Students of classroom 3-E have a strange assignment: the mysterious yellow octopus-humanoid creature, Koro-sensei, claims to have destroyed 2/3 of the Moon, and that he will destroy Earth in a year, unless the students are able to assassinate him—while he is teaching them. The teenage students, including Nagisa, Karma, Kaede, Yukiko, Rio and others, accept the task, using bullets which are harmless to humans, but the problem is that Koro-sensei has a speed of mach 20, and is able to dodge thousands of shot bullets with ease. The reward, if they succeed, is 20 billion Yen, and government official Karasuma, is there to oversee how they are doing. A new teacher shows up to try to seduce and kill Koro-sensei, Serb Irina Jelavić, but to no avail. During a school trip to an island, an ex-teacher poisons the students with an artificial virus in order to blackmail them into giving him Koro-sensei, now shrunk in a small ball after an assassination attempt, to kill him, but Nagisa is able to knock the teacher out in a battle and prevent the transfer.
"Assassination Classroom" seems like someone wanted to take the teacher sub-genre and give it a Sci-Fi twist by turning the main teacher into a mutant in order to make it more interesting for the viewers already used to these kind of high school stories. The result is the kind of anime which half-way into watching it you still do not know if it is good or not, because it is just so bizarre. The concept of students having the task to assassinate their yellow octopus teacher seems like some sort of weird upside-down logic in a black comedy akin to "The Addams Family"—it is obviously not to be taken seriously, yet it does leave a strange ethical contradiction: since the teacher Koro-sensei is so nice, it is hard to root for the students to actually kill him, let alone to ponder about the questionable idea of teaching teenagers to become killers. One of the more creative jokes of how to assassinate him is when the newby Karma jumps from a cliff with a pistol in his hand—he knows that Koro-sensei has to protect his students, so he will have to catch him from the fall, and then Karma will simply shoot him from close range. However, Koro-sensei simply outsmarts him by transforming into a giant net with glue, thereby catching him and glueing his hands so that Karma cannot move and shoot. The addition of the new busty teacher Irina Jelavic is comical because the Japanese cannot pronounce her last name, so they simply give her the nickname "Bitch"-sensei. She also has an amusing moment when she draws a "smiley" face on her cleavage in episode 9.
However, despite dozens of wacky gags being thrown from every direction, the story surprisingly takes a few more serious de-tours here and there. One is definitely in episode 14, where school bully Terasaka was teasing the "nerds", but then has a sudden bitter realization that these "geeks" are going to become future CEOs of a company, while he will have to serve them because he never learned anything, sadly concluding that those who have a goal will dominate over those living their lives aimlessly. Episode 7 even enters a very dramatic territory when two girls are kindapped by a couple of bullies in Kyoto, and—while it is never explained what exactly they intended to do—kept them tied up in a basement while they invited "photographs". Koro-sensei is also a remarkably good teacher, with "motherly" care for his students, and helps them improve their grades and even win several contests, since the E class is considered the worst, while classes A and B are considered the best. This speaks about institutions and how students are treated: instead of only focusing on the "elite" students, the school should do something constructively to help the worst, as well. The finale is, unfortunately, very chaotic and 'rough', with several inconsistencies and skewed directions throughout. The class has to secretly infiltrate the top of a building, but as they approach and meet several henchmen, wouldn't the latter simply sound the alarm to warn others? We have serial killers using some sort of tranquilizing gas, but it just affects only Karasuma, and not all the other students, even though they are all in the same hallway, in an enclosed location. There is even a ridiculously cliche killer who uses his pistol as a spoon to eat from a bowl of ramen (!), even though the scene of him sucking from the cannon is really unaesthetic. The resolution of the final battle is unconvincing, whereas it is a pity that the authors failed to give some explanation to Koro-sensei's origin. "Assassination Classroom" is something like trying out eating ice cream upside down: it is different and new, but does not seem like you got something more out of it.
Grade:++
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