Summary:
Evangeline approaches the student dorm and casts a spell, but then gets confronted by Takamichi. To stop him, she manipulates some of Negi’s students to surround him. When Negi then appears to ask that Evangeline release the girls, Takamichi tells him that Eva’s magic will naturally disappear in the morning, so Negi follows Takamichi’s advice to run away. At that time, Asuna coming out of a store with Konoka and Setsuna after having just bought a new video game. She sees Negi flying through the air, so she runs after him, leaving the game with the other two girls. Negi meanwhile turns to face Evangeline once he above the lake. He understands her past and is willing to give up his blood, but he wants her to promise not to attack people anymore. Negi thinks that it must have been painful for her being stuck here, which is why he wants her to be free. However, Evangeline isn’t about to make any such promise since she’s a vampire. She reaches in and is about to bite Negi’s neck when a shoe comes flying out of nowhere and hits her on the head. That shoe belongs to Asuna, and she proceeds to throw her other shoe, hitting Evangeline square in the face. Asuna then picks up a rowboat and chucks that at Evangeline too, managing to send Evangeline tumbling into the lake.
Negi lands on the dock and thanks Asuna. However, Evangeline isn’t done yet and casts a spell that freezes the lake into a giant ice structure. She sends ice shards flying at Negi, but Asuna tackles him out of the way just in time. She gets hurt in the process and becomes really angry, but she is kept from throwing one of the ice shards back by Chachamaru. The robot tosses Asuna into an ice wall, knocking her out, so Negi takes her body and flees further into the ice structure. As Negi is trying to wake Asuna, Kamo suggests that they enact a provisional contract. Negi is hesitant, but Asuna regains her senses and agrees with Kamo. However, before they can do anything, they are discovered by Evangeline and Chachamaru. Negi manages to run away and hide again with Asuna, this time inside the hands of the giant ice statue of Evangeline. Kamo then initiates the pactio ritual, which they have to hurry through because they are soon found again by Chachamaru. Asuna ends up kissing Negi on the forehead, which won’t suffice, so Kamo makes her kiss Negi on the lips. As Evangeline and Chachamaru break into the ice cavern, Asuna notices that nothing has changed, but Negi knows that something has, and he brings out Asuna’s hidden power with an incantation. Through a magical transformation, she gains a red, armored outfit and a large sword. When Evangeline sends Chachamaru to challenge the newly powered-up Asuna, the robot is still able to kick Asuna down. In response, Asuna chases after Chachamaru away from Negi and Evangeline.
Negi takes to the air again, but Evangeline catches him this time by the throat. But Kamo comes out of Negi’s pocket and annoys her by jumping in her hair and her face. She falls off Negi’s flying staff in the process and goes crashing straight into the ice statue of herself. An unconscious Evangeline reverts back to her child form and remembers how the Thousand Master had told her to wake up. He had wanted her to live in and feel the light – that’s where her future is. As Negi saves her from falling, Evangeline can feel the warmth of the light. Afterwards, when she asks him why he saved her, Negi replies that it’s because she’s his student. Once Evangeline gets rid of the ice structure and returns the lake to normal, the headmaster and Takamichi appear. The headmaster thinks that Evangeline finally understands the meaning of why she was sent here and points out how she had been worried about Chachamaru being hurt the previous night, something that the old her wouldn’t have done. As Evangeline remembers the Thousand Master’s words again, Chachamaru brings back Asuna, who’s returned to her normal form and is now hungry. Evangeline decides to leave with Chachamaru, but tells Negi not to misunderstand – she’s not giving up on his blood and warns him to be careful during the full moon.
In the aftermath, Negi spends the rest of the school year with his students. In the spring, he receives a loving and encouraging letter from his cousin Nekane. When the new term starts, Negi is in charge of the same group of girls, but they are all now in class 3-A. This is Negi Springfield: child teacher and mage. And now, the story starts…

