Characters / Negima Negi Springfield

Main Character Index | Negi Springfield | Ala Alba | Class 3-A | Cosmo Entelecheia | Ala Rubra | Magic World | Other | Game-Only

Negi Springfield

Voiced by: Rina Sato (Japanese) and Greg Ayres (English)

Portrayed by: Yukina Kashiwa

Negi is our ten-year-old protagonist, a precocious Welsh mage assigned to be the homeroom teacher of an all-female Japanese middle school class as his on-the-job magic training.

His principal goal is to find his father Nagi, a legendary mage and hero of a recent magical war, presumed to be dead for a decade or so. With good reason, the boy thinks otherwise and devotes a lot of his energy, with the help of his friends, toward unveiling the secrets of his disappearance. Sadly, but predictably, the Ala Alba is often sidetracked by one or more of the Muggle students being endangered by the various hazards of the magic underworld.

As a fighter, Negi specializes in wind, light and lightning spells, later supplementing his magic with martial arts when the weaknesses of a pure wizard become apparent.

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A-F

• Abnormal Ammo: During the fight with Evangeline Negi uses Magic rounds.
• Accidental Pervert: Tends to stumble in on girls naked or magically make them naked on accident.
• Achilles' Heel: His lightning techniques that turn him intangible are vulnerable to exorcism techniques like the Shinmeiryu arts. Can't block those with deflector shields either. However, further mastery of this ability makes damage taken in this manner less serious.
• Adorably Precocious Child: He struggles hard to being formal and mature, which makes his students find him adorable.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite more than once getting his butt kicked after going into a fight alone, just to be saved by reinforcements, Negi just can't seem to get the idea of teamwork. This becomes a plot point later.
• All-Loving Hero: He's sweet, kind and forgiving. Unless someone touches his Berserk Buttons or threatens his students.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: During an early arc, he sacrifices his magic to keep himself from the temptation to cheat. He promptly enters a situation where just his basic physical reinforcement would have been quite helpful.
• Anime Accent Absence: Despite being from Wales and teaching English, he still has no accent.
• Apologizes a Lot: Whenever he says "sorry", take a swig.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: He's forced to wear a miniskirt-style fox-girl kimono with Zettai Ryouiki during the Mahora Festival. And again, due to Chamo's suggestion, wears a Sailor Fuku when asking for a favor from Ayaka. Ayaka nearly died from a massive nosebleed in both occasions.
• Badass Adorable: He looks completely non threatening, but even as early as the Mahorafest tournament he could throw around adult men about ten times his size.
• Badass Bookworm: After his fight with Jack, both he and Evangeline observe that Negi's primary strength isn't raw power, but his skill at developing new forms of magical theory and application. At one point, Jack states that his degree of genius is such that the magic he has developed at age ten is superior to that of those who've been studying the same thing for decades, even centuries.
• Badass Teacher: One of the quickest ways to get into conflict with Negi is to attack his students rather than him directly.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Negi is definitely a Nice Guy, but Magia Erebea isn't exactly powered by rainbows and sunshine.
• Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: At the start of the summer break, Negi asks Asuna if she would go to Wales with him as his partner. Asuna, Nodoka, and Yue think he means as in romantic partner and start freaking out, until Negi clears up he was referring to Asuna as just his Pactio partner. Asuna gives Negi a Megaton Punch for saying things in a way that's so easy to misunderstand.
• Balloon Belly: In chapter 56, Makie prepared food for him knowing he was training for Evangeline's Apprenticeship Test and overdid it. Then she brought out the "secret" diet technique of the gymnastics club, which went too far the other way.
• Bash Brothers: With Kotarō. They had their first fight together against Graf Wilhelm von Herrmann. In the Magic World arc they fully become this trope during their stint as a gladiator team.
• Battle Aura: The first sign that Negi is actually angry. Being a wind mage, it also appears when he uses his more powerful spells. And then there's Magia Erebea Demon Form.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Negi was told that if he got in trouble, his father would appear and save him. When Negi's village was attacked, his father came to rescue him, but Negi still wonders whether it was divine punishment for his foolish wish.
• Befriending the Enemy: He resolves to deal with Fate by befriending him and convincing him to cooperate in an alternative plan to save the Magic World.
• Benched Hero:
  • Negi misses out on the first half of the battle against Chao's robot army because he needed to rest and replenish the mana he used up earlier. The rest of the class and the Mahora Academy had to defend the World Tree without him.
  • Negi goes on a rampage during the final battle and ends up being incapacitated due to stopping himself short of completely giving into the darkness, forcing the rest of his group to improvise until he gets back into the game.
• Berserk Button:
  • Just seeing a full demon can make Negi lose control of his emotions. Negi almost got killed by Graf Wilhelm von Herrmann after the latter revealed his demonic form and told Negi that he participated in the raid on Negi's village. He also didn't hold back against the demon race when the bounty hunters group Canis Niger attacked Nodoka.
  • Jack discovers that a good way to get Negi to give it his all is to act condescending towards the effort he puts in.
