Befitting its school setting, Negima! has a large cast of characters. In the first chapter, our hero holds up a class roster with photos of each of the thirty-one schoolgirls, and when he asks himself, "How am I going to remember all this?" we can't help wondering the same thing. Most of Akamatsu's young girls share the same basic body type and similar facial features; their primary distinguishers are their hairstyles and the look around their eyes. Both Asuna and her seeming rival, class rep Ayaka Yukihiro, are similarly tall and leggy with long light hair. (Though the former appears to be redheaded in contrast to the latter's blond locks, in black-and-white this distinction is less immediately apparent.) There are times in the book when I as a reader had to momentarily pause and remind myself which girl I was looking at, particularly when Asuna let her hair down.

In the first volume, only four girls in the school cast really stand out: Asuna, of course; class rep Ayaka (who gets in more than one girl fight! with Asuna in the book); Asuna's roommate Konoka Konae, who is granddaughter to the school's dean and an avid fortune teller; plus class librarian Nodoka Miyazaki, who wears her hair down over her eyes and also appears to be a fount of arcane knowledge. The only other adult of note in the book is Takahata-Sensei, the lanky male English teacher who Negi replaced. Though the students are not openly privy to Negi's abilities, it's not clear whether his adult peers know or not. In the book's supplemental features, Akamatsu teases the reader by noting that not all of Negi's classroom may be human, but he doesn't give us more than that. Me, I want a close look at Nodoka's eyes.

Due to its large and rowdy cast, the book is jammed with dialog asides and sound effects. (In an afterward, the editors note that where most manga have up to five sounds or asides per page that need to be translated, Negima! has as many as ten per page.) Many of the asides are jokes that've doubtless been contributed (or at least Americanized) by Peter David, and per the paperback-sized printing of your standard manga graphic novel, they're definitely squint-inducing. First time through the book, in fact, I found myself skipping a lot of the asides to get the gist of the story first, then going back and more slowly picking up the jokes. David is happily shameless when it comes to tossing in old puns - and more power to him.