The second volume of Negima! is just as much fun as the first volume. The story of a ten-year-old magician who is assigned to teach middle school has a good mixture of action and humor, with the accent on the humor. Just what one would expect from Akamatsu Ken, the creator of Love, Hina. In this volume, Negi has to combat a vampire along with her robot body guard, gets lost on campus, and has to keep the middle school girls from fighting with the high school students. Another fun volume.

Series background:

Asuna Kagurazaka is a 14 year old student at Mahora Academy, a private all-girls school in Japan. As the eighth grade is about to start, she really hopes that she'll be assigned to Mr. Takahata's homeroom class since she has a big crush on the hunky instructor. Unfortunately, she's not that lucky. Her homeroom teacher turns out to be not the teacher of her dreams but...a ten year old boy; Negi Springfield. Asuna naturally takes an instant dislike to the young prodigy teacher from Scotland. How dare he take the place of her heart-throb Takahata? Not only that, but all of the other girls think he's cute!

To add insult to injury, Negi doesn't have any place to live, and since Asuna and her roommate are sharing a dorm room built for three, he gets assigned to live with them by the dean of students. Things look like they can't get any worse when Asuna discovers Negi's secret. He's no ordinary teacher, he's actually a magician. As part of his training he's been assigned to teach at Mahora, but no one is to know that he has powers. If the students find out, he'll fail and never obtain his goal of becoming a Magister Magi.

In the first volume, Negi meets his match when he finds out that one of his students, Evangeline, is some sort of vampire. She has teamed up with a robot posing as a student, Chachamaru, and the two of them really clean Negi's clock. Now the young magician has to come up with some way to stop the monster.

This episode:

As the disc gets underway, Negi is in a bad situation. He's lost his magical staff, he knows he's no match for Evangeline, and he has few options left. Negi's familiar Chamo, a perverted ermine who has a fondness for women's lingerie, convinces Asuna to partner with Negi, take some of his power, and be his comrade in arms. All that she has to do to seal this bargain is…kiss her teacher.

After bonding, Negi and Asuna manage to corner Evangeline's partner, Chachamaru and get the drop on the robot fighter. They can easily destroy their enemy, but she seems so nice and kind, can Negi bring himself to kill her?

In the following episode, Evangeline has managed to enhance her powers and plans to take out Negi once and for all. It's a showdown between Negi and Asuna and the vampire and her robot body guard and Evangeline isn't planning on going lightly on her professor.

After the more serious episodes that started this volume, they relax the pace a bit with a humorous stand alone episode. When Negi gets lost looking for a building on campus, he accidentally takes a tour of some of the clubs and buildings of Mahora Academy. He runs into the robotics club, a group that's working on enhancing Chachamaru's abilities and body, and the walking club that ends up playing a lot of tricks on the young teacher.

The volume ends up with another light-hearted episode as the high school girls try to take over the middle school girl's volleyball court. They decide to settle the disagreement by playing a game of… dodgeball. While it's not as funny as the Ben Stiller movie, it was still a fun episode.

This volume comes as a stand alone DVD or as a limited edition set with a small figure from the series imported from Japan. This disc contains four episodes on a single disc. Unfortunately, there is an unskipable trailer that plays before the menu. You can't fast forward or chapter skip past it, which is really a pain.

Audio:

This disc comes with the original Japanese soundtrack and an English dub, both in stereo. There are also optional subtitles in English. I watched episodes in both languages and I really liked the Japanese audio much better. I found the English voice for Negi to be a bit irritating. Greg Ayres provides the voice for the young teacher and tries to make the character sound both Scottish and 10 years old. It doesn't really work. I've enjoyed Ayres work in other series such as Burst Angel, Detective Loki, and D.N.Angel, but this voice sounds a little silly.

Both audio tracks sounded fine with clear music and strong voices. There isn't a lot of separation between the two tracks, but some use is made of the front soundstage. Overall, the disc sounds good. There is one big defect though: signs and labels are not translated, even when the subtitles are turned on. This is too bad because some of the signs, such as the names the "Baka Rangers" take, really should have been translated.

Video:

The full frame color video looked pretty good. The lines are tight, the blacks are firm, and the colors are solid. On the digital side things also looked good. Aliasing, something that usually plagues animation, is absent from this show. Blocking, cross coloration and other compression artifacts are also missing. A fine looking DVD.

Extras:

The disc has a good amount of bonus material. The first episode has a commentary track by two of the English voice actresses, Clarine and Caitlin. (They didn't seem interested in giving their last names on the commentary, so I won't give them either.) I'm not a big fan of anime commentary tracks, and this one didn't change my mind.

There is also a text piece on Japanese communal bathing (which is odd since there wasn't a bath scene in this volume), character profiles, and a textless opening and closing.

The deluxe limited edition version also comes with a small plastic Evangeline figure that snaps together. This Japanese import is pretty cute.

Final Thoughts:

This is turning out to be a good series. There's a nice mixture of humor and drama which suits the show well. The overriding story is slowly emerging, and that promises to keep the show interesting. While it's not quite a harem show like Love, Hina, it does have the same sort of humor. If you enjoyed that previous series from creator Akamatsu Ken, you'll enjoy this one too. Recommended.