  • And whatever you do, don't call Chachamaru a doll. Just don't.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's normally very gentle, but he's both the most flexible and most powerful character in the group despite his young age.
• Bishōnen Line: Upon using Magia Erebea he looked less and less human for many reasons, most notably its encroachment. Eventually he began mutating into a rampaging demon. However, while powerful, this form is not clever enough to fully utilize its strength. After mastering Magia Erebea by integrating it into his soul, he becomes nonhuman but retains the power and rationality of one.
• Blood Knight: He starts out averting it, but eventually grows to enjoy fighting.
• Blow You Away: Negi primarily uses wind magic defensively (outside of disarming/stripping others). He later incorporates it offensively for his lightning form.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: Negi and Asuna smooth out some initial conflict by bonding over their mutual parentlessness.
• Boring Yet Practical:
  • Before he gains Magia Erebea, Negi's magic style revolves primarily around Sagitta Magica, a very weak and basic attack magic. However, after months of experimenting and developing ways to use it, by the time of his final battle with Fate, Negi has built it up to the point where it's the equivalent of a full-scale war spell.
  • Earlier in the Festival arc, Chao didn't have any qualms giving Negi her Cassiopeia Time-Machine since effective use of it would require the aid of a highly-advanced super-computer wired into his clothing. Negi re-purposes the spells for telekinesis and future-prediction (the most basic spells one can learn) to utilize the Cassiopeia for combat use. Now deprived of the Game-Breaker she'd kept to herself the entire arc, Chao's winning streak comes to a sudden halt.
• Born Winner: He's the son of the World's Strongest Man and the heir of an ancient magical bloodline, taught from a young age by an immortal dark sorceress and later another legendary hero. He's also intelligent, can plan quickly, has excellent looks and a diligent nature to keep his talents from going to waste.
• Brits Love Tea: As a bonafide Welsh gentleman, Negi's favorite drink is tea with milk.
• Broken Hero: Negi is an extremely kind and helpful little boy, but besides Parental Abandonment he has a traumatic Dark and Troubled Past where demons invaded his village and turned everyone to stone. Everyone was horrified to see his memories of said event, which worked exactly opposite to how it was supposed to.
• Brought Down to Badass: After having his magic sealed temporarily by Yuuna in a class event based around the idea of getting Negi to make relationship progress, he's challenged to a duel by Ku Fei after she confesses. With no chance to explain, he instead is forced to rely on sheer physical prowess and manages to throw her. It wouldn't have been enough to win, but it shows amazing reflexes even without supernatural power.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: His village is attacked because his mother's enemies found where he is and tried to kill him.
• Came Back Strong: During his battle with Dynamis, Magia Erebea starts completely consuming Negi and he's left on the brink of death. To recover quickly, Negi accepts to be resurrected as a demon and he gains full control over Magia Erebea.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: One sip of alcohol reduces him to a weepy drunk. In his defense, he's ten.
• Cerebro Electro: Negi primarily uses lightning magic and has the intelligence to maximize its potential when he lacks the raw power of his father.
• Character Development: Negi learns early on the line between good and evil isn't so cut and dry and sometimes to do the right thing, you have to do the wrong thing. And while it takes him awhile to get there, he does learn to rely a bit more on his students for help.
• Chaste Hero: Oblivious to girls' feelings because he hasn't even hit puberty and doesn't think of girls like that yet.
• Cheerful Child: Subverted. He's quite sunny and pleasant in early appearances, but it's just a surface attitude that covers up an obsessive attitude and a lot of negative emotions.
• Child Mage: Negi is incredibly proficient with magic for being only ten years old. He's even the trope picture.
• Child Prodigy: Graduated from university-level education at age nine while primarily attending a magic school.
• Clear My Name: At the beginning of the Magic World arc, he was framed for destroying the gate ports to the real world. This isn't addressed much for more than fifty chapters.
• Clingy Sleepers: Much to Asuna's annoyance, Negi subconsciously insists on sleeping with her and getting as cuddly as possible.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: He's ridiculously popular with girls (to the point that the resident lesbians have shown a passing interest in him) and never really seems to pick up on that.
• The Collector of the Strange: Though it isn't brought up too much, he has a bunch of weird stuff, both magical and mundane. This is where he got the magic gun he used a couple of times early on, for example.
• Costume Evolution: Outside of his suit, Negi doesn't really have an Iconic Outfit at the start, though he later mostly uses Chinese martial arts garb and the two outfits he wears during his time as the gladiator "Nagi" resemble both Chao's and Mana's battlesuits respectively.
• Crazy-Prepared: His fight against Rakan has him pulling out five different trump cards, many of which were merely to guide the flow of battle or stall.
• Curtains Match the Window: Red hair, red eyes.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: The Idealist to Evangeline's Cynic. Negi begins the story as incredibly idealistic and naïve, and Evangeline tries to teach him that the world isn't the happy place he thinks it is. It works, but his idealism starts to change her views on the world as well.
