For anyone planning on starting the series, it initially starts very love hina ish, standard romantic comedy harem type affair without much different until about the 3rd vloume, which is when the first big bit of action is, tho it's a predominantly magical affair and thus not that exciting.. the later battles (starting vol4) have much more swordplay/hand to hand combat for all you fighting fans. And I have to say, these are some really exciting battles that are very well done. None of them feel dragged out (my common complaint of shounen action, tho it's always more prevalent in the animes than the mangas), they just flow at a natural pace and are quickly resolved. And between battles instead of poor filler there's lots of fun episodes with cute girls, cute funny situations and all sorts of small details that just make you smile. (E.g. the time when the schoolgirls are all stripping Negi for the school festival preparations, and if you look in the background you can see inchou has a major nosebleed going on
-- it's something you might even miss your first time reading through, but the manga is full of such tiny things and attention to detail).If you like Love Hina you would like the start of this manga, as the first 2-3 volumes are basically more of the same, altho done even better and with much more likeable characters (tbh I think that's why I didn't think super highly of Love Hina, it was good and entertaining, but I think I didn't connect with any of the characters or really love any of them enough for me to rate the series very high). And after that there's a lot of action mixed in with all the fun to basically make it the best shounen manga out there atm since it has everything, and it's all done very well.
Spoilers up to chapter 102 in this post, since I just read it
from #aquastar-anime on rizon..First up, I have to lol at the fact it's a maid vs maid battle
haha I love it And setsuna still has neko mimi on!!!! Omg! It's too much for me <head explodes> Loads of fantastic expressions on Eva in this chapter, I've come to like her more and more with her every appearance, and this chapter is no exception to my rising appreciation. Ofc there was much cute and cool setsuna too.. And asuna was there ofc, but who cares about her We got to find out a bit more about asuna's mysterious past tho, from the looks of it, many of the uber magi types (including nagi) died trying to protect her from something.. which makes sense given her magic negation ability thing, and also she seems in the flashbacks to be exceptionally talented at magic
All interesting stuff, but not likely to be fully explained for quite a while me thinks 
(Just think how many chapters passed since the previous childhood flashbacks lol)page 15 of this chapter really scared me
That sword coming down on setsuna was a total "OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT SETSUNA!?>!?" moment (Eva's expression there was great too ).. I mean, I didn't think she'd be killed ofc, but maybe seriously injured and out of the tournament But she's setsuna! I should remember that ;o And she wtfpwned Asuna just when it was looking really bad for her. Mwahaha Setsuna advances in the tournament \o/I'd upload a pic but it's not functional again yet ;(
Also since there's not been a thread about this before now, I'll summarise some random spoilerish thoughts about the series so far: Inchou rocks, she is the best shoutacon ever! and when she saw negima as the mini skirt fox girl. roflmao that was classic. Chisame is CUTE! omg, at the cosplay contest. Too cute.. just argh, cute! Ku Fei rocks, she has such a great style to her not really much to say as they haven't developed her much beyond being negi's martial arts trainer and a baka ranger, but what we've seen, I really like
And Mana, haha the bit when negi joined her on the kokuhaku prevention mission was quite funny Will be interesting to see what she's gonna do tho, she didn't seem stronger than takahata sensei, so does it mean chao is super strong? All so mysterious ><
