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spottoYou know, while I can go on and on about why Touhou is awesome (music, characters, gameplay, etc.) I think I do have a reason to like it that I don't think most others have.
When I first started liking Negima, it was due to the characters, music, story, etc. I really loved it, and it had some strong, dynamic characters into the mix. I started to read it near the end of the Mahora Festival...that was four years ago. Lately I've become rather impatient with the series, and it seems to have genre-shifted far too much for my liking.
I do not enjoy shounen series. I know that much. Maybe I did when I was younger perhaps, like when I was fourteen or something. I mean, I didn't like Beyblade for the Beyblades, I liked it because Max was adorable. So my reason was drastically different from the norm, but that series is largely considered shounen. Negima too is also considered shounen, but first we should define what shounen is.
Shounen is basically ANYTHING targetted to younger males, such as older children or teenagers. Beyblade falls into this category because the anime is basically a giant commercial for the toys, which a lot of boys would love to play with. Negima is for a different reason, it had a bunch of girls and tons of fanservice for again, boys to play with. (Was that too inappropriate? Lmao) But I knew Akamatsu wanted to do a fighting series, so the harem-comedy series with tons of fanservice and females slowly started to genre shift into a fighting series.
It was the mix that I liked the most. I enjoyed the lighthearted-more comedic side of Negima, with occasional badass fights thrown in between the characters. Then after the Mahora Festival, everyone began to head to the Magic World. Just imagine Dragon Ball Z if you will, even if you've never watched it before. In the beginning of that series, everyone was relatively on par with each other, and as time went by only the more important characters became stronger. This was still okay because that was still a chunk of the characters (even if it really was only the Saiyans) but as time went on it was clear Goku would be above the rest and it was only him who would be able to save everyone in the end.
I think if DBZ had ended with Gohan becoming Super Saiyan 2, it would've been for the best. Yes it does end with some kid who becomes stronger than the rest, but you get to watch him as a child become such, and he really wasn't the main character for most of the series, Goku was. It would've been rather refreshing for an outcome like that. Sadly they continued on with MOAR forms that look kind of ridiculous (the subtle "add lightning" around a Super Saiyan for the second form was nice to me") and included SUPER-POWERED EVIL FORMS that can flip out and kill people AT ANY TIME. But at least half of it was good!
Return to Negima. The main character is Negi. He is often compared to Gohan, and his goal in this ENTIRE MANGA!? Find his father. Now why am I comparing the two right now? Well, think of Negi and friends going to the Magic World like the DBZ cast going to Namek. Then tell me the most famous meme associated with Namek.
ARE THEY STILL ON NAMEK!?
The thing with DBZ, is that Namek ended with probably one of the most influential anime things to hit...well, anime. Super Saiyan. Yes. At that time, this series was revolutionary in a way, and after a few long years the things DBZ did will be repeated and then it'll become tiresome, like that dead horse thing I talked about last post.
Okay, so back to Negima.
ARE THEY STILL IN THE MAGIC WORLD!?
Also, Negi has already elevated to an "EVIL SUPER-POWERED FORM" that can flip out and kill everyone AT ANY TIME. Then he gained this lightning body that looks like...a super saiyan. And he is already leagues above EVERYONE else! (This isn't just me whining about how all the females in the series are suddenly super-weak. Even KOTAROU is leagues away from him now. KOTAROU, his rival! Wasn't YAMCHA Goku's rival at some point at time? Wasn't he!?) So at this point, Negi was super god-powerful and super-god-awesome who has to save EVERYONE (not just the helpless recently-was-a-muggle-people, but EVERYONE--including people like Chachamaru and Kaede) because they cannot POSSIBLY do jack-shit to the enemy, except like, tiny small things.
Remember the Mahora Festival when everyone did something and it made sense to their personalities, and it wasn't just Negi doing EVERYTHING? (I didn't mind that he, in the end, went up and defeated Chao himself, but everyone had a part, a large major part) And this isn't just because everyone else didn't level up themselves, THEY DID. Nodoka for example leveled up five thousand times to epic badass-ness, but she still needs to be saved because NEGI NEGI NEGI.
Tournaments with just Negi against no-namers until Rakan? Wow that's interesting. I think the genre-shift is done. I came for the middle, but the end does not satisfy me. It has become a shounen with the likes of Naruto and Bleach, mangas I do not read because I am just not interested. I guess what I was looking for wasn't the real goal of the mangaka.
