In the fourth volume of Negima! the series starts to pick up again.  This comic series has a few good laughs in each episode, and though the larger plot is being ignored for now, it's still a fun series.  The comedy content picks up with this volume and there are some pretty funny moments.  While these are mainly stand alone episodes, a few hints at a bigger plot are dropped, and the action part of this series should pick up pretty soon.

Series background:

Asuna Kagurazaka is a 14 year old student at Mahora Academy, class 2-A, 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 couple of volumes, 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.  The only way to defeat this villain is to take a partner himself, and Asuna is happy to become his comrade in arms.

This volume:

It's summer break as this disc starts, and Negi goes to the house of the class rep, Ayaka Yukihiro, and the rest of the class accompanies the teacher to act as chaperones.  Ayaka is filthy rich, and the class soon starts running rampant though her gigantic mansion.  They swim, eat, and generally cause trouble, much to Ayaka's dismay.  There's a reason everyone came over however, and it has to do with Ayaka's past.

The next episode is a comedy that only partially works.  The entire class congregates at an old abandoned school that's rumored to be haunted one night to play a game.  Whoever can get to the science room and tie a ribbon on the skeleton there wins.  Negi, being new at the school, gets a head start and enters the school.  After he leaves, it's revealed that the real game is a bit different.  Five pairs of girls are to go into the building through different entrances and whoever gets to Negi in the science room first and steals a kiss wins.  If two groups encounter each other, they have to have a pillow fight, and the team that loses is disqualified.

The last two episodes are tenuously linked.  Nodoka Miyazaki is a shy bookworm who's had a crush on her teacher since he first arrived at Mahora Academy.  Her roommate gives her two tickets to the local amusement park and Nodaka gets Negi to accompany her one afternoon.  The girl wants to confess her love to the young teacher, but it's hard for her to get up the nerve.  Every time she gets close to telling Negi how she feels, something interrupts her.

After seeing how brave Nodoka was, Asuna decides to reveal her true feelings to Mr. Takahata.  His birthday is coming up, and she figures that will be the perfect day to let the teacher know she's in love with him.  She can't just go up and blurt it out though she has to give him something, so she decides to make him a cake.  The only problem is she can't cook, and her early attempts at baking go comically awry.
 

It seems that they've dropped the larger story and are concentrating on stand alone comic episodes.  That's not all bad; there were some pretty funny moments in this volume.  The scene where Asuna cooks her first cake and has Negi taste-test it was hilarious.  If the tentacles and eyeballs didn't turn him off, the fact that the cake bleeds when she cuts it surely do.

When they play up the comedy angle, the show still feels like it's missing something however.  In this volume Negi only uses his magic once, and that's to make some light.  The action part of the show seems to have been forgotten.  There were a few hints dropped however that seems to signal something big is in the works.  Only time will tell.

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.  Like FUNimation's other releases, a trailer starts running when you pop the disc in the DVD player.  This time however it is skippable, just press the menu button to jump past it!  Good going FUNimation!

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.

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 nearly absent from this show. Blocking, cross coloration and other compression artifacts are also missing. A fine looking DVD.

Extras:

There is another commentary on this volume, to episode 15, the first show on the disc.  This time Laura Bailey (Ayaka) and Brina Palencia (Yue) discuss the show.  I really don't enjoy anime commentaries very much, since the voice actors don't have much insight into the show.  This track was better than most.  Laura and Brina talk about getting started in the business, some of the nuts and bolts of recording, and anime conventions.  This isn't scene specific, and that's a good thing.  They avoid describing what's happening on screen for the most part, and just chat.  Laura especially does a good job of keeping the conversation flowing.  There's also a clean opening and closing, a couple of character profiles, and a text piece on Japanese values.

Final Thoughts:

This was a fun volume.  While it doesn't advance the main plot at all, these episodes were pretty funny and enjoyable to watch.  An improvement over the last volume, this disc is recommended.