• Dark and Troubled Past: When Negi was four years old, a horde of demons appeared and attacked his village. Just as a demon was about to attack Negi, his father Nagi appeared just in time to save Negi from receiving a fatal punch from the demon. With a few strikes and a powerful spell, he destroyed all of the demons but the village was already in ruins and most of the villagers had been already petrified. Nagi then disappears again and leaves his crying son behind. It's such a sad story that almost everyone who saw it, including Eva, couldn't help but cry.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Negi's strongest technique, Magia Erebea, literally is Dark Magic and feeds on negative emotions. However, it's a case of The Sacred Darkness and Negi himself is a heroic figure, so while he might look menacing while he uses Magia Erebea (and could potentially lose control of himself), he is definitely a good person.
• Death Glare: After gaining Magia Erebea he started to get some nasty, overpowering glares, likely complemented by his terrifying power.
• Declaration of Protection: He declares that even though she's not Asuna, Shiori is important to him and that he'll protect her. He also makes it clear to Fate that he won't let Fate lay a hand on Nodoka.
• Demon of Human Origin: By mastering Magia Erebea, a technique created by Eva specifically for undying monsters like herself, Negi slowly transforms into an immortal demon similar to Eva.
• Determinator: When Negi puts a goal in his mind, there is basically nothing that can stop him.
• Distressed Dude: When the group was sent to the future by Chao's trap, Negi was briefly captured and locked away without any of his tools, thus rendering him unable to actually use his magic. Interestingly, he apparently somehow managed to use magic despite having no staff or ring, which allowed him to escape and meet up with the group that had just arrived to rescue him.
• Ditto Fighter: Thanks to his Pactio, he has the ability to copy the artifacts of his own Ministras.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Negi goes berserk when Rakan sneers at the training he went through for his tournament fight.
• Doomed Hometown: Kind of sucks that the poor kid had his own village attacked by a horde of demons, doesn't it?
• Doppelgänger Attack: His strategy to beat Kurt involves swarming him with waves of lightning clones so the latter has no idea which to attack, relying on his reserves of magical energy to overwhelm Kurt. Thus, while they do have some ability to do damage, it mostly functions as a Doppelgänger Spin.
• Dream Walker: He can cast a spell to spy on other people's dreams. He uses this on Eva when she's having a Flashback Nightmare about the Thousand Master, something she tries to kill him for.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The kid Can't Hold His Liquor; he accidentally takes one sip of sake and crashes.
• Elemental Hair Composition: Technically, Negi's hair turns into lightning because all of him turns into lightning, when he gets the ability to become an Elemental Shapeshifter of lightning with He Astrape Huper Ouranou Mega Dunamene.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: With Magia Erebea, he can absorb spells to grant himself properties of the element in question. Incendium Gehennae, for example, grants him intense offensive power while Tempestus Fulguriens makes him incredibly quick. The Thousand Bolts makes him as fast as lightning while applying it twice basically makes him lightning for real, granting intangibility and thinking fast enough to keep up with his speed.
• Endearingly Dorky: As a 10-year-old boy who tries to teach a class of female middle school students, he can be so adorably awkward. This makes many of his students treat him like a little brother. Asakura and Misa in particular like to tease him about his dorky shyness, especially when they see him in his adult form.
• Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher: Despite his teaching job being an assignment, he still tackles it with great vigor despite the fact that most of his students are older than him (only Chachamaru is younger).
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: He comes to really hate Fate, even devolving into petty arguments about coffee vs. tea when they're face to face. However... He soon comes to realize that he doesn't actually hate Fate, and wants to befriend him. And he succeeds.
• Family Theme Naming: Negi, son of Nagi.
• First Kiss: With Asuna in Chapter 25. Asuna pretends that since it was a pactio it doesn't count, but she's obviously not even fooling herself.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Everyone calls him by his given name. As he grows closer to his students, he also starts calling them by their given names, with a few exceptions like Chao, Asakura (no ones calls her Kazumi), Mana (who he is a bit scared of), Ku Fei (his master) and Ayaka (because she's the Class Representative).
  • Special case with Asuna, Kotarō and Anya, who are very close to him and do not use any honorific for Negi. Negi also doesn't use any polite language for them. He is this with Takahata as well, as the two of them are friends since Takahata came to visit Negi when he was little.
• Flash Step:
  • Negi learns Shundo from Kotarō before his fight against Takahata, which would become a vital tool in all of Negi's fights from then on. However, once you made the "entry", you can't change directions, so an opponent who anticipates the move could simply trip you by placing an obstacle (like a leg) in your path. He later can do it mid-air too, which does allow him to change directions in the middle of the jump.
  • In Negi's lightning form, he uses an advanced version of it, Raisoku Shundo. In Raiten Taisou form, it carries the same weakness of Shundo though. Negi uses wind magic to create a group of his own positive particles away from the main body, so his main body is drawn to the particles and allows him to do a lightning-fast movement. But until Negi removes the positively charged particles from his main body and to elsewhere in his expanded electric field, he cannot use a circuit for high-speed movement, which means he can't change directions once he makes the jump.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Negi usually speaks very formally to mostly anyone he doesn't consider as really close friends or family. Makes sense since most of the people he interacts with are his students and he wants to sound well-mannered to make a good impression as a teacher. He only drops the formalities when speaking to someone who has a good level of familiarity with him, like his childhood friend Anya. When this is pointed out, the girls with crushes on him become worried that there is an emotional wall between them and Negi.
