Now this review will go slightly different to the normal run of the mill reviews. You see Negima has four different adaptions so keeping up with all of them is a major task, saying that they all follow a common theme as I will now tell you.
Negima is about a ten year old wizard from Wales, (Because all good wizards are Welsh) who gets selected to become a teacher at Mahora Academy looking after a class of 31 girls, all of which in the picture above.
His task is to become a great wizard like his father the Thousand Master but many magical troubles arrive to test Negi, and in order to avoid regular people finding out about his magic, Negi must make the girls his partners.
That's your basic plot and it serves all four adaptions; so lets do this in order of appearance.
Negima Manga
The official Canon for Negima and the most well known and Ken Akamatsu at his story telling best, mostly. This is the first time Akamatsu has ever done a full on Shonen action show and it's hard to break habits when he's creating fan service quite frequently and mostly at awkward moments, nevertheless the action we do get is Shonen Jump worthy, however the further you get into the story the more confusing it gets and with all the Latin words littered everywhere it can easily confuse the smartest person.
Negima 1st Anime
Followed the Manga up to a point but the sudden change in plot was probably one of the biggest tone shifts in anime history. Not helping it's case was the fact that it was made on a pretty lousy budget, which so plagues Akamatsu's works.
Negima 2nd Anime
Rewriting the plot was a good move, it made things simpler, the animation is incredible and overall it felt closer to what I expected from Negima in the first place. It does suffer a bit from being too simple at times as many of the stronger characters have been streamlined in an effort to keep the focus on Negi but it also balances itself out by making annoying characters far less sufferable.
Negima Neo Manga
Same as the 2nd Anime, only it tones down the signature card magic plot and brings back some strong character backstories. But then it also suffers the same as the 1st Anime by the sudden change in the last story arc. The problem is not so much a tone shift rather than a "What the bloody hell?" It also pushes the fanservice to uncomfortable levels at times.
All Adaptions
But there is a common problem with each adaption, none of them succeed in managing all 31 girls stories. Ken Akamatsu is no stranger to harems but 31 girls is too much and certain characters miss out badly in the plot department; the 2nd Negima Anime got the closest to succeeding but ultimately ran out of episodes before it could be done. To better explain this problem were going to need a double list, but for now lets wrap up this review.
Final Verdict
Negima Manga: The action is spectacular and really works well despite the fanservice mixed with the Shonen Jump style. Don't expect to understand the plot though; once you get to the Magical World you'll lose the plot.
Negima 1st Anime: If you had bad memories of Love Hina's anime adaption then it's probably not a good idea to watch this one, it's cheap production values really spoil things. I'd watch the renewed seasons and OVAs based on the Magical World Arc instead.
Negima 2nd Anime: Wonderful colors, great atmosphere and overall the best and most solid attempt at the Negima anime.
Negima Neo Manga: Fun for a while but has a tendency to go overboard with Fanservice and the sudden random story elements are baffling.