Wow, where do I begin? That fight was awesome. Negi himself wasn’t that impressive unless you count sticking by his principles – all he ended up doing was a lot of running without directly fight Eva. Kamo was the reason Eva fell off the staff, which led to her crashing into the ice structure and reverting back to her young form. Asuna, however, was quite a joy to watch – the part where she threw a boat at Eva was hilarious. Her transformed version reminds me a lot of Saber, except in red. Actually, it’s a lot like the costume Asuna is wearing in chapter 147 and on in the manga. And I see they changed the Pactio Card. I think this one has a much more modern feel to it compared to the original one because of the black background, the font, and the bar code lol.
The class advancing to 3-A (they started in 2-A) and the narrator saying that the story starts now would seem to suggest that all of this Evangeline stuff was just a prologue story to set us up for the rest of this series. It’s still unclear what direction they’re going to be taking, but next week would appear to be a Nodoka episode. I can’t wait to hear more Noto Mamiko. 🙂
Oh yea, I almost forgot to mention that the very end of the episode had a Kanon reference: Uguu!? That just made my day.

44 Comments

  1. Negi doesn’t transfer in at the beginning of their 2A year. If I recall correctly, they become 3A in the 4th volume, so it’s not surprising that the anime is moving at this pace, considering Evangeline was the 3rd volume. If anything, people should be surprised that they entirely skipped over the first two volumes.

    Rift
  2. Well in this anime version, they show (in the paper cutout format) the seasons of summer, fall, winter, and then spring, which is when the new semester starts. If it’s not an entire year, it’s pretty close to one.

  3. What I noticed the most this episode compared to the first 2 was the music – it sounds like the OST has some very nice tracks (I’m particularly thinking of the one during the first ‘pactio’ when Asuna kisses Negi’s forehead, and later when Negi activates the pactio, but there are more). I’d love to hear them during longer scenes.

    Needless to say that this was another excellent episode to me, with even some good humor like Camo’s flags, or Takahata being assaulted by the girls… I wonder how Asuna would have reacted to that =3

    Ahuri
  4. Actually, about the whole skipping to Eva’s arc thing, on Animesuki there was a post about how Ken Akamatsu once said he wanted to start the manga with the Evan arc, but his editor wanted him to introduce us to the characters first. Thus the first two volumes of the manga were born.

    Shinji103
  5. I felt really rushed, even though I’ve read the manga. How can this Asuna so easily accept what is happening and rush into a pactio?

    The action and atmosphere were fabulous. Where did the plot or characterization go?

    Eleutheria
  6. I imagine the “Uguu” was sort of a moan from Baka Pink aka Makie (because that huge… robot foot? … fell on her). Why is she getting the short end of the stick in those Baka Ranger clips? (won’t that get an outcry from her fans, considering during the release of the first few volumes Makie won the first poll for most popular Negima girl?)

  7. >Oh yea, I almost forgot to mention that the very end of the episode had a Kanon reference: Uguu!? That just made my day

    Asuna’s “Ma~ho” in the previous episode did that for me as well.

    Zanz
  8. First three eps as a prologue? Well, the end for ep 3 made it seem prologue-ish material anyways. Also with the speed of it :p I can’t wait to see what actually happens for this series~

    Baka Rangers still makes me lol. They’re so mean to Makie XD

    Jin
  9. Looks like they’re assuming everyone has a bit of a clue about the characters and they’re taking the opportunity to jump ahead into the bigger stories …. but does that mean they’re skipping over the Kyoto arc completely? (didn’t that happen the first year?) and the library arc? I’ve forgotten the manga timeline.. guess I need to review tonight.
    I suspect they’re heading right for the festival and the aftermath (since the series in Japan is much further along than the english Del Rey books)… I was kind of hoping to see the library arc though…

    Still its very good stuff — I just hope the character development doesn’t get lost in the flashbang since this is likely the last time we may see these characters animated (unless they manage to rip the knobs off and garner a followup project).

    vexx
  10. hehehe poor negima but still this does parallel how powerful asuna really is, but i dont get how evangeline can turn in2 an adult, o wel at least she looks somewhat pretty in that form

    asian182
  11. I actually like this version better than the previous one. In the previous iteration, the series felt like a string of lighthearted episodes with no cohesion, and then around episode 20 they introduce the last Asuna arc which was absolutely heartbreaking. That felt more abrupt. I also like the darker tone this one has. Now the true test. Whether all the episodes can stay this strong.