• Fragile Speedster: The lightning-based Magia Erebea techniques drastically increase Negi's speed, but lower his defense. Later compensated for by turning intangible.

G-P

• Generation Xerox: As the manga progresses, his fighting style and relationships with his friends are becoming more and more like that between Nagi and his Ala Rubra.
• The Gift: Negi is often called 'Prodigy' or 'a Genius' thanks to his ludicrous growth, amazing smarts and innate ability to master many fighting styles. Neither brash nor overconfident, he's instead insecure, self-sacrificing, somewhat power-hungry with a noted inferiority complex.
• Glass Cannon: Early in the series he had good offense, but was slow and easily interrupted.
• The Glasses Come Off: Later on in the story, Negi's glasses break/were never on in the first place/simply vanish whenever he becomes particularly violent.
• Guile Hero: Negi's no slouch physically, but what really makes him dangerous as a fighter is his planning ability. Other characters say that he'd probably be a supporting character in a different series.
• Hand Behind Head: Often seen doing one (or both) of these whenever he's nervous. Particularly when he has to say something he doesn't want to, like "confessing".
• Harem-Powered: Negi spends much of the series slowly amassing "Pactios" with the students of his class - a magical contract in which a "Magister" empowers a "Minister" to act as their partner in battle, and creates a Pactio Card with which the Minister can summon a powerful artifact matching their personality. Just before his climactic battle with Jack Rakan, Negi enters a temporary Pactio as Princess Theodora's Minister, receiving the artifact One Thousand Bonds - a card holder which can summon the artifacts of any of his own Ministers, and is referred to even in-universe as a Story-Breaker Power.
• Hates Baths: He doesn't like washing his body at the bath and Asuna usually needs to do it for him. According to a Drama CD, he gets it from his father.
• Hates Being Alone: He tends to be pretty morose when nobody is around. Sleeping alone is also listed under his dislikes.
• He Is All Grown Up: Not that he isn't already at least cute, but when he starts appearing as "Nagi", basically every single girl takes notice of him. Also when he actually grows up, many girls still point out how handsome he's become.
• Healing Factor: Magia Erebea starts granting him one the more he synchronizes with it. When he eventually combines with it entirely, he's capable of healing off disembowelment and holes being blown through his torso in mere seconds.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: He inherited his father's spiky red hair.
• The Hero: Negi is a boy with a good, naive heart and one of his main motivations is protecting those around him. Eventually, he starts a project to save two worlds from a future war.
• Heroes Fight Barehanded: Negi slowly phases out his weapons after he gets a ring to serve the same purpose as his staff.
• Heroic Resolve: Capable of taking a massive spear to the chest and continuing on via willpower alone, though only briefly. Played straight during the tournament final.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • Mana exhaustion will cause a loss of consciousness. Negi just needs to rest and sleep a bit, though. Negi fell asleep this way right after the Mahora Martial Arts Tournament, after he travelled back in time a week, and after he used everything he had in his Beam-O-War against Chao.
  • An interesting subversion happens after he and the rest of Ala Alba were scattered throughout the Magic World. He was earlier completely healed by Konoka and her artifact. It left him in a state where his body reacted by overloading because he had too much mana inside him. The way to heal himself was to release the energy by using spells.
  • After pushing himself too hard with Magia Erebea, the encroachment finally becomes too much and eventually causes him to collapse and give him magical poisoning. After this is temporarily dealt with, his body petrifies itself to begin a metamorphosis process right in the middle of battle.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: He is insecure and has a noted inferiority complex.
• Hero-Worshipper: Negi admires his father, Nagi, who became a hero and worked for an NGO as a Magister Magi, which is why Negi initially tries to imitate Nagi and become a Magister Magi like him. The Nagi that Albireo Imma recorded for Negi then told Negi to become his own person.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Negi is proficient in light magic and most often uses light arrows when he channels Sagitta Magica, though it doesn't really have much to do with him having faith in something. It's implied that he wished to imitate his father, which is why Negi early on focused on light, wind and lightning magic.
• Honor Before Reason: He really would win his battles a lot quicker if he didn't pull his punches against even the most black-hearted villains so much.
• How Much More Can He Take?: Beaten so hard during his graduation match with Rakan that he begins puking blood.
• Humble Hero: Negi seldom recognizes his accomplishments and feats. He fights arguably the World's Strongest Man to a deadlock and never says a word about it.
• Hypocrisy Nod: He was very aware and conflicted about this when he faced Chao, who travelled back in time to change an unfortunate past. Negi admits that he can't deny her and that he probably will have committed evil by stopping her. Asuna later points out that Chao and Negi are similar, and this makes everything he said to Chao to make her stop even more hypocritical.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: The entire fight, Negi and Rakan are just one-upping each other. Negi, as The Chessmaster, prepared five trump cards against Rakan, one card after another just baiting Rakan into Negi's final attempt to use Rakan's own power against him. And even after Rakan manages to withstand that, Negi prepared a small insurance, though he is completely beat afterwards.