As much as I want to drop this series, I've been following it for four years. I'm not just going to stop suddenly. I'll see to it to the end, perhaps this is just a horrible phase to attract shounen-fans or something, but I personally no-longer list Negima as my favourite manga or favourite anything. Sure I love some characters, and Kazumi atm is apparently "dead" (just cheap tricks to make you think the situation is DANGEROUS but don't worry, Negi is here!!!" So she's definitely, definitely fine.)
And...what does that have to do with Touhou? Lol. Well, despite Reimu defeating everyone and clearly being the bestest at everything...it's not so simple. First, they have spell-cards rules, which means EVERY BATTLE is played with danmaku and fair rules, thus someone completely god-like (which is pretty much half the characters anyway) can't just cheat and kill her in one hit. Also, NO PAINFUL TRAINING ARCS TO WADE THROUGH. It's a game, so obviously those aren't there, but even the "training" Reimu went through in one of the mangas was completely skipped because TRAINING IS BORING.
In other words and thanks to the awesome fandom, Touhou was what I was looking for when I got into Negima. A generally light-hearted, comedic setting with badass fights sprinkled in. The characters? The music? Amazing bonuses. Also it's a game, so I can PLAY A GAME and have fun (or lose all the time P:) in the game, rather than yell at a story I don't like. The stories based in this universe are made up of the fandom, so if I don't like it I don't have to adopt into my head because it's not canon. (barely ANYTHING is canon) There are no power levels, no training, no super-serious melodramatic crap on one character who is totally better than everyone. It's a bloody game, even if the game wasn't a game, the whole danmaku business itself IS A GAME.
Man.
Although I suppose Silent Sinner in Blue might have shades of the crap I hate in Negima right now...even then it's not the MAIN PART of Touhou, the games are. All the anime spinoffs and other spinoffs of Negima, no matter how bad it is I will always know that it is not the main part of Negima. Well, the main part of Negima is not satisfying me, and therefore my rage.
So there you go, where Negima failed me, Touhou will succeed, or at least is succeeding at the moment. And that is one of the biggest reasons I have started liking this game series: it is better.
When I first started liking Negima, it was due to the characters, music, story, etc. I really loved it, and it had some strong, dynamic characters into the mix. I started to read it near the end of the Mahora Festival...that was four years ago. Lately I've become rather impatient with the series, and it seems to have genre-shifted far too much for my liking.
I do not enjoy shounen series. I know that much. Maybe I did when I was younger perhaps, like when I was fourteen or something. I mean, I didn't like Beyblade for the Beyblades, I liked it because Max was adorable. So my reason was drastically different from the norm, but that series is largely considered shounen. Negima too is also considered shounen, but first we should define what shounen is.
Shounen is basically ANYTHING targetted to younger males, such as older children or teenagers. Beyblade falls into this category because the anime is basically a giant commercial for the toys, which a lot of boys would love to play with. Negima is for a different reason, it had a bunch of girls and tons of fanservice for again, boys to play with. (Was that too inappropriate? Lmao) But I knew Akamatsu wanted to do a fighting series, so the harem-comedy series with tons of fanservice and females slowly started to genre shift into a fighting series.
It was the mix that I liked the most. I enjoyed the lighthearted-more comedic side of Negima, with occasional badass fights thrown in between the characters. Then after the Mahora Festival, everyone began to head to the Magic World. Just imagine Dragon Ball Z if you will, even if you've never watched it before. In the beginning of that series, everyone was relatively on par with each other, and as time went by only the more important characters became stronger. This was still okay because that was still a chunk of the characters (even if it really was only the Saiyans) but as time went on it was clear Goku would be above the rest and it was only him who would be able to save everyone in the end.
I think if DBZ had ended with Gohan becoming Super Saiyan 2, it would've been for the best. Yes it does end with some kid who becomes stronger than the rest, but you get to watch him as a child become such, and he really wasn't the main character for most of the series, Goku was. It would've been rather refreshing for an outcome like that. Sadly they continued on with MOAR forms that look kind of ridiculous (the subtle "add lightning" around a Super Saiyan for the second form was nice to me") and included SUPER-POWERED EVIL FORMS that can flip out and kill people AT ANY TIME. But at least half of it was good!
