So I'm a huge fan of the Negima franchise. The original manga is my favorite of all time, I've wasted an embarrassing amount of time on all related materials... Of which there is a lot... And I'm currently working on a review of the first anime adaptation. That review might take a while, so in the meantime, I thought I'd leave you a brief review on what I consider the worst part of the franchise, the obscure 2010 one-shot manga Negiho!

Negiho is a role reversal of the original manga's concept. Instead of a ten year old teaching a class of middle schoolers, Negi is an adult teaching a class full of kindergartners based on his original students! The original idea was probably to create a manga based on the episode of Negima?! 2006 where he had to take care of his students when they were all stuck in their childish dud forms, but instead, they went with this new idea!

I’m not going to beat around the bush about this, Negiho is fucking creepy. Negima has always had an issue with exploiting its characters for fanservice, as well as some pretty creepy age-gap romances, and if you think the five year old versions of these girls are immune to that exploitation, than you have way too much faith in humanity. They get into fights with each other about their bodies, compare bathing suits, battle for the hearts of their oblivious teachers, and oh yeah, one of them comedically loses her clothes in front of adult Kotaru. I was largely forgiving of the original manga for this kind of thing, but come on, guys.

The girls never act like real children, either... I know, surprising, right? Well, here’s a prime example. There’s a chapter revolving around the traditional Japanese proncess festival, an extended holiday where girls arrange a set of dolls according to a caste system. The girls in Negiho want to dress LIKE the dolls and sit pretty on the shelf. Yeah, no, little kids would generally rather play than be told to sit on their asses and look like pretty little dolls. That sounds about as appealing to a child as getting a time out, doesn’t it?

But these girls aren’t real kids. The girls in Negima were much more realistic teens, and even they weren’t entirely realistic. The Dud card episode that this was obviously based on was chaste in comparison, with the girls’ personalities and puppy-dog crushes on Negi being played for laughs, and none of them were sexualized. Negiho’s girls are the exact opposite.

Generally speaking, the cardinal rule of under-18 age-gap crushes in a story is that it has to be one-sided, and the younger one has to be the smitten one. Kids having crushes on the adults or older teenagers in their lives is normal... In reverse, it's a problem. The original manga did have issues with this, and I will be addressing them when the time comes. The thing is, there is an exception... A smitten child can be inappropriate, if their overtures towards the older party are used to sexualize them to the audience, and good God, the cast of Negiho couldn't be winking to the audience hard enough.

I’m not going to say this manga didn’t have any good ideas... The circumstances in which Chachamaru became Evangeline’s servant are actually pretty damn funny... But in general, I can not imagine anybody thinking this product would have been a good idea.

Would I recommend it? No. One decent arc aside, this is the worst of the lot. Avoid at all costs and for the love of god, don’t make the mistake of saying ‘challenge accepted’.