• I Am What I Am: Magia Erebea turns him into an undying demon and Negi is totally fine with it. He's even glad that now he's the same as Eva.
• I Am Your Opponent: During the gateport incident, he attempts this one, but he's taken too much damage by that point.
• Idiot Hair: Negi has one, but it's only when to comes to matters of the female heart and how to be a child. Otherwise he's a genius.
• Idiot Hero: Averted, as Negi is intelligent and thoughtful in contrast to his father. This is lampshaded by everyone around him, as it becomes obvious that he thinks too much about things. Kotarō later on tells him though that "idiocy" is supposedly the secret behind Asuna's and his father's strength, making Negi try to find out a way to act with more thoughtless confidence. When Negi asks Rakan for his advice on this matter, the latter ironically punches Negi for acting like an idiot, telling him to stop trying to imitate his father. Which turns out to be a good thing: Idiot heroes have their strengths, but solutions more complicated than 'Punch bad guy in the face' tend to be beyond them.
• Immortality: One of the consequences of Magia Erebea is speculated to be that he'll become a mindless, immortal demon, though he tries to work out countermeasures. The mindless demon phase is temporary, so he gets through this stage by accelerating it as quickly as possible. After completing the transformation, he has a powerful Healing Factor and at best only a few more years of aging before maturation ceases.
• Improbable Age: He's ten years old and capable of teaching English while also being a magical prodigy that ends the series as one of the most powerful beings in existence.
• In a Single Bound: Using wind magic with Flash Step, Negi can jump across the street and on top of buildings.
• Inept Mage: Early on, Negi attempts to erase Asuna's memory of him doing magic and ends up erasing her clothes instead. He also tries to give her a ride in his flying staff, but he crashes. These incidents help foreshadow Asuna's Magic Cancel ability. He's portrayed much more competent when the series takes a more action-oriented direction.
• Innocent Prodigy: He is very intelligent, but naive likewise.
• Innocently Insensitive: Negi cares a lot for other people, especially his students, and hates to put them in any form of danger. What he doesn't understand is that they don't mind to be in danger in order to help him out and they can feel hurt when Negi tries to keep them out of what he does for their safety. The best example of this is perhaps when Negi doesn't take Asuna with him to the lowest levels of Library Island. When Asuna finds out about it, Negi explains he didn't want to expose an "uninvolved person" to danger. Unsurprisingly, Asuna gets very angry at Negi for still treating her like an outsider and refusing to rely on her despite everything they have been through. Negi, however, has no idea of why Asuna reacted so badly to what he said.
• Instant Expert: Due to possessing The Gift, Negi learns things like martial arts and magic techniques far too fast, something that's sometimes commented on.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Takahata. The two of them are on a First-Name Basis.
• It's All My Fault:
  • He blamed himself for the destruction of his hometown when he was younger because he wanted to see his father. When his father did show up, it was during a massive demonic attack.
  • Negi in general blames himself too often for bad things that happened which he had no control over. Kotarō had to beat him up to make him stop, Asuna (and later Chisame) also does this occasionally. Both Kotarō and Rakan also keep telling Negi to trust his friends, but he still wishes to resolve things alone and thus bears the responsibility alone.
• Kid Hero: He's a ten-year-old hero, though he's less immature than the trope usually calls for.
• Kids Love Dinosaurs: When given a time machine by Chao, Negi wants to use it to go back in time and see the dinosaurs, but the time machine doesn't have the capacity to turn back time for more than a few days.
• Kiss of Death: Played for Laughs. A World Tree-controlled Negi catches Asuna in a deep kiss that ends after she's passed out from lack of oxygen.
• Kung-Fu Kid: With the tutelage of Ku Fei he becomes an accomplished martial artist almost overnight. As shown late in the story, even without using any magic at all he's able to land an effective counter on super powered opponents.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: When it became clear his Squishy Wizard ways weren't good enough, he picked up martial arts from Ku Fei and started blending magic and martial arts together.
• Lightning Bruiser: At the end of the story, he's the fastest known character with good but not amazing attacks and the best or second best defenses.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Negi is polite, intelligent, studious, and doubts himself all the time, the complete opposite of his father who was a Hot-Blooded Idiot Hero through and through.
• Limited Wardrobe: Negi wears the same green suit for much of the story, but during the Magic World and school festival he shows a lot more outfits.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: He doesn't dislike the fact of Magia Erebea granting him Complete Immortality. Negi even says he's happy about it because he's now the same as his teacher Eva.
• Living with the Villain: He's had to fight at least three of his own students. Has occasionally gone Go-Karting with Bowser.
• The Load: When he seals his magic and journeys to Library Island with the Baka Rangers, he's about as useful as an actual ten-year-old boy would be in an area with many dangers and traps.
• Lost Orphaned Royalty: Negi was raised as an orphan and only heard that his father was a famous hero. His mother? She was the last queen of the Vespertatia Kingdom, making Negi a lost prince of the Magic World.
• Magic Fire: Magia Erebia Armationem of Incendium Gehennae ("Hell's Conflagration"), a high-level fire- and darkness-based spell, glows with black flames; they apparently cause Mana Drain.
• Magic Knight: Only in name. When asked by Eva whether he wants to become a Squishy Wizard or Magic Knight, he chooses the latter. One, because this is what his father was and two, because Negi seeks the strength to fight alone. Negi has weapons, but he stopped using them when he became a Kung-Fu Wizard.
• Marked Change: Magia Erebea causes black runelike tattoos to appear beneath his skin when used.
• Marshmallow Hell: His female students always sandwich his head in between their boobs upon tightly hugging him, and the Trope Namer moment occurs when several of them Group Hug him simultaneously.
• Martyr Without a Cause: He always throws himself into the most dangerous situations and rarely factors in personal harm when coming to decisions, which makes people uneasy more than impressing them.
• Meaningful Name: "Negi" means "spring onion" in Japanese, which is a reference to how the leek is the national symbol of Wales. Negi-Bozu is slang for newbie.
• Memento MacGuffin:
  • Negi's staff. It Was a Gift from his father after Negi was saved by him six years before the story began. It is the proof that the Thousand Master was still alive (despite being declared dead four years earlier), which fueled Negi's wish to find his father.
• Merlin and Nimue:
  • Negi is the Nimue to Evangeline's Merlin. She is several centuries older and becomes his magic master, after he saw a glimpse of her power in Kyoto. He eventually even adopts her original technique, Magia Erebea. While they show affection towards each other, neither seem romantically interested.
  • An inverted case with Negi's magic students, specifically Yue. Negi is her master (and the magister in the magister/minister relationship), though Yue is slightly older than Negi. Yue can empathize with Negi on a different level compared to many of Negi's other students, but her love for him is one-sided.
• Mighty Glacier: His Incendium Gehennae mode, as opposed to the Lightning Bruiser Jovis Tempestas Fulguriens, grants amazing offense and improved defense, but leaves him quite slow. He never really makes use of this form.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: He prefers The Smart Guy approach and diplomacy, but in a fight his performance is exceptional.
• More than Just a Teacher: While the teacher aspect of Negi is highlighted early in the series, it moves completely into the background during the Magic World arc as the mage aspect takes center stage.
• Nice Guy: He is very kind and friendly, though rather serious.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: In his lightning form, he's the Made of Air variant: Almost all attacks just pass right through him.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Rock spear to the chest. It would have been fatal were Konoka not around.
• The Nudifier: Anytime he sneezes, it will blow up several skirts, shred clothes, underwear or both. Later, sneezes accidentally cast the disarmament spell, meaning they can even strip you outright.
• Oblivious to Love: The only way he ever learns if a girl has feelings for him is if she straight-out tells him. Interestingly, he quickly picks up on Asuna's crush on Takahata, and Setsuna's on Konoka....
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Negi gets to meet his berserk form in person this way. He is guided by Evangeline's avatar, who is also naked. Not that she ever cares.
• Parental Abandonment: Negi was raised by his cousin, Nekane, for the majority of his life. His father supposedly died around Negi's birth, though Negi knows better, as his father came to his help six years before the story. The whereabouts of his mother are also unknown, but she is presumed to be deceased and he only learns late into the manga who his mother even is.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The Thousand Bolts, a spell he learns when first on the borderline of the monster tier with Rakan or Eva, is an anti-army ability and the ultimate lightning spell. In theory, since Negi comes up with a few lightning spear techniques.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Asuna. Despite their Ship Tease, Asuna prefers to hold the role of Negi's Cool Big Sis and Negi doesn't fall in love with her, but he identifies Asuna as the most important person to him.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: He's left dazing off after his second kiss with Nodoka. Also, Ayaka's pactio leaves him twitching on the floor.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: His hair turns white when using Raiten Taisou.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: When using Raiten Taisou, his hair becomes as long as he is tall.
• Pretending to Be One's Own Relative: Negi sometimes uses magic pills to age himself into a teenager. As "Nagi", he passes himself off as his own cousin to anyone who isn't aware of magic.
• Pretty Boy: His teenage form, "Nagi", is ridiculously pretty and makes girls lose their breath.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: When Negi fights Rakan, he brings out his new ultimate move, turns into lightning and pinballs Rakan around for an entire chapter, at which point Rakan falls down. The next chapter starts with Rakan getting up, unharmed, and beating the crap out of Negi.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Negi values his minuscule pince-nez glasses, but they do not seem to serve any purpose regarding his eyesight or anything else beyond marking him as bookish.

Q-Z

• Really Royalty Reveal: Ostensibly a normal kid from a backwater village in Wales who just happens to have a famous father. His mother, however, is from an ancient royal bloodline and possibly deceased.
• Red Baron: Eva remarked that he is called 'Boy Genius Mage' and later he's referred to as 'Thunder God Negi.'
• Red Is Heroic: His hair is red and he's a hero.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • Subverted with Raiten Taisou. Despite momentarily becoming lightning, Rakan points out that Negi does not actually get lightning-fast reflexes.
