A Note from the Fanfiction Editor: This is an introduction to My Brother's work. We will refer to him for all intents on here, for now, as Elodahn. He has given me permission to place this story online. He does not own Negima, or any other work related to it and neither do I. I am sharing this story because I believe it to be an amazing story. :) -Bunny
Mahô Sensei Kain: The Introduction
This is the story of Mahô Sensei Kain. It is a FanFiction work based on the story of Negima, originally written by Ken Akamatsu. I began writing MSK largely just for myself and a few of my close friends and my family, and never intended to introduce it to the public. However, as my sister is greatly insistent that I expose this story to the world, I've decided to go ahead and do so. However, MSK is an unusual work in many ways, and so before I begin to present it, I decided to sit down and write out this introduction to properly explain the raison d'être of the story.
FanFiction writing is a natural pastime for me—it is something I am doing constantly. Nearly every book or manga I read, show or anime I watch, or any other media I enjoy prompts me to reimagine it in my mind, and these considerations end up dominating my brain processes most of the time. I just enjoy imagining myself or at times a character of my design interacting in the story, contributing, just being there…usually not supplanting the main characters, but smoothing over one or two 'bumps' at most and just generally enjoying my placement. An NCIS agent, a ninja, maybe even a pirate and certainly a few different kinds of wizards…I'm a writer at heart, but alas, one with far more imagination than originality (it may sound like a contradiction, but it's the best way to describe it).
However, there are some stories that, for various reasons, inspire a need for a more in-depth reimagining. That's what this story is. Most anime fans have one or two series they'd like redone—the story is great, many of the characters are excellent, but there are one or two things that might hold it back. Evangelion, for a specific example, might be the most commonly reimagined anime series; after all, it was so wildly successful and yet so thoroughly 'flawed', in its conclusion if nothing else, that there have been two official anime reimaginings and perhaps a dozen or more manga variations on the story. Naturally, there are innumerable FanFiction interpretations of the story as well.
And Negima, for me, is one of these stories. It wasn't one I should have started reading in the first place—although I am a fan of anime and manga, I am still somewhat prudish and even Puritan in my tastes, and I feel that there is a line for fan service in these works that can be crossed, taking it from 'tolerable' to 'gratuitous'. The works of Ken Akamatsu-sensei, Love Hina and Negima, seemed to cross that line, and I resisted reading both. Negima, however, a tale of sorcery in the modern world quite obviously born from the spreading popularity of Harry Potter, did seem to be an interesting tale…but still I felt it was too 'ecchi' for me. Finally, however, I had so many references to it and recommendations and such that I decided to take the plunge.
And at first it was just as bad as I feared. Negi was a child who, despite being a 10-year-old genius mage teacher, mostly caused havoc with his magic, regularly stripping his students with crazy hijinks. He was 'hilariously' incompetent, when it came down to it. I don't know why I kept reading it…okay, I do know, and that reason was one character I fell for, but long story short, eventually I was rewarded for my patience. Negi suddenly became appreciably competent and was involved in actual battles and struggles and secrets in this magical world, and the story just kept growing in its excitement, mystery, and glory. The fan service was still pervasive, but it was easier to ignore, and, in my mind, at least, almost became an afterthought—after chapters of normal battles, it was as if Akamatsu-sensei suddenly remembered, 'Oh yeah, this is supposed to be an ecchi manga' and made another 'get all the girls naked' chapter. But it became more than tolerable, such was the awesomeness of this little boy Negi and his quest.
And thus the work became a prime candidate for a personal adaptation—as awesome as the whole thing was, there were still things that I didn't like, that, to my prudish and rather arrogant mind, could have been improved. The fan service, primarily—the 'Barbie doll' nature of the nudity simply made it worse in my mind than works that hide ladies' breasts and such through convenient arms, hands, locks of hair, or other pieces of background. In addition, some of the weird fetishes continually repeated, such as the recurring theme of short skirt-wearing girls going 'commando' by either accident or design, were off-putting, and perhaps most particularly, the romances towards the 10-year-old child Negi were…troublesome, for the most part.
