one of my favorites from Negima. The world building feels half assed and characters get almost no development, save for Touta, Eva, and Kirie. Santa had their arc, which while his development itself seemed good, the events of it were awful. Fucking Zombie Apocalypse. Then…. They kinda just became a prop that sat in the background 90% of the time. There’s also all the deus ex machina and asspulls for powers that make no real sense. The pacing also sucks, I just URG. I’m gonna stop myself before I go on a full blown rant. I can and have ranted on EACH of these points in the past before. I don’t want to do it again and put myself in a bad mood.)
(I don’t even know how to explain it, but it killed a lot of faith in Akamatsu for me. Sometimes authors just have a fluke and make a real good story, or perhaps having editors to reign him in and say “no” helped. The early chapters of Negima, as awful as they were, had some nice character development and building, even if the story and harem hijinks were an eyesore. Maybe it was the fact he lost quite a few assistants from Negima, including his Latin expert. The more I thought about it, the more I also realized he could have ended the Negima manga differently and not just deus ex machina solve everything off screen to avoid the legal troubles. And hell, he’s DOING another manga anyway, so he could’ve solved all the cliff hangers there. Instead, we got the Sleeping Asuna timeline that nobody wanted over finding out what happened between chapter’s 353 and 354.)
(Basically, I used to love him back during Negima, but now I think he’s a goddamn hack who managed to catch lightning in a bottle during Negima, but can’t do it again.)
