All three of the Limited Edition volumes of Negima including the new OVA discs are now available for pre-order on Yes Asia:
Magister Negi Magi 23 (Limited Edition / w DVD)
Magister Negi Magi 24 (Limited Edition / w DVD)
Magister Negi Magi 25 (Limited Edition / w DVD)
All three are priced at $55.2 and are due out on August 14th, November 16th and February 16th respectively.
The LE version of the Negima! manga vol. 16 was here when I got home from work yesterday and the extras included are fairly cool, and are all from the new Negima!? anime and manga. First off is Asuna's Armour Card (I'm referring to these as Neo Pactio cards to distinguish from the old Pactio cards) which unfortunately (from my point of view) has Armour 'misspelt' the American way as 'Armor'. I now have two of these (scans here) including the Ku-Fei card that came with the Spring Special DVD. Next is a Negima!? anime "starter pack" booklet which explains the new card system and layout and gives the character designs for most of the new cards which are split into "Armor" cards and "Charta Figura" (cosplay) cards along with a messed up card for each character (like the original failed pactios these have chibi designs but now all wearing a different animal costume). Some of the card designs are kept secret, e.g. they don't show the design for Eva's armour card or Chachamaru's cosplay card. The third extra is a little special: it's a reproduction of the ADR script for the first episode of the new anime with signatures, doodles and little messages from all the cast scattered throughout (the highlight being Eva's).
PS, the morse code on the bottom of the card is the character's first name and the Seiyuu's name in morse katakana
Well, I watched this last night and the DVD itself arrived this morning. Points of interest:
Despite being based on a story from the original manga, it has the question mark from the neo manga and 2nd anime.
The rough storyline is taken direct from the manga but been tweaked; the reason for Negi and Asuna breaking up has been simplified (presumably as they wanted to contentrate on the resort itself as a stand alone episode and couldn't fit in library island and the dragon etc or simply rely on people having read the manga), more time was spent showing what the secondary characters are doing at the resort, and the action was amped up with the skydive sequence.
They really have amped the fanservice for this OVA too.
Setsuna really does spend the whole time staring at Konoka's butt.
Konoka keeps doing Ichijo-san impressions.
Again this wierd obsession with Chupacabra.
I keep seeing characters in the background and not being able to put a name to them - not used to the new character designs yet (there seem to be two Ako's for example and I'm not sure which is the real Ako and who the other one really is)
There are no on-disc extras, but there is a booklet with some nice illustrations (and a couple of pages on Chupacabra..), a neo pactio armour card for Ku-Fei (like the title related to the new series rather than the actal OVA), and a second DVD with footage from the Spring live event.
Well while I've heard bits about the dub from trailers and heard accounts of it from others I've got my hands on the actual product for the frst time today. Let me say straight away that, whatever people think of the actual product, the packaging is exceptional. The box is simply the best I've ever seen, the stickers are cute and the chibi figurine was a great bonus. For the content, you'll have to bear with me as I'm always much better at spotting flaws than being able to articulate how good everything else is.
I didn't spot any changes in the final two episodes so instead, I'll post comparisons of the changes in hair colour from the original OP to the final version.
I've only noticed one little change on the 6th DVD in episode 24, and not only is it impossible to call an improvement, it's impossible to understand why it was changed - Konoka is reading a letter and, in the TV version her eyes scan the page but in the DVD version they do not move. The sharp eyed may notice that I've used the same DVD screenshot three times.. this is not an error, I just couldn't see the point in making three identical screenshots.
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After getting that first epiosode out of the way (I've updated the article for episode 17 if you haven't checked it yet) the rest of the disc wasn't much trouble; apart from updated flashbacks in episode 18 that I didn't bother to capture I only spotted two changes in episode 20, if anyone with better eyes saw any more, let me know.
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There's a heck of a lot more changes than I was expecting this late into the run since this is after the new team took over the animation. I've only got halfway through this episode now and it's taken me a few days so I'm uploading what I have so far (I've not thinned out all the dups etc yet).
Only noticed one redrawn scene in episode 14 15, where they forgot to draw clothes on Negi and Ayaka that suddenly appeared in the next scene, so not bothering with the cut on this entre unless a whole lot more turn up in the next two episodes. Didn't see anything in episode 14.
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I've now finished capping episode 13 so here's a selection of modified scenes. Episodes 14-16 to follow when I've had time to watch them, assuming there are any changes.
Spoilers for the last few episodes under the cut.
Sorry I haven't done any caps for volume 4 yet (assuming there are any changes), not had the time to sit down and do it yet. Didn't realise I'd been putting it off this long until I got confirmation today that volume 5 has shipped..
Here's a selection of screenshots to demonstrate the changes in Episode 10 on DVD Magic 3. As mentioned in the last entry, there didn't seem to be any changes in episode 9 and I've not watched episodes 11 and 12 yet. As usual these are only a representative sample of screenshots, I've left out ones that are pretty similar to these already included, and wideshots that don't show details well in small screenshots etc. There don't seem to be any specific errors fixed or added this time around, except I noticed in one shot that the highlights in Nodoka's hair were missing in the DVD version.