    TJ
  12. I think it’s a good thing that they did go into 3-A (Mainly because the Kyoto Arc stuff happened after the class became 3-A). The whole Library Island stuff was just more introduction to the characters, so that can be cut out. Going straight into the story instead of focusing on the characters is a good move. Mainly because they only have a limited amount of episodes (Could be 24-26), so focusing an entire episode on a character is just wasting time when you can just focus more on the story. Not to mention I’m pretty sure the majority of people watching Negima!? are already familiar with the characters, so there’s no need to do character episodes. I’m interested to see which direction the story will go into next week, whether everything else will be all original, or if they’ll use plots from the manga and make an original story out of that.

    DC
  13. This show is fucking ass shit! How dare Shaft make an absolute piece of shit out of Akamatsu’s work! This shouldn’t even get the honor of being called an anime. I suggest you stop blogging this. Otherwise you’re just going to keep causing more arguments.

    Don
  14. All I see is civil responses if they hate it, or praise if they liked it. What makes you think Omni is gonna cater to one person’s wishes? He likes the series, he is gonna blog it. End of discussion.

    jopchan121
  15. Don huh? I guess Hudson wasn’t good enough for you now, especially since I know who you really are. You seriously need to stop, it’s just sad now that you’re so ignorant because people don’t want to agree with you. Omni is blogging this because he likes it, and he has every right on doing so. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but you seriously need to stop going to other people’s websites, and threaten them that you’ll start arguments just because you don’t like it yourself, or because you don’t like the fact that others like it. You know what, I’m not even gonna bother responding to your posts, because you’re just an ignorant little shit, and a pathetic excuse of a human being.

    DC
  16. Well DC couldn’t have said that better myself. I’m getting really tired of people coming on and saying stop blogging this, really tired! I just have to say to those people GROW UP!!! Its a waste of space for you to come on and say that. Like I said before your opinion is fine but Omni is the one who decides if he wants to blog or not so just stop! Please! Anyway another awesome episode (don’t I keep saying that) and we got to see the first real battle which Negi didn’t really contribute to but hey he still won. Chamo was the true victor this time. 😀 The new pactio cards are cool but I still prefer the other cards but hey thats just me. Can’t wait for Negi to do other pactios and I’m hoping they’re going to do the Kyoto arc, and give it true justice not like the two episodes we had before. I still want to kill Xebec for that anyone want to join me? Well definitely looking forward to the next episode and oh also Eva can’t powned by a boat, hilarious.

    Hyosuke
  17. I just enjoyed the library sidestory and hope they slip it in somehow (its not really timeline dependent) … but including the Kyoto Arc and Festival would mitigate that hugely. I also see now why they threw the beach trip into the OVA as it provides more time for these two arcs.

    Well… I thoroughly enjoy the manga but I’m finding this re-interpretation a wonderful companion to the manga. Kind of like I enjoyed both the Keaton/Nicholson interp of Batman as well as the latest Batman Begins I guess. Or for that matter I liked the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, the Sean Connery Robin Hood, and the Daffy Duck Robin Hood (o yeah, I guess I liked the silly Costner version too because of the Sherrif of Nottingham)

    Vexx
  18. It will be interesting what they do next. At the pace their going it might reach that tournament thing. Oh by the way I think I saw the game based on this series and they went to Osaka. I think this was the DS game.

    sheraz
  19. This was probably the most rushed episode of any anime I’ve watched. Look at it, we instantly start with evangiline breaking a magical barriar then negi running, then enter asuna, to asuna and negi doing a pactio to magical fight scene (sort of) to after fight commentary, and then one year later… Really Its not like I would prefer to see another episode of this saga, because it really doesn’t deserve that, but it would have been nice if they cut out alot of the chatter in episode 2 to make this episode more balanced. And by the way, J, the show isn’t following the manga, its doing its own story, and just doing slight things from the manga (like characters and such, or the general story arc for a series) Still the only thing they have to do to keep me watching is to let Kotaro join the cast.

    ddhboy
  20. Arr, I didn’t even go hopping around on forums and aniblogs and said “SUZUMIYA HARUHI’S A PIECE OF SHIT! GET IT OUT OF HERE!” If you’re going to complain, do it in a civilized manner.

    I can understand if you don’t like it cos everybody else does, you have the right to not like it. But seriously, be more mature when you say, “I DON’T LIKE IT.”

    Jin

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