Remember kids: Drugs aren’t cool, and neither is your bad dancing
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):
The show suffered a bit the last time from being a bit too straightforward for it’s own good and falling a bit too much into the usual shonen trappings that this kind of story arc comes with. It was a bit of a hindrance for a series that generally prides itself on being clever, but thankfully that’s not quite the case this time. It’s a proper return to form here as it manages to weave it’s way around some of the usual trappings and there’s plenty of fun to be had as usual.
Continuing from where things left off the last time, Karma gets ready to go up against the next assassin and it actually turns out to be pretty clever. At first the fight seems like a pretty straightforward hand-to-hand brawl, and the assassin even states as such since he wants to go up against a worthy opponent. Of course since the assassin is well…an assassