What They Say:
One day a weird tentacle creature destroys 70% of the moon and threatens to do the same to Earth in a year. However in exchange for being allowed to teach a group of misfit students called the E-Class, he’ll allow them to try and assassinate him. With the chance to earn 10 billion yen and prove their worth to the world, the kids are willing to give it a shot, but this thing might just end up being the best teacher they’ve ever had.
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers): Last week’s episode was a solid return to form in terms of the show’s handling of heavier material, but this week returns us back to the usual
Last week’s episode was a solid return to form in terms of the show’s handling of heavier material, but this week returns us back to the usual student-of-the-week antics. With that we get another two shorts kind of deal here, but where normally at least one of them manages to hit their mark, this time, we end up with a couple of duds. Neither is particularly bad per se, but it’s definitely some of the slowest stuff the show’s put out over it’s run.
Our first half features Itona working on a high tech-RC tank in an attempt to kill Korosensei, and between the two, this bit is probably the stronger half. The RC he makes is pretty elaborate but gets even more so when some of the boys decide to add some upgrades once they realize the tank’s usefulness for spying on the girls. Needless to say, this ends up backfiring when the tank gets destroyed by an animal, but the experience has helped to reinforce to Itona that one failure isn’t enough to make him give up, and hanging with Class E has taught him that. This half works pretty well coming off of Itona’s character focus last week, and on that end, it’s great since it’s nice to see bonding with the other students. Unfortunately while that aspect works, the gags here aren’t particularly funny and the bonding while nice, isn’t quite enough to compensate, making things drag a little.
Interestingly enough, though, the second half of the episode kind of suffers from the opposite problem. One of the students named Kimura laments over how annoying it is that his name means “justice” and it starts a lengthy discussion from the entire class about what some of their names mean. One of them gets the idea that it might be fun to use codenames like the assassins they’ve met and Korosensei agrees. This makes for some great laughs during one of their training sessions as the names they come up with are all completely ridiculous, and it doesn’t take long for them to regret the idea. Kimura, however, is the only one who’s codename resembles his actual name, and does the best during training as Korosensei gets him to realize that it’s not his name that matters, but what he does with it. The gag with the codenames is pretty great, but unlike the first half it’s everything else that kind of falls a bit short, and while the student-of-the-week problems aren’t always interesting, this one is particularly straightforward and makes it all feel a bit weak.
Thankfully while things are on the slow side this week, it looks like there’re big events on the horizon. The episode ends with the principle and Asano discussing the former’s desire for Class A to dominate the next set of exams, and that likely means another clash between them and Class E. The school system angle of the show is generally where is shines, so I’m looking forward to more of that, and at the very least it should more entertaining than what we got here.
In Summary:
If last week’s Itona centered entry was the strongest episode since the start of the second season than this one is probably the weakest. There’s nothing really horrible about it but both halves of the episode fail to hit their mark for different reasons. and kind of drag as a result. On the bright side it does seem as though the show’s heading back into to more interesting territory for next week, and another round between Class A and Class E sounds like it should be a good time.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
