12 Days of Christmas – Day 4 – Where the Hell is Arika?!

I still haven’t gotten used to the feeling of a manga I’ve been reading suddenly coming to an end. I know lots of popular series that have ended this year, like Bakuman, REBORN, Zetsubou Sensei or Air Gear, among many others. Of those I’m reading, only three came to an end in 2012, and I don’t think any of them felt like the traditional ending of a manga. I knew Bokura ga Ita would be ending long before I got caught up, and BARRAGE didn’t last long enough to have the proper impact. Of course the big finale that happened this year, and the one I wanted to briefly touch on one last time, is the ending of Mahou Sensei Negima.

Soul Eater – The Gathering Storm

Maka is slowly turning into something out of Touhou.

With Maka and crew finally making their way to the moon, Kidd’s team returning after meeting up with the society of witches, Crona having traveled here to find the Kishin, and Excalibur doing something somewhere, the conditions of this arc are quickly turning into something very much like a final battle. I knew this whole encounter on the moon would be very important in the grand scheme of things, but since Maka and Crona were away from that battle, it was difficult to imagine this as anything conclusive. Now things are slowly resembling a scenario I’ve seen several times before at the ends of shonen, which is where every available character gathers in one location to brawl until one side runs out of guys.

The World God Only Knows – What if God Was One of Us?

…

The Goddess arc has been going on for so long now that it’s hard to imagine The World God Only Knows doing anything else at this point. I think it had been going on for over a year at the point when I got caught up with the manga, so I can only imagine how this ending must feel for those who have been with it since the beginning. There was quite a bit of talk about whether the series would even keep going after this storyline was finished, and while I believed it would, I had that same doubt in my mind too.

Claymore – And Everyone Lived Happily Ever After

“It’s against our laws to kill humans, so maybe I should have explained this first.”

Some of you have probably heard the rumours about Claymore coming to a rather abrupt end. I personally heard it from a tweet by Shonen Beam while I was halfway through the chapter, so there was slightly less surprise then there probably should have been. I understand that this isn’t the actual end of the story and it will be continuing on in a different magazine. Whatever happened, it’s still a lot for readers to suddenly find out at the last possible second. I would have expected some sort of warning from one of the many anime news websites that are out there, or at least for the little “Claymore – End” note to also include “See You In Whatever Other Magazine”.

Mahou Sensei Negima – Finale

This is one post I didn’t think I would have to write for a long time. Mahou Sensei Negima was one of the series that got me into manga to begin with, and I was sure it would be around for so much longer. Of course a part of that is because the ending felt so rushed and there was so much left unexplained. A lot has been said about this ending, most of it negative. I can see where all of that comes from, since I know I wanted so much more from the conclusion. How come we didn’t see Nagi come back? Why don’t we know who Negi liked? These are some of the building blocks of the whole series and they didn’t get the resolution they deserved. Clearly this series doesn’t know how to end things.