Of winners and losers
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):
Testing is an important part of any school experience for as the show itself, articulates, it’s a means by show the importance of competition in a real-world manner. Of course as with any competition there are both winners and losers, and this week’s episode offers a pretty good mix of both. As such it makes for one of the strongest episodes of the shows to date, and some more than worthwhile payoff for how slow last week’s was.
The kids begin tackling their exams and the show once again displays it through the visual metaphor of giant monster battles. Like with the last time, it’s pretty silly but also works as an extremely fun way of getting through what would otherwise be boring material. The E-Class students have an easier time wading through a lot of the questions than the A Class does thanks to Korosensei’s teaching methods, and their newfound confidence really shows how certain characters like Okada from a few episodes back, have grown under his influence. However the most confident ones of all are Asano and Karma who both believe their smarts will triumph in the end. More than the test itself though the results are the real focus of this episode and they provide a good sense of duality.
At no real surprise to the audience, the E Class kids manage to beat out the A Class kids in 3 out of the major 5 test subjects. Not only that, but they even manage to squeeze out several perfect scores in the minor subject of home-ec in order to take better advantage of Korosensei’s tentacle wager (though he’s at least a good sport about it since he realizes the extra effort it took). They’ve managed to squeeze a couple of minor victories here and there over the other students but it’s the first time in the series the E-Class kids get to feel a sense of genuine triumph over the school’s rigid system. So much so that even the brief appearance of the usual discrimination shtick falls apart since the E Class actually scored well, and it makes for a really nice highlight in the episode, though it seems like the principal isn’t quite through with them just yet.
Though of course as said before, where there are winners there must also be losers and that makes for the true highlight of it all. In this case however the losers are non-other than Karma and Asano, both victims of their overconfidence. Karma’s scores end up being much lower than they could have been if he had actually take the exam more seriously, and even though Asano scored the highest in the grade overall, he still failed to beat the E-Class at their wager. It provides a nice little parallel between the two as both are mocked for their failures by their respective instructors and it inspires them to do better. The whole hard work matters more than natural talent/smarts thing isn’t anything particularly new for a shonen series but the execution here is really nice as it speaks from a slightly more real world perspective of why it’s not good to take the latter for granted.
On the downside this episode is notably lacking in the show’s usual abundance of humor, but it’s a minor price to pay for how good the material for it is. It also sets up a pretty big event for things going forward as the reward for the kids beating the A Class was getting a trip to a tropical resort for a summer training camp. The kids plan on using as their venue for their next big assassination attempt on Korosensei so that should likely prove to be something to look forward to.
In Summary:
After last’s slow episode, this one brings out some excellent payoff as it rolls out some of the show’s best stuff to date. It’s nice to see the E Class kids get a legitimate victory and it also helps in developing Karma and Asano’s characters going forward. With the focus likely going back to the assassination side of things now that school’s out, hopefully it can keep up the momentum.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: FUNimation
