Review for Assassination Classroom - Season 1 Part 2

Introduction

I like surprises in the anime that I watch. The thing about anime is that it’s just like any other entertainment medium, in that the majority of it, entertaining or not, is built on clichés and character tropes, tried and trusted genres. For a show to do something different, original is rare indeed, and for it to be any good is rarer still. That’s why I had a grin on my face all the way through the first part of Assassination Classroom, when I reviewed it a few months ago. Okay, it’s not completely original when it comes to the ingredients, the character types, some of the story arcs, and how things unfold, but it’s been put together in a wholly original and unexpected way. Assassination Classroom is a Shonen Jump manga, and you’d expect those manga to conform to certain norms, stay within expected boundaries for the target audience. That it manages to do that, and still be brilliantly original as well is impressive. I haven’t been this impressed since Death Note!


The moon has been destroyed! Most of it has been blown away, leaving a permanent crescent in the sky and a field of debris. And the one who has destroyed it, an enigmatic figure with a large round yellow head, and tentacles (but definitely not an alien, he claims) has threatened to destroy the Earth the following year, unless he is killed first. But killing him isn’t easy when he can move at Mach 20. And for the year before he destroys the world, he wants to be a teacher. He’s been installed at Kunagigaoka High School, teaching class 3-E. So the government come up with a proposition for this class, kill Koro-Sensei, and get 10 billion Yen in reward money. Education has never been so lethal. But it’s not easy to kill Koro-Sensei, not easy at all when you consider that this is just the first season of Assassination Classroom, and its second season has only recently finished airing


The concluding eleven episodes of Assassination Classroom Season 1 are presented across two discs from All the Anime.

Disc 1
12. Ball Game Tournament Time
13. Talent Time
14. Vision Time
15. End-of-Term Time
16. School’s Out / 1st Term
17. Island Time
18. Action Time
19. Pandemonium Time

Disc 2
20. Karma Time / 2nd Period
21. XX Time
22. Nagisa Time

Picture

It’s getting harder and harder to comment on the video quality of Blu-ray anime, as they all seem to approach the same level of consistency. You get wonderful HD transfers, offering great detail, colours and animation, and there’s usually the consistent niggle of digital banding across colour gradation. Assassination Classroom’s 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer is just like that, and like every other Funimation and Sentai Blu-ray that gets released these days. All the Anime are pretty much using Funimation’s discs as is, and the only times that the digital banding will annoy here is when there are close-ups of Koro-sensei’s head.

Assassination Classroom is a noitaminA show, but don’t expect the usual adult sensibilities, the more complex world designs and adult character designs. Assassination Classroom might as well be any mainstream show, and it looks just like the Shonen Jump adaptation that it actually is. It has the look of many a high school comedy, with likeable character designs, a simpler world design, but with strong animation. There’s a hint of the Baka and Test to the show, not least because of the low rent campus that Class 3-E get, but also a little Nagisa/Hideyoshi crossover in design and voice actor choice. The real creativity comes in the form of Koro-Sensei, a moon-faced tentacle creature in a teacher’s gown, and the object of the many assassination attempts in this show.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by All the Anime.

Sound

I could say the same thing about commenting on Blu-ray audio. With anime hardly challenging the boundaries of home cinema audio in the same way as the latest summer blockbuster, you’re going to get good quality sound each time, and Funimation has this sussed out by now. You get the usual Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English, 2.0 Stereo Japanese, and as is so often the case these days, translated English subtitles and a signs only track locked to the appropriate audio stream. I sampled the English dub to ensure that it existed, but I stuck with the Japanese throughout this time. The audio was clear with no glitches or dropouts, the characters voiced appropriately, the action coming across well, and the show’s rather quirky music suiting its irreverent tone. The subtitles were timed accurately and free of typos. Recalling my wish from Part 1, Part 2 gets a new credit sequence or rather two, and this time the student names are overlaid in English in the original credits. They pass by too quickly for me to read though. I know, I’m nitpicking!

Extras

The discs present their content with rather nifty animated menus.

Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Funimation Now, while in the extras, you’ll find two audio commentaries.