  • Played straight with Raiten Sousou, Raiten Taisou's upgrade. Negi does get the reflexes and constantly stays in his high-speed lightning form. Negi can make electric circuits indefinitely because he can create another circuit mid-air, which allows him to change directions however he wants.
• Replacement Goldfish: It's implied that Ayaka sees the little brother she never had in Negi.
• Right Man in the Wrong Place: Negi starts off as just a fresh magic school graduate assigned to teach English at another magic school (sort of) halfway across the world. However, just because he doesn't know he was sent doesn't mean he wasn't: Merdiana's choice of assignment and the dorm he ends up in are just a little too convenient to be coincidence.
• Rubber Face: Asuna stretches his mouth when she thinks he's been withholding information.
• Scars Are Forever: During the Mahorafest tournament he gets a scar on his cheek from Setsuna and another during the finals. He could get them fixed, but he has an emotional attachment to both. Negi refuses to have a scar on his arm he received in a fight with a temporary backup image of his father healed, preferring to keep it as a memento. He also didn't heal the scar Setsuna gave him on his face, keeping it as a reminder to not get so caught up in the thoughts of his father that he forgets his students. They both disappear after his Magea Erebea transformation is completed.
• Semi-Divine: Being the son of an Ostian queen, Negi is a direct descendant of the creator of the Magic World. Yue theorizes Negi's talents and high magic power may have something to do with him descending from what's essentially a Physical God.
• Sensei-chan: Rare Male Example. Negi is younger than his students, being only ten years old, and for the most part acts like an Adorably Precocious Child.
• Sent Into Hiding: His parents became fugitives of the Megalomesembria senate after Nagi saved Arika from being executed by them, so Negi was hidden away for his protection. The enemies of his parents still found him and sent a horde of demons to destroy his hometown.
• Sexier Alter Ego: "Nagi", his teenaged form that he takes after taking a series of age-disguising pills. Everyone finds him ridiculously hot.
• Shared Family Quirks:
  • Despite being a complete opposite in terms of personality, Negi does share one very important quality with his father Nagi; the ability to make every single girl he meets fall in love with him. According to a Drama CD, Nagi hated washing his body much like Negi.
  • Negi inherited his mother's complete inability to notice love.
• Shipper on Deck: At the very least, he likes teasing Setsuna about Konoka.
  Setsuna: In any case, I already have Konoka ojou-sama as...
  Negi: Ah... So it really is that...
  (Beat)
  Setsuna: N-NO! That's not, um... That's not what I meant!
  Negi: Ahahahahaha! Setsuna-san, so it really is Konoka-san!
  • He also urges Asuna to tell Takahata how she feels.
• Shirtless Scene: He's shown shirtless several times. Most prominently when he's put in the hospital. Because he's a ten-year-old, this is hardly played for fanservice though.
• Shock and Awe: Most of Negi's offensive abilities are lightning-based powers. He later turns this up to eleven by becoming lightning.
• The Short Guy with Glasses: The youngest and shortest of the main cast, but also one of the smartest.
• Shower of Awkward: With Setsuna in Kyoto. He also caused an awkward shower situation when he attempted to do Asuna a favor by enchanting her brushes. She wasn't appreciative. And there was also the time he spotted Chachamaru bathing in a river, but she didn't mind.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Negi reveals to Gödel that he is well aware of his plan and the truth behind the Magical World.
• Sins of Our Fathers:
  • Evangeline was not happy to see the son of the man who sealed her powers and bound her to Mahora. Justified by the fact that she also wants Negi for his blood, as it mitigates his dad's curse.
  • There's the supported theory that the Megalomesembrian Senate were responsible for launching the attack on Negi's village solely to kill Negi, because he is the son of their old foe Arika Entheofushia and Nagi Springfield.
• Skilled, but Naive: A highly talented mage who at 10 years old has the sort of power and skill that most don't get even after decades of study and training, but he's still a ten year old and he thinks like one.
• Sky Surfing: Courtesy of his staff.
• Slipknot Ponytail: Negi's ponytail has a habit of coming undone during significantly violent battles later in the story. Together with the removal of his glasses, this serves to give him a much rougher look.
• Smart People Speak the Queen's English: In the dub.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Smartest character in the story barring maybe Chao and he wears glasses despite likely not even needing them.
• Stepford Smiler: Chisame frequently calls him out on using fake smiles, when a child of his age should be more cheerful.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Played With. Negi is a naive and compassionate Kid Hero who would do anything to protect those he cares about and won't give up once he has a goal set in mind. He's striving To Be a Master, amasses a group of True Companions, and eventually becomes one of the most powerful beings in the series thanks to learning dark magic. He's also extremely clueless in matters of love. Personality-wise, he's quite the opposite to the Idiot Hero expected from the archetype. He's highly intelligent, something of a worrywart, and doesn't rely on the Power of Friendship (in fact he started using dark magic specifically so his friends wouldn't have to fight alongside him).
• Strong Family Resemblance: He looks almost identical to his father Nagi, especially when he magically ages himself up.
• Super-Intelligence: Negi's great strength later in the manga lies in his ability to rapidly learn and create new techniques and strategies. It's remarked that governments would love to sit him behind a desk to just work on magical theory all day.
