Chiefly concerning wizards

Hisashiburi, na?

Anyhoo. So I recently decided to read Mahou Sensei Negima, and it got me to thinking: manga about children with magic, are much better than Harry Potter (the HP influence on Negima's pretty obvious). Just in Negima:

• The Latin. Negi's spells are just flat out in better Latin than Harry's—apparently Akamatsu Ken can be bothered to notice that Latin spellcasting is in the subjunctive, for instance. Also, when the Thousand Master casts older spells, they're in Greek! Real Greek, too, not English written in the Symbol font, though I don't know enough Greek to know how good of Greek.
• Negi's spells have a lot more range, though the change to an action series sorta made the utility spells get short shrift in favor of the combat. But Harry Potter made that same shift, and then we discovered the wizarding world has no combat spells that aren't illegal. Also, no area-effect spells! And then again, when Harry was carving things in his arms for Umbridge, who else wanted her to check...and get the message, "I took Explosive Runes today."
  Ahem. But in Negima, he's got like 29 different levels of Sagitta Magica (somehow I suspect we know that name from somewhere *cough*magic missile*cough*), for each element!!! Also I dig the combining magic with martial arts, though this series suffers from the bizarre conception Chinese martial arts are strong (also that Europe doesn't have any, or at least none of them have shown up—anyone else wanna see magic + savate?)
• Just, the shonen series-ness of it: Negi is more of a man at ten than Harry is at seventeen. Admittedly Akamatsu has an advantage in writing about a young boy's heart that Rowling didn't—as in, he is a boy—but I don't think his female characters are half as off as Rowling's male ones.
• All that said, I finally found a vampire character I hate more than Alucard and Edward Cullen: Evangeline A. K. McDowell. The real problem with her is she has her moments (her Kugimiya Rie-type tsundere scenes), and then she starts fighting, and you have to hate her Alucard!Sue-ness.
• Actually come to think of it, and I just realized it now, Akamatsu apparently has trouble writing strong female characters (as in "female characters who can kick your ass," not Strong Female Characters™ as in "good female role-model based on a hilariously androcentric conception of strength"). Other than Ku Fei (whose saving grace is she's a ditz), Asuna, and Setsuna, all the powerful girls are obnoxious bundles of stereotypes and cliches, and most of them are Sue-y, too—especially what's-her-name, the gun chick. Still better than Potter, though.

And then there's Naruto. "That's a reach," you say. No, it's not. It was originally gonna be a manga about a kid in a wizard school, but then Kishimoto-sensei decided he hated drawing Naruto's goggles, and drew other things on his forehead instead, until he came to the ninja hachimaki and decided to change them from wizards to ninjas (who have magic, in folklore). And the rest was history (and then, apparently, a couple years later, Kishimoto heard about some English book series, and realized he'd really dodged a bullet).

Actually Naruto's got more similarities to HP than that. Except it's better.

Consider.

• Team 7 is made up of the chump, the bookworm, and the broody last survivor of a rich family. Also the chump has orange hair. Also the last survivor has a mark put on him by a guy who can talk to snakes. So Naruto is Harry Potter, except about Ron.
• Orochimaru is basically Voldemort, except with a good motivation and actual talent as a villain.
• Sandaime Hokage is Dumbledore, except he doesn't make everyone else make sacrifices and endure suffering, while getting off the hook himself by forcing someone to euthanize him. Oh, and he actually stands up to the evil student he couldn't kill before, rather than hoping a bunch of children can pull it off.
• Itachi is Snape, except Kishimoto realized the whole double-agent assassin thing was a really nasty thing to make someone do, and had Danzo do it, instead of the Hokage—because Hokage actually earns his people's love and loyalty.
• The Chûnin exam arc was the Wizarding Cup—which I realize makes Gaara Viktor Krum, for which I apologize to the fangirls—except instead of "this minor international school contest makes international news," it was, "this thing that directly affects the military strength of every nation on the planet, except the one that uses samurai instead of ninja, is obviously international news."
• The Akatsuki and Sound Ninjas are actually competent, and the ninja villages actually have defenses. Meanwhile the Death Eaters re-enact Three Stooges bits during battles, and the wizarding world's entire defense appears to be Aurors, which would be like England's only law enforcement and military forces being the CID. At its current strength. And staffed by the gumbies from the Monty Python Architect Sketch.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Rowling should be embarrassed.