I already went over the circumstances behind this OVA’s production in my previous review, so I’m going to give you the quick version here. Ken Akamatsu is a pretty well known auteur in the manga market. He’s spent most of his career combining silly and somewhat pervy fanservice with slapstick comedy and fantasy action, and while his work might not be popular enough to be considered a household name in the states, it’s just well known enough that if you’ve ever searched an actual library for manga, you’re pretty likely to have come across it.

Akamatsu’s work has been notoriously difficult to adapt, thanks to all of the long, involved story arcs and just barely PG-13 level nudity, and as such, both of his first two adaptations... Love hina and the first Negima anime... Were huge critical and financial flops, with terrible production values, stories told out of order, and rampant inaccuracies, to the point that neither title were able to secure the second season they were banking on. And the less said about AI Love You, the better.

So it came to pass that Studio Xebec would lose control of the Negima license, which was picked up by Studio Shaft and placed in the hands of yet another experimental auteur, Akiyuki Shimbou. You’ve probably heard of Shimbou from the Monogatari series, and if you’ve been watching anime long enough, you’re probably familiar with his eclectic visual style, which I have largely mixed feelings on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but one place where it usually seems to work more often than not is in gag comedy anime.

Before starting work on his version of the Negima anime... Which would be nearly entirely made up of new material that wasn’t present in the manga... He created two OVA episodes. The first was called Spring special, and it was about a trip to the beach, and the second was called Summer special, and it took place at a bathhouse/indoor water park. Which is the best way you can describe the Mahora Academy bathhouse, to be fair. Right off the bat, I have one question about this. Shouldn’t they have switched titles? A sunny trip to the beach sounds like a summer thing, and a story full of romance and shipping kinda sounds more Spring to me, like that one song sequence from Bambi.

Then again, Love Hina also had a Spring special that had a tropical theme, so I guess this is just on brand for Akamatsu’s adaptations.

Anyway, the Summer special is the second OVA that Shaft produced, both of which come packaged in the US on one very affordable DVD. This one isn’t based on any existing material from the manga... At least not that I can remember, although I do have a vague recollection of a red string of fate story in the manga. It seems to exist to make up for all the bath scenes that got left out of the first anime... But it follows the same idea as the Spring special; Give each character a moment to shine, and dole out the fanservice!

As a matter of fact, I’ll be blunt about this: If you’re one of the people who was offended by all the nudity and fanservice in the manga, avoid this title like the plague. Akamatsu’s fanservice style was to show frequent nudity, but never fully show a bare breast or the nipples attached to them(going to some extreme measures to censor them) but bare butts were always fair game. The same approach is taken here, making Summer Special the only Negima anime thus far to accurately represent Negima’s fanservice style, although that might also be because Shimbou himself has literally the exact same nudity-loving-yet-nipple-avoiding style.

Yue casts a spell to help Nodoka find out who’s on the other end of her red string of fate, but due to a miss-cast, she accidentally binds Nodoka to Negi by an actual indestructible red string. Just when they decide to wait for the string to disappear, Ayaka whisks them away to her new Spa Resort! Negi and Nodoka will have to... bathe together? Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, this episode plays out pretty much the exact same way as the Spring special. You have the main story arc, and it serves as narrative framing for the antics of the rest of the cast, pretty much all of whom get their moment to shine. The main story arc makes just as much sense this time around, although I will say the Spring Special DID do a better job of covering up its budget issues than this one did.

If you can ignore the perviness... Or hell, if you enjoy it anyway... This is also a pretty fun episode. There are a lot of really clever sight gags, and you’ll have to watch a few times to notice them all. There are also a few cameos to characters that would be appearing later in the second series. Nodoka and Negi have some really cute and funny moments together, although Yue’s arc seems a tad forced, and Asuna’s arc just feels kind of rapey. Most of the jokes hit, and the ones that don’t are over quickly. The fanservice seems to entirely revolve around minors, but if that bothered you, you’d have gotten off the Negima train(come to think of it, the Akamatsu train in general) long before you ever encountered this OVA.

I give Negima Summer Special a 7/10.