And so, for a NaNoWriMo project a while back, I decided to try my hand at my own version of Negima, a story based on the skeleton and using some (probably about 10-20%) of the characters, but otherwise being my own work. It has enough that it is certainly a FanFiction of Negima, but…well, it's just far from a normal one.
The first thing necessary to understand about me is that I write FanFiction constantly, as I stated earlier. The second is that I think overly much, about a great deal of things, and I have a tendency to want to express or explain myself, perhaps unnecessarily, and that is the main reason for this introduction. Like one of my heroes, MegaTokyo artist Fred Gallagher, I like to express my thoughts and reasons for the progression of my works, and, in addition to this introduction, I have 'Chapter Notes' that explain my changes and adaptations, character introductions, and whatever else I am thinking about (regarding the work) at the time. Those who read who want to know a little more are encouraged to read them, but if you'd rather not subject yourself to my diseased thought ramblings, even if you are enjoying the story, you are naturally free to skip them.
The stage has been set….
For those of you who have never read Negima or watched the anime adaptation (or any of the other alternate universe manga/anime versions), all you really need to know now is this: this is the story of a young man, a genius mage teenager who begins his life as a mage being an English teacher for a class of girls his age in Japan, and has many adventures with them. If you are interested, please beginning Act 1 to know more.
For those of you who have experienced the Negima universe already, there are some things you should know about this work:
Origin: This work was inspired by, and follows the skeleton of, the original manga written by Ken Akamatsu, and so, where there are differences between the original and its adaptations and spin-offs, my work will more closely follow the manga.
Main Character: One of the things that made Negima great was its titular character. While he began as a bungling and incompetent meddler, he grew and became a true hero by the end. He has enough of my faults that I can empathize with him, and enough heroic traits I wish I had that I can truly admire him…but in the end, in the convenience of my universe, he's one of the problems with the story. He's a ten-year-old kid, and that status makes the romances problematic, a big problem for me since I am a romantic at heart. So for my story I decided to replace him with the 14-year-old mage teacher, Kain Lockeheart (hence Mahô Sensei Kain). Kain Lockeheart is a heroic version of myself, naturally. Although you might label this a male equivalent 'Mary Sue' FanFiction (i.e. 'Obviously this guy wishes he had his own harem) this isn't any more than I usually do for my FanFiction variations, and in fact I detest Harem situations (see below). Kain Lockeheart is a good hero to bring in because, as I said, Negi has many traits I identify with. Making a teen Kain in this story is probably its biggest shake-up, largely because it kills all the child love 'humor' while adding more realistic romance and a more thoughtful, observant character. That's the extent of that, however—Negi is largely a product of his environment, his past and background, and since, for the story's sake, Kain is assuming that same past and background, he will be far more like Negi than he would otherwise be (based on the original Kain Lockeheart I created for other stories). So, big thing #1: we have a regular anime harem story with a teenager crew, not a shotacon situation.
Harem: As I mentioned, I actually hate harem situations. I am far too ridiculously prone to pity and sympathy, and that is brought out badly in those situations, because I feel sorry for all the competing girls who don't win. So I suppose I could have readjusted the work to be a regular, mixed group of teens, a coed school, instead of an all-girls, but, sadly, harem situations are so common in anime now, including some of the others I'm adapting into here, and is such a major part of the Negima skeleton, that I felt I had to leave it. However, to help assuage my guilt some, I am adding a larger amount of male supporting characters there to add spice to the harem and give 'consolation prizes' or whatever for some of the unlucky females. Negima had a few of those, but far too few, and most not nearly remarkable enough.
