Negima! Volume 11 Book

The artwork for Negima is beautifully dull. I love this comic book series, but honestly, with all the girls and all the characters, I have to say that one of Akamatsu-sensei's weaknesses is his very plain and repetitive art style. It doesn't help any that he makes all of Negi's students secondary characters in the story. They are all of them designed a lot alike, and he doesn't do much about their differences in design. He tries again and again in the books to flesh out the different female students by giving them their own interests and clubs but time and again he fills his panels with too many of them talking and except for the more interesting ones like Chairman Ku Fei, Evangeline and the class president who has a naughty crush on Negi, all the other female students just tend to blend into each other.
The other thing wrong with Akamatsu-sensei's art is that its so bloody and needlessly detailed. I know, this sounds like a ridiculous contradiction to what I have just said about how his characters are all sadly, very much look alikes, but that's likely the fault of the fact that he spends so much time detailing the backgrounds of his comic books, which is something I seriously love, but I feel is effort spent on the wrong thing. I wish Akamatsu-sensei would spend more time trying to make his characters distinguishable from one another, or maybe he could write less of them into the stories instead of making these elaborately illustrated backgrounds that only serve as setting for the story, and should not be the main focus of the book.
The main focus of the book is the characters not all the pretty backgrounds.
That said, another aggravating thing about the books is that so many background characters are talking all the time, the book seems needlessly filled in with text and speaking that coupled with the constant repetition of spells only serves to obscure the beautiful artwork. Do we really need to read about five dozen people cheering Negi or Ku Fei during the fight? It detracts from the story, and obscures the overly beautiful backgrounds.
As far as the story is concerned, as usual Negi has to make time for all of his students by being the greatest teacher that ever lived, even though he's ten year's old. But all of this works to make Negi adorable which is the biggest draw of the book. So its only really a so-so story with beautiful artwork and it delivers a lot of story which is why I consistently give the works of Akamatsu-sensei such high praise.
Its definitely worth reading, if you're a fan of Harry Potter, good art, or funny girl manga. But I have to dadmit that I do miss the whole Negi sneezing and blowing off the girl's clothes schtick that first got me into this gag-manga.