Author Ken Akamatsu certainly wanted to get outside of his comfort house with the creation of his second series following Love Hina, Negima! Magister Negi Magi. It seems to be a harem series about a genius boy teaching a classroom of girls, but it eventually became so much more. Over time, it became a hardcore shonen series following that same genius seeking to learn what happened to his father, and the girls who found themselves immersed in a world of magic where they each had to grow and change to survive.
In the end, Negima! made way for UQ Holder!, a series set in the same universe, but following a largely different cast — this time it's made up of immortals of various types. While Negima! ended on a “Happily Ever After” epilogue, we were left in the dark regarding quite a few questions that UQ Holder! has thankfully answered. But we’re still scratching our heads about many other questions — this list will delve into both the answered and the unanswered.
10 DIDN'T ANSWER: WHO'S ZAZIE RAINYDAY?
Negi’s class had ghosts, ancient demon-hunting swordswomen, ninjas, vampires, and women from the future. But Zazie Rainyday always felt like one of the stranger inclusions — she was an actual demon. She isn’t known for using her powers very often, but we do know she’s incredibly powerful. Alongside Evangeline and Mana Tatsumiya, she’s one of the few people remaining from the original class 3-A. But what’s her purpose? She worked in the “Nightmare Circus," which was a storyline Akamatsu planned to do but wound up cutting. Could we ever find out what her purpose was?
9 ANSWER: HOW THEY BEAT THE LIFEMAKER
For much of Negima!, the primary villain was Fate. He walked around turning whole areas to stone and being opposed by Negi and his homeroom class. But there was always someone bigger waiting in the wings. We knew for whatever reason they looked a lot like Nagi, but we didn’t know why...and while Negima! worked great as an epilogue, it was a horrible “answer” to what happened at the end. UQ Holder! finally fills those blanks in, showing how Asuna saved them from the threat of the ever-growing power of the Lifemaker.
8 DIDN'T ANSWER: WHERE'S KOTARO?
Though UQ Holder! is supposed to take place in the far-future, it’s really only a couple of decades. All things considered, there’s really no reason for any character that was a demon or even of a different race not to be present. So that being said...where’s Kotaro?
He makes a brief appearance during the flashbacks where Negi and Fate battle against the Mage of the Beginning, but he’s never made an appearance in the main timeline. He wasn’t possessed by the Lifemaker, so he should be working with either Fate or Yukihime to help someone finally take down the being that brought down Negi.
7 ANSWER: WHO IS THE MAGE OF THE BEGINNING
It feels a little weird not knowing who the main villain was for most of the series, but Negima! left us in the dark on the person who was actually responsible for much of the problems. UQ Holder! finally went ahead and answered that in the 153rd chapter of the manga. It was explained that the Mage took the weak and powerless humans of Earth and guided them to Mars, where they created Mundus Magicus, the magical world. Over time, that mage faded away, but she couldn’t let go of the despair, not only for people of the present, but of the past as well. That magic corrupted her until we got the villain we know today.
6 DIDN'T ANSWER: WHERE DID THE PUREBLOOD VAMPIRES COME FROM?
This is more of a UQ Holder! question than a Negima! question, but it still remains largely unanswered. Though we knew Evangeline was transformed into a daylight walking vampire, UQ Holder! has introduced a brand-new race to the series that’s vastly more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen before. The pureblood vampires are absurdly strong — Dana has literally broken the fourth wall to alter reality before— and we don’t know where they came from or what their purpose is. It does seem like we’ll be figuring out exactly what it is before everything’s said and done, though, as they’ve become a major enemy of Touta and UQ Holder! recently.
5 ANSWER: WHAT HAPPENED DURING EVANGELINE'S PAST?
Throughout much of the series of Negima!, all we knew about Evangeline, the immortal vampire responsible for training the lead, was that she was trapped at Mahora Academy thanks to a spell cast by Negi’s father Nagi. UQ Holder! has gone into detail on what exactly Evangeline’s life was like. We’ve gotten entire mini-arcs dedicated to her early years training with the pureblood vampire Dana, as well as her hunting down mages who used their powers to take advantage of medieval Earthlings. Though there are some questionable things about the way they handle her romantically, largely she looks even cooler now than she did then.
4 DIDN'T ANSWER: WHAT HAPPENED TO NEGI'S MOTHER?
Over most of the series, we get to see quite a bit of Negi’s father Nagi, as he’s the legendary “Thousand Master”, and leader of the Ala Rubra. Their exploits are known by magicians both on Earth and Mars, but one person who’s not spoken of nearly as much is Arika Entheofushia, the queen of Vespertatia and Negi’s mother.
We know from our glimpses of the original world’s future that Nagi and Evangeline eventually wind up married, but that doesn’t actually tell us what happened to Negi’s mother. Presumably she’s dead since she hasn’t shown herself, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be true — she could be looking for other ways to shut the Lifemaker down.
3 ANSWER: WHAT HAPPENED IN THEIR TIMELINE
At the end of Negima!, the “solution” wound up being as simple as taking Asuna from one timeline and transferring her over to another timeline’s past to fight the Lifemaker and give her her actual life. But what happened in a timeline where that wasn’t possible? Well, UQ Holder!’s entire series is dedicated to answering that. However, we do get to see the “final” fates of many of Negima!’s old characters...and they aren’t pretty. A world without Asuna was pretty cruel to Class 3-A.
2 DIDN'T ANSWER: WHAT HAPPENED TO CHAO LINGSHEN?
Who could have imagined when Negima! began, the first big villain of the series would be one of the girls Negi was teaching? Chao Lingshen turned out to be from a future where everything had gone even more wrong than they had in the UQ Holder! timeline, and she went back to “fix” everything. In the epilogue of Negima!, we learn she has the ability not only to travel back in time, but traverse parallel worlds. Presumably she’s busy saving her own timeline, but since she could literally go anywhere it seems like she could at least spare a thought to the world that doesn’t have its own Asuna.
1 ANSWERED: WHO NEGI MARRIED
Even though Negima! turned into a series much more about fighting and saving the world(s), it was still originally created as a harem. And while it drifted from its roots, part of the reason we cared so much was seeing who would somehow wind up with who. And while Negima! made some hints, it never outright said anything. Fortunately, UQ Holder! finally explained that Negi wound up with the real Best Girl of the series, Chisame Hasegawa. The one woman who was capable of bringing Negi down to Earth and balancing him out was the woman Akamatsu decided Negi needed the most.