Return to Negima. The main character is Negi. He is often compared to Gohan, and his goal in this ENTIRE MANGA!? Find his father. Now why am I comparing the two right now? Well, think of Negi and friends going to the Magic World like the DBZ cast going to Namek. Then tell me the most famous meme associated with Namek.
ARE THEY STILL ON NAMEK!?
The thing with DBZ, is that Namek ended with probably one of the most influential anime things to hit...well, anime. Super Saiyan. Yes. At that time, this series was revolutionary in a way, and after a few long years the things DBZ did will be repeated and then it'll become tiresome, like that dead horse thing I talked about last post.
Okay, so back to Negima.
ARE THEY STILL IN THE MAGIC WORLD!?
Also, Negi has already elevated to an "EVIL SUPER-POWERED FORM" that can flip out and kill everyone AT ANY TIME. Then he gained this lightning body that looks like...a super saiyan. And he is already leagues above EVERYONE else! (This isn't just me whining about how all the females in the series are suddenly super-weak. Even KOTAROU is leagues away from him now. KOTAROU, his rival! Wasn't YAMCHA Goku's rival at some point at time? Wasn't he!?) So at this point, Negi was super god-powerful and super-god-awesome who has to save EVERYONE (not just the helpless recently-was-a-muggle-people, but EVERYONE--including people like Chachamaru and Kaede) because they cannot POSSIBLY do jack-shit to the enemy, except like, tiny small things.
Remember the Mahora Festival when everyone did something and it made sense to their personalities, and it wasn't just Negi doing EVERYTHING? (I didn't mind that he, in the end, went up and defeated Chao himself, but everyone had a part, a large major part) And this isn't just because everyone else didn't level up themselves, THEY DID. Nodoka for example leveled up five thousand times to epic badass-ness, but she still needs to be saved because NEGI NEGI NEGI.
Tournaments with just Negi against no-namers until Rakan? Wow that's interesting. I think the genre-shift is done. I came for the middle, but the end does not satisfy me. It has become a shounen with the likes of Naruto and Bleach, mangas I do not read because I am just not interested. I guess what I was looking for wasn't the real goal of the mangaka.
As much as I want to drop this series, I've been following it for four years. I'm not just going to stop suddenly. I'll see to it to the end, perhaps this is just a horrible phase to attract shounen-fans or something, but I personally no-longer list Negima as my favourite manga or favourite anything. Sure I love some characters, and Kazumi atm is apparently "dead" (just cheap tricks to make you think the situation is DANGEROUS but don't worry, Negi is here!!!" So she's definitely, definitely fine.)
And...what does that have to do with Touhou? Lol. Well, despite Reimu defeating everyone and clearly being the bestest at everything...it's not so simple. First, they have spell-cards rules, which means EVERY BATTLE is played with danmaku and fair rules, thus someone completely god-like (which is pretty much half the characters anyway) can't just cheat and kill her in one hit. Also, NO PAINFUL TRAINING ARCS TO WADE THROUGH. It's a game, so obviously those aren't there, but even the "training" Reimu went through in one of the mangas was completely skipped because TRAINING IS BORING.
In other words and thanks to the awesome fandom, Touhou was what I was looking for when I got into Negima. A generally light-hearted, comedic setting with badass fights sprinkled in. The characters? The music? Amazing bonuses. Also it's a game, so I can PLAY A GAME and have fun (or lose all the time P:) in the game, rather than yell at a story I don't like. The stories based in this universe are made up of the fandom, so if I don't like it I don't have to adopt into my head because it's not canon. (barely ANYTHING is canon) There are no power levels, no training, no super-serious melodramatic crap on one character who is totally better than everyone. It's a bloody game, even if the game wasn't a game, the whole danmaku business itself IS A GAME.
Man.
Although I suppose Silent Sinner in Blue might have shades of the crap I hate in Negima right now...even then it's not the MAIN PART of Touhou, the games are. All the anime spinoffs and other spinoffs of Negima, no matter how bad it is I will always know that it is not the main part of Negima. Well, the main part of Negima is not satisfying me, and therefore my rage.
So there you go, where Negima failed me, Touhou will succeed, or at least is succeeding at the moment. And that is one of the biggest reasons I have started liking this game series: it is better.
