Ako Izumi

Ako Izumi (和泉 亜子, Izumi Ako) is Student Number 5 in class 3-A. She is a shy athletic girl who works as a school nurse's assistant.

Character Outline
Ako is a very unique character as first time she appeared, she is only a side character. However, as the story progresses, she becomes more and more of a main character.

One interesting point is that she has a fear of seeing blood, which makes her position as a nurse's assistant seem odd. She has a large scar across her back, which she makes every effort to hide from others and is the source of her low self-confidence, as she believes that the mark makes her ugly and unwanted. The scar may also be connected to her fear of blood, as seen in Chapter 123.

Plot
She is usually seen with Makie (her roommate), Yuna, and Akira. She is also the manager of the boy's middle school soccer club, and in charge of 2-A's sanitation department. She does not consider herself anyone special because of the scar on her back and is one of the better-behaved members of the class, quite a contrast to the more mischievous Yuna. She has some talent with a bass guitar. She had once confessed her love to an older boy but was rejected.

Ako, who never really showed much interest in the 10-year-old Negi, develops a huge crush on the older, teenage version of him (after taking Age Deceiving Pills), whom she believes is his cousin "Nagi". She was so infatuated with him that she immediately invites him to her festival's activity, even though she said it was nothing at all. Some of the other girls also have shown attraction toward Negi's older form, though Ako is by far the most interested. Recently, Negi, in his older form, took Ako out on a date in order to help her relax before the Mahora Festival's live concert. They take part in the Mahora Best Couple Contest and won 2nd place. During this date, Negi encourages Ako to think of herself more as the main character, rather than just part of the supporting cast. This helps her build more confidence in herself, to the point where she almost confesses her love toward the handsome "Nagi" twice. The first time she chickened out by asking him if he liked Japanese squid, (rather than saying that she really loves him), and the second time during the Mahora Live Concert. She narrowly avoided getting shot by Mana, who was watching out for love confessions during the festival. Luckily, she ended up only asking for his e-mail address.

With the end of the Mahora Festival, she assumes that Nagi has already left for England and is now pining away at his absence. The Cheerleaders talked her into sending pictures of her in different sexy outfits to him. At one point, Misa knocked her out and sent one last picture of her dressed as a bunny-girl (Which caused Negi spit his tea out in surprise when he opened the email). The idea was that Nagi would appreciate a taste of home, as they believed the bunny-girl outfit originated in England.

Ako, Natsumi and the rest of the Sports Girls followed Negi's group to the Magic World, and were split up in Fate's attack on the gate. Ako became very sick and Akira and Natsumi had to sell the three of them into slavery {C to pay for the medicine to treat her, which cost 1,000,000 Drachma.

Negi and the gang found them and tried to help by entering the tournament, with Negi {C disguised as Nagi. However, the day before final day, Ako learned the truth when Tosaka threatened to reveal Negi's identity. She then offered to sell what little freedom she still had to stop Tosaka from threatening Negi. However, Tosaka decided to give the evidence back to her and not allow her to sell herself. He then punched Negi because of his actions.

She is also the 2nd person who confessed to Negi.

After they won the tournament, Haruna tried to force the girls who didn't have Pactios to make one. Ako got into fight with Makie who say that she will give up Negi-kun for her. In chapter 289, Negi tries to make a pactio with Ako as "Nagi," but she made him swallow an Age Deceiving Pill that transformed him back into his ten-year-old self before they kissed. She claims that she did not want to do it with "Nagi," but with Negi. After he agreed, Ako made a pactio with him, becoming the thirteenth girl to do so.

Epilogue She, like the rest of the class, assists Negi in saving Nagi and defeating the Mage of the Beginning﻿. Due to the injury on her back being healed with magic, she decided to study in the Magic World after graduating from High School. She returned home as first-grade healing practitioner. Currently, as a nurse, she works at the same place as Ookouchi Akira. She secretly look up to Konoe Konoka as her teacher and contiunes devoting herself to study.

Pactio

 * Manga: Cultrix Cum Traumate (literally, "Worker With Trauma"): Made with Negi in Chapter 289. Her artifact is a big syringe with a needle 1.8 cm wide is named Mysterious Syringe. By injecting the needle into a targeted person (she claims this injection needs to go up the rear end), that person is able to receive a magical boost to his/her abilities (such as allowing Yuna and Makie to keep up with Koyomi in her transformed form). In Chapter 348 it is also revealed to be captable of injecting poison that can reverse a target's direction and senses when she is forced to use in on Negi.
 * Negima!: Infirmaria Cum Traumate: Her pactio weapon is a huge syringe complete with a catgirl nurse outfit. In the manga, this was a costume that the cheerleaders suggested her to wear in their fantasy cafe during the Mahora Festival arc.
 * Negima!?
 * Suka: Chicken Chick
 * Cosplay: An overcautious nursing assistant wearing a jacket and a scarf over a soccer uniform and with a first-aid kit with a spout as her main artifact. Inside the kit is a giant band-aid that heals any wound instantly. She has a star painted on her right cheek and a clover on her right thigh. The pattern on her shorts also resembles the design of the standard Teamgeist ball.
 * Armor: Knowledge Syringe: Similar to the manga Pactio card, she is dressed in a blue nursing outfit with wings while riding on a giant syringe which appears to be her main weapon. This time she no longer has her cat-like appearance.

In other media
Mahou Sensei Negima!: Her pactio weapon is a huge injection needle complete with a nurse uniform.

Negima!?: Although the first anime only revealed it pronouncedly with her pactio, Ako's nursing skills are further emphasized in this series: she is consistently healing other members of the class and even comes up with strange medicines and needles to help them out. During one incident, she tries to inject Negi with a giant needle filled with an energy formula, but instead hits Chamo making him literally become super-powerful! The anime also acknowledges her membership in Dekopin Rocket with the cheerleaders, but she is only seen with them in one scene acknowledging the massive noise Asuna made in the dorm. During the "Suka incident", she becomes a chick.

Trivia

 * Popularity: 14th >> 6th >> 10th >> 11th >> 4th >>8th >> 6th >> 4th
 * Ako changed eye color between the Manga and Anime versions, in the Manga she is shown to have a somewhat reddish tone in her eyes while she has more brown in the Anime. Though the eye colors in anime has fixed since Shiroki Tsubasa Ala Alba OVAs onwards.
 * Ako is similar in appearance to the character Rei Ayanami in the Neon Genesis Evangelion series. In other ways, she resembles the character Kamyu from the series Utawarerumono.
 * In the Del Rey translation of Volume 9, her surname, Izumi, was misspelled "Waizumi" during the ghost incident. Her surname is come from the city of the same name (as well as that of an ancient province) in Osaka Prefecture.
 * Her given name, Ako, means "sub-child".
 * On March 2003, she confessed to an upperclassman but got rejected