Episode 14 has an audio commentary from Lindsay Seidel (Nagisa) and Sonny Strait (Koro-sensei).

Episode 17’s commentary features voice actors Martha Harms (Bitch-sensei), and Chris Ryan (Karasuma).

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Rage of Bahamut: Genesis.

Top 10 Moments lasts 11:17, and has the English language voice cast nominating some of their favourite scenes.


You get the locked subtitle credit sequences, two opening and one closing. Don’t believe the ‘Textless’; and with Assassination Classroom’s brilliant credit sequences, you just wish that you could banish those subtitles!

You get 11 Next Episode Previews, and there is the US Trailer for Assassination Classroom.

Finally there are further Funimation trailers for Blood Blockade Battlefront, World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman, The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Project Itoh: Harmony, Garo the Animation, The Rolling Girls, Doamygar-D, and Fairy Tail.

Just as before, I saw only the Blu-ray check discs for this release, and cannot comment on any physical extras that come with the title.

Conclusion

There was a bit of blip there towards the end of this collection, as I wondered about which direction the show was going in. But it was a false alarm, an unwarranted preconception, as Assassination Classroom maintained its high quality of story-telling, comedy and drama all the way through. If you’ve read my review for Part 1, you’ll know just how taken I was with this show, which managed to do something completely different and unique, while still maintaining the usual anime and Shonen Jump tropes that appeal to the typical target audience.


The second half of season 1 starts off in much the same vein as the first half ends, with the lowest ranked class in the school tasked with attempting to assassinate their ever wily and elusive teacher. The twist being that he’s the best teacher they could possibly have, and the things that they learn, the effect it has on their character; it actually threatens the hierarchy in the school. There’s a bit of mystery regarding the nature and origins of Koro-sensei, and this half also adds to the intrigue when it comes to the rest of the school, and their rather cold-hearted principal. In this collection we also meet the principal’s son.


The friction between Class 3-E and the rest of the school is at the heart of most of these episodes, with a fractious baseball game merely the prelude for the end of term exams, which in a school of this twisted reputation are a step beyond the usual school tests. Consequently there is an added incentive for passing the tests, beyond the weakest students in the school being relegated to Class 3-E. Whichever class comes top in the tests, they get a prize, in this case a summer vacation on an exclusive resort island. When Koro-Sensei makes a deal with his class, that for every top mark that they get in the exams, he’ll suffer a handicap for their next assassination attempt, this gives Class 3-E all the incentive they need to turn the school’s status quo on its head. The only outlier in these opening episodes is the one where Class 3-E gets a new teacher, one whose training methods leave a lot to be desired. But this does set up the second half of this collection.


SPOILER. In the end, it is class 3-E that goes to the resort island. It seems like a simple change of venue, a chance for the usual swimsuit and watermelon smashing antics that are a tried and trusted trope for mainstream anime shows, and it’s here that my concerns were raised about where the show was going. Sure enough, it is the most elaborate and carefully planned assassination attempt yet on Koro-sensei, making use of all of the handicaps that they have earned through their hard work, but initially, it seemed like just a trivial diversion, a change in location. But it’s in episode 18 that the situation take a turn for the serious. Not that you need reminding, but as well as being the best teacher possible, Koro-Sensei is a being that destroyed the moon, and has threatened to destroy the world too. Naturally, the students won’t be the only ones looking to kill him, claim the bounty and save the world. On the island, there’s a brutal reminder of that fact when the students are themselves attacked, by someone who is willing to use the bonds between students and teacher against Koro-sensei. As it turns out, they are also willing to take revenge against the students for an earlier humiliation. As the saying goes, the s*** gets real for the final five episodes of this collection, pushing the students, Nagisa in particular close to breaking point.


Assassination Classroom is a fantastic show, a strong contender for one of the finest of the year. And it’s all because it manages to do something wholly original and refreshing, while conforming to the rather stricter bounds of its storytelling style and genre. Shows like that don’t come along too often. This first season takes us to the end of Class 3-E’s first semester. Mathematics will tell us that there are two semesters to go before Koro-Sensei will make good on his threat, but at the time of writing, we only have the recently concluded Season 2 to look forward to.