Hallo (OAD Two!)

I have immigrated here from a different blogging site, and hopefully I will have a much funner time blogging to myself here than there. :D

What to blog about today I wonder...Ah! But of course, the Negima OAD#2 is out! I watched it pretty early actually, before anybody on the usual forums noticed it was up. No need to brag about it really but I like watching it before other people, gives me some pathetic sense of pride, haha. It was quite good, but again like the first OAD had ups and downs in terms of animation. All of Anya's flaming attacks were very well animated, but there were parts where again they got lazy and animated the scene poorly. There was more in the first OAD so they improved somewhat on this point, but I still believe that there is no justice being served for my favourite character, Asakura. First they blow up her breasts to an enormous size and her other proportions in other scenes seem a little iffy too, and a few other characters too, but I probably noticed it more with her due to that promo picture, heh.

Besides animation, the voices were wonderful as usual. I actually like Kotaro's voice, and I don't understand how other people might not like it. It has that rough sound and that boyish sound...perfect for a rough boy like Kotaro, right? It's nice for them to add scenes with him since he didn't really have much dialogue in the actual episode. I want to hear moar Kotaro! I want the Magic World Arc to be animated to hear even moar Kotaro! Oh and but of course those adorable lolis. As for other notable voices, the 'roughness' of Yuuna's voice is back, since it was strangely absent in the first OAD, where she just sounded generically loud. Overall the voice-acting was superb, especially Anya (Chiwa Saito), though I feel a bit disappointed with Ayaka (Junko Minagawa)'s performance.

As for being faithful to the manga, it was about 95% faithful. There were a few changes here and there, maybe a deleted scene, extra lines, and an added scene or two, but nothing major. Any Negima fan would be fine with that, but there are some small things that would have been nice to see animated or even coloured which were cut, disappointing me slightly. I welcome any additions to the OAD unless it's competely ridiculous (for example, if SHAFT threw in a Motsu cameo...), but deleted parts don't sit as well with me. Of course maybe an exact adaptation of the manga is too linear for people. One thing I had really hoped for SHAFT to do was to have a close-shot of the Sayo doll when it first appeared, then panning out to the actual volleyball game. That way there would have been a fairly large quality image of the Sayo doll but instead they opted to follow the manga exactly at that point. Oh well, guess I'll have to wait until the third OAD. Also, either Ayaka has disturbingly flexible fingers or her index finger is broken.

I loved the soundtrack, particularly a certain song that played during the second beach scene, sounded too cute. I also thought the background music for the pillow fight fit very well, especially since the pillows being thrown around looked crisp in animation as well. (I noticed the freakin' pillows! That must have been some awesome animation!) Basically everything sounded excellent to my airs, so no complaints there! The OAD overall exceeded my expectations. It was better than the first OAD, so I'm going to have high hopes for the third OAD, which would have the much anticipated scene of the Sayo Doll, and of course...lots of Chisame. This was the best scene in the OAD, though I wanted to see how they would adapt the 'symbollic cussing' in the manga, and they answered that question with nothing at all, so that was also disappointing, but again overall was superb. 8.5/10!A nice start to my first post, no? One more thing, despite the oversized breasts, I did laugh at that spring scene too, mostly because of the amusing sound effects.