It’s the last day before exams, and the Baka Rangers are doing their best to study on Library Island. Back at school, Ayaka is desperately trying to rally the troops. Thanks to Evangeline’s warning about Negi’s perilous status, Ayaka is determined to make everyone score significantly higher to compensate for the Baka Ranger effect. Of course, she also believes that they can achieve a top ranking, thereby driving Negi into her waiting arms…
Just as everyone is resting peacefully on the island, the golem returns! It grabs Makie, but Ku Fei and Kaede rescue her, while Makie grabs the magic book of knowledge that just happened to be resting on the golem’s neck. Naturally the golem gives chase, and corners the gang at a dead end. Unfortunately, when he tries to smash them, he ends up revealing a service elevator that goes directly to the surface. The one catch is that the crew is slightly too heavy for the elevator. When even getting naked doesn’t help, Negi steps out for battle, but without magic he doesn’t stand a chance. Asuna correctly realizes this, and pulls Negi back. After all, if Negi dies then the whole risk was pointless. Instead, the book is thrown out, and the Baka Rangers just barely make it to the testing area in time. In spite of the effort, the 2-A comes in last again (by 0.1%), and Negi prepares to leave the school. However, everyone stops him, and the principal makes an appearance to declare that he was actually late grading the last 5 tests because he was getting some massage loving from Shizuna-sensei. With the recalculated score, 2-A ends up with an average of 80.4% (the overall class’ average was 76.1%), which is good enough for 2nd place! Oh yeah, and the magic book, golem, and Library Island turn out to just be phonies put in place by the principal to test everybody’s determination. Just say no to grade inflation!
Again, I enjoyed this episode much more than in the manga for some strange reason. The animation has gotten to the point where it’s not noticeably bad 90% of the time, and I really love that chanting song that played during Negi’s departure. Too bad it was already used for Evangeline’s flashback scene… I also totally dig Evangeline’s voice, probably the most of any of the other seiyuu performances (Konoka’s slight lisp comes in just 0.1% behind). Although the Baka Rangers certainly did their best, managing a collective average of 66 (Ku Fei gets a personal record of 67, Kaede gets 63, Yue gets a 63, and Asuna gets a 71), not enough is made of Ayaka’s tremendous contribution. Even though she’s already number 4 in the class, she still scores 10% above her average and gets everyone to surpass their limits, making her the MVP in my book. On a separate note, the whole decopin (forehead flick) with Kaede and Ku Fei was hilarious, as if that doesn’t scare you to study harder, then nothing will ^^.
2 Comments
do you know the name of the chanting song that is playing during negi’s departure? if you do could you please email me the name.
cant wait for the dvd’s to be available (with reworked episodes) , and best of all the season 2 promo video floating around the net is looking pretty damn good !