From the second ED sequence, Kaede using a Mikan Box as a table!


Oh, and then there’s one on Asunas desk in episode seven…

and one in Chisames room in episode twelve.

There’s also this one in the Bakarangers skit at the end of episode 7, but it’s not entirely clear what it’s saying on the side of it.

It’s a little surprising that it’s actually taken me this long to get around to watching Shafts Negima!? TV show. I mean, I’ve shown myself to be a Negima fan with a predilection toward importing on more than a few prior occasions (side note: remember when this blog had acutual content? Hard to believe, isn’t it?), not to mention that I’ve been a self-proclaimed Akiyuki Shinbo fan ever since The Soul Taker originally hit R1 DVD. Given I’ve got pretty much every other R2 Negima DVD release (which isn’t the Live Action series – you can forgive me for skipping THAT), including the Xebec series, it’s strange that I skipped this one.

I think I seem to have gotten the impression that this was a bad series from somewhere – I’m thinking I heard that it goes rapidly downhill in it’s second half, around the time where a lot of the same staff started working on Hidamari Sketch at the same time, but I could be imagining that. I’m sure that someone will remind me if that was the case.

As it is, the first half of this series is a lot more fun than I was expecting. Maybe it’s just because I wasn’t really expecting it to be all that much fun in the first place, but I’d at least like to think it’s because it retains enough of that Shaft insanity that it’s amusing, whilst restraining it enough as to not be overly annoying. I guess I’ll see if that remains the case when Funimation get around to releasing the second half of the series in a months time.

Speaking of Funimation, the video on this release is a bit so-so, and as much as I’d like to blame Funis recent trend for cramming upwards of six episodes on a DVD for this, I don’t think that’s the problem in this case. The video displays an awful lot of line noise in places, in a fashion which suggests that part of the mastering process as been done in composite. I’ve not seen evidence of this on any other recent Funimation releases, so I’m inclined to think that they’ve been given a less-than-ideal master from the Japanese side. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a Japanese company as provided a licensee with worse materials than used for the R2 disks – ADVs release of Fumoffu displays similar issues, for example.

Anyway, I think I might actually get around to watching the second Ala Alba OAV tonight – the third episode is due in just a few days, after all. There’s nothing like being prompt, is there? ^^;