Kasumi Asakura rigs together a “Love-love Kiss Negi-Sensei” festival disguised as a “Summer Evening Courage-testing” festival, and the girls of 2-A divide up into teams. Negi thinks he’s going in to tie a ribbon on the skeleton in the science room, but really he is the target of the 5 pillow-wielding teams trying to secure a kiss from him. Kasumi and Konoka host, and Chisame (being blackmailed with a net idol picture) and Sakurado Shiina judge. Of course this leads to some rather amusing battles, and dark horse team 4 (Yue and Nodoka) is able to sneak in through the emergency exit. Unfortunately, things take a strange twist when Negi sees a more fleshed out dummy and faints, causing his magic light to disperse and form 5 evil Negi clones. These clones boldly go to offer out kisses, and one even tries to put the moves on Yue, after causing Nodoka to faint. Fortunately, Asuna finally wakes up to save the day, and we get a funny scene at the end where Sayo eavesdrops on Asakura, Chisame, and Ayaka talking about their run-in with ghosts.
While amusing, this episode didn’t flow quite as well as the manga counterpart did. I can understand the reason for changing the cause of the Negi clones, but the new cause didn’t really make any sense at all. High points include Kaede doing nothing while Ku Fei had to do all the fighting, the twins’ fake bunshin attack, and the introduction of Yue’s low self-confidence. Yue is a real team player in this episode, which will later throw quite the monkey wrench into the plot. I found myself enjoying the Chisame screentime more than I thought I would. Also, the art was kinda mediocre this episode.