• Super Mode: The base form of Magia Erebea gives him a 50% power boost before he even starts using the actual Magia Erebea abilities.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Magia Erebea has an effect on his emotions because it's fueled by them. When the encroachment goes out of control, he turns into a berserking monster with some rather heavy mutations. Surprisingly, this is never really used in combat after he's interrupted during its first real occurrence.
• Super-Strong Child: Downplayed. Negi uses magic to enhance his strength among other things, but when he's without magic he's about as strong as a normal ten year old would be. That said, he does go through intense physical training before fighting Rakan and becomes much stronger even without magic.
• Survivor Guilt: Being one of the only two survivors of his Doomed Hometown, Negi has lots of it.
• Sweetheart Sipping: During a shopping trip with Konoka. It gets misunderstood by the Date Peepers to hilarious ends.
• Swiss-Army Hero: It's noted early that by changing the spells he absorbs with Magia Erebea that he can give himself different strengths such as a Stone Wall, Fragile Speedster or Glass Cannon. However, he almost always uses the Fragile Speedster effect.
• Talented, but Trained: According to Evangeline, Negi has an outstanding gift to produce magical power, but it's all useless unless he learns to properly use it through hard work. Negi always trains rigorously to constantly improve his skills, to the point he often can overwork himself.
• Tareme Eyes: Likely to complements his "innocent little boy" traits.
• Teeny Weenie: Both Makie and Evangeline have a laugh about this on separate occasions. Of course, Negi is still only ten years old.
• Tell Me About My Father:
  • Negi grew up without his parents, and his Parental Substitute, Nekane, told him stories about his father, a hero, whom Negi would later admire and try to imitate. Negi always wishes to learn more about his father from people who knew him, though Nekane struggled to tell the young Negi what exactly "dead" really means, people like Stan or Evangeline didn't have many good things to tell about Nagi, and Nagi's comrades intentionally keep things secret from Negi until they no longer have a choice but to tell the truth.
  • Later on, Negi learns about Princess Arika, who he correctly guesses is his mother. When he begins to ask questions about her though, most people try to dodge the topic, since she was falsely blamed and supposedly executed for starting the war Negi's father resolved. Just calling her "Queen of Calamity" in front of Negi almost made him lose his temper.
• Took a Level in Badass: The most obvious levels taken in badass were post Kyoto arc when he got some good teachers and later when picking up Magia Erebea.
• Took a Level in Cynic: In the beginning, Negi is hopelessly idealistic and only tends to view the world in black and white. That there are even mages with ill intentions to begin with is a completely foreign concept to him. As he moves forward he starts to understand the world better and while he's still very idealistic, he comes to understand that "Good" and "Evil" are just labels that people use to justify their actions, and reality isn't that simplistic.
• Tranquil Fury: After Quartum bisects Chachamaru, Negi appears and delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Unstoppable Rage: First happens against Graf Wilhelm, though Kotarō manages to smack some sense into him. Later occurs multiple times starting during a fight with Gödel.
• Unwanted Harem: Does the collection of powerful girls crushing on him strike you with pity, envy, or fear for the day he hits puberty?
• Vocal Dissonance: When the 3rd OAD came out, his adult self was still voiced by Rina Sato.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim: After Evangeline becomes his magic teacher, Negi lets the vampire girl suck his blood at the end of their training sessions to replenish her magic power.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Negi managed to defeat Takahata because he came up with a plan to break through Takahata's defenses and was able to land a point-blank punch right in the gut right afterwards, thanks to a delayed spell. To be fair, Takahata never was serious. He used his full power, but held back in aggressiveness, instead wanting to test how good Negi has become.
  • In Negi's fight against Chao, Chao displays more powerful magic than Negi. However, while her raw firepower may be greater, Negi can counter her evenly because he is more experienced. For instance, while Chao uses 29 Valkyries, Negi only summons 17 Valkyries to counter her. While Chao gathers 59 Magic Arrows, Negi only needs 37. Basically Quality over Quantity. In their final Beam-O-War, Negi can get off his attack faster than Chao, forcing her into a defensive position.
  • Negi is still far weaker than Rakan, but ends up drawing against him because Negi developed a plan where he would eventually absorb Rakan's attack and use it against him.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Negi's view at the beginning of the series is very much like this, with the idea of there even being evil mages being completely foreign to him. Evangeline helps him grow past his naiveté though he still remains an idealist throughout the series who tries to see the best in everyone.
• Willfully Weak: At one point decided that he would seal his magic and fulfill his duties as a teacher without relying on magic. He chose a bad time for it.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite being ten, he is very wise, though this has pointedly come at the cost of sacrificing a real childhood.
• Worthy Opponent: Kotarō thinks of Negi as being the first mage he's gone up against that wasn't a loser who couldn't take a punch.
• Would Hit a Girl: Despite being an "English gentleman", he doesn't hesitate to fight Takane. Asuna does not approve; Setsuna and Evangeline do.
• Young and in Charge: A 10 year old teaching a class of older women.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Stays behind to stop horde of demons from catching Ala Alba. He's not in any real danger though.

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