The Girls: While I generally liked the class, I wanted to do something of my own, and having all the same girls in the class would have left it far too much of a copy (and I do copy parts I liked or needed as often as I can, I will admit). I wanted to make things different, at least to a degree, so I decided to build a different class. Three of the girls, the three I like the most and generally find the most irreplaceable (either one or both) return from Negi's class, but the rest of the girls of 2/3-A are not from Negima. For starters, I had a list of twelve anime girls that were my absolute favorites, and I decided that there was no better place to include all of them than in an all-girls mash-up anime story class. I then filled out my class with girls that worked well or fit in certain roles so that I could follow the skeleton to the degree that appealed to me. And also, I did this because….
The Mash-Up: I love mash-ups and crossovers. I love imagining, say, NCIS invading the turf of NYPD and working a case with Castle and Beckett, or Yusuke Urameshi investigating a well on assignment that takes him to a feudal era stuffed with demons. I really enjoy the thought and exercise of characters reacting to other characters and adjusting to unique situations. This is my imagination, and my true love. And this is a large reason I decided to mix in twelve rather random anime girls and then a whole bunch more: the exercise and excitement of multiple characters interacting, in being in roles or situations that are unusual for them, etc. And so, besides the girls in the class, many teachers, adversaries, side characters, and more will hail from a wide variety of anime sources. Those who are particularly diversely knowledgeable in anime (at least, my corner of it) may find a particularly amusing collection of colliding worlds. Or they may be even more insulted by my audacious sacrilege, who knows. For that reason, in addition to the Negima arcs and mini-stories I'm using and adapting, I work in stories, scenes, and lines that I particularly like from these other anime. And where they are important to the character, I am also working in whole backgrounds from other anime. Again, these are adaptations, so they won't be exactly the characters you may be used to…particularly amongst the class, the girls are often assuming backgrounds, like Kain, from the characters already present in order to fit in the story better, but I'm still trying to keep them closer to their original character.
Unique Characters: For certain characters I couldn't adequately replace and didn't want to keep, I substituted my own characters, and there are a few I wanted to include and place for various reasons. They are generally few in this story, but there are a few, and generally I announce who these characters are. They, obviously, belong to me, while the rest of the characters do not.
The Magical World: Negima had a rich history in its magical world and a wonderful, terrible secret, a very well-done plot twist and background to this 'Mundus Magicus'. It is something that is very uniquely Negima, and Ken Akamatsu's, and I certainly have no desire to trample on it by ripping it off entirely. I designed my own magical world, largely from the pieces of Negima and some of the other magical world anime I'm adapting in, and it will have an entirely different past, reason for existence, and all the rest, so don't assume it will be the same. It won't.
Ecchiness: As I said, the ecchiness of MSN was one of the things that got to me, and one of the reasons I wanted to write this was to have the awesome story without the fan service. Besides, in a text story a large amount of fan service would be rather distracting and pointless. Now, like the aforementioned Fred Gallagher, I do acknowledge that a certain amount of fan service, tastefully done, can create story threads, draw attention to culture and psychology differences, and generally aid in storytelling, as long as it doesn't become lewd; it is generally humorous, for example, in pointing out the absurdity of all the hot springs episodes in anime, to have a parody hot springs episode of my own at some point. As long as it isn't fan service for fan service's sake, I can appreciate and even use it. Several of the works I'm adapting in (apart from Negima, of course) have a few scenes of a 'fan service' nature that are natural to include here for several reasons. A boy living with a bunch of girls his age, even one as discreet and shy and gentlemanly as Kain, is going to run into occasional problems. But those expecting paragraphs of explicit situations or descriptions should look elsewhere.
Disclaimer: That's about it for my necessary notes; if you want to know more about all the changes I'm making, or who specific characters are or what they're doing in this work, peruse my author's notes in the chapters, where I address almost every story included, ever skipped story, every minor or major character, and every random reasoning for my changes. In closing, I should like to proclaim my all-important disclaimer: I do not own Negi Springfield, Negima, or most of the other characters included in this work, it is not for any commercial profit or personal gain, it is simply a story written for personal fulfillment and presented for public enjoyment, and as an honest homage to the fine story conceived and written by Ken Akamatsu, as well as all the other (innumerable) works that find place herein (and their authors).
Well, if you've made it this far and still want to go on…then enjoy.