Not finished the screencaps yet (currently halfway through ep 10, ep 9 has no discernable differences) but I do have some comments on the cards... basically they're disappointing.
Apart from not having SAMPLE stamped across them they are the same as the examples on the official site, which I had previously assumed were incomplete preview versions. They're nicely draw, don't get me wrong, but they are missing elements from normal pactio cards:
There's no 'title' (e.g. Bellatrix Sauciata on Asuna's card).
The Virtus and Directio lines are missing (replaced with an alphanumeric string).
The words tonus and astralitas are missing from the top right and bottom left.
The colour (tonus) has been replaced with a month.
The astrological symbol is missing, with the name in the circle instead.
The romanization (literally in the case of the cards since they're written in latin) is different - following the style of the the previous cards I would have expected Akashi Yuuna to be written something like Acasi Juuna, Aisaka Sayo to be Aisaca Sajo and Ookouchi Akira to be Oocouti Acira (not sure how they romanize long o's since there's no precident and I don't know enough about latin spelling and pronunciation to figure it out myself).
I can only assume that this is because these cards are, so far, anime exclusive - they have not appeared in the manga or been included with CDs yet - and that Akamatsu simply hasn't written the full text for the cards yet and indeed wasn't involved in the making of them at all since they weren't even drawn by him but by the anime character designer, Katou Hatsue.
[edit]Corrected error (see comments below) and added name of the illustrator which I hadn't gotten around to figuring out at the time.[/edit]
Couldn't detect any changes in episodes 5, 7 and 8, but episode 6 has had a complete overhaul to some scenes. One odd thing I've noticed is that eyes have more detail in wide shots in the TV version.
Not like it's not been done before, but here's my screenshot selection of DVD improvements for Negima, mostly from episode 2.
While checking out the new improvements on the first DVD I spotted a new error that has somehow crept in:
| Negi's staff is no longer strapped to his back in this scene.. | |
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Keep meaning to make some notes on these.. just started watching episode 16 which has reminded me. The promised improvements have been showing since episode 14/15.. episode 14 also was the start of a new OP theme (or rather, a different part/rendition of the same one) and a new ED theme. I've really got no complaints to make about the animation at the moment which I guess means they're doing something right:) The most obvious change was the toning down of hair colours, most noticeble in episode 15 with the twins, they didn't feature in ep 14 and I didn't notice any other colour changes so I don't know which ep it started in (the opening animation hasn't been updated to reflect this either). The other major animation point of note was the Gankutsuou-style textures the made a surprise appearance in episode 14. Storywise, episode 14 followed the manga except I don't remember the 'drunk' Konoka stuff (although I may just have forgotten it). She did look cute in that kimono though :)) Episode 15 was new to me in it's entirety so it's either unique to the Anime or in a book I've not read yet. I've only seen a bit of ep 16 but they seem to have pushed forward the kiss contest that was supposed to be in the Kyoto arc (so we've not seen Chamo and paparazzi girl in cahoots and the stuff with Setsuna, Konoka and Negi hasn't happened yet so I don't know how they'll handle the stuff with the Pactio cards, if they include that at all and it'd be a shame to leave that out. Talking about cards.. they don't seem to have done that botched Konoka card)
Ah.. looking at ANN it seems the OP song has changed every few eps and I've just not noticed it till now..
OK, dekimashita. They have indeed written out the Pactio cards completely, they came up with a lame new way of cloning Negi (but missed the point of it all which was to make those fake cards) and Nodoka doesn't get her kiss (but then, she hasn't has her kokuhaku yet either)
Just a few quick notes for the moment.
The Anime still seems to lack something compared to the Manga (but then I feel the same way about Azumanga and that's generally well received so it may just be me..)
Animation wasn't too bad but there were a few 'goofs' of note - a book suddenly dissapeared early on, there's the wierd thing about hair changing colour wildly in the mornning, Nodoka's hair is longer when she's lying down and they don't seem to realise that colouring sakura petals red doesn't turn them into rose petals.
Not 100% sure how to work this properly, but having a go with the last thing I watched. I capped the ep primarily for avataring so haven't got the best shots story-wise to be honest. The animation quality hasn't improved on the first ep (and the raw encoding was dire too), and this is coming from me who's no great connosieur. In particluar closeups of faces often go wrong and they can't seem to draw butts properly at all. Pretty similar to the manga but with some changes, e.g. when Negi tried to erase her memory Asuna's clothes don't get completely blown off, just her pantsu (this being the fanservice-lite version of the story), they don't get caught while 'practising' her kokuhaku, and he spends the first night outside rather than in the girls' room. The dayglo pink hair looks worse on Makie than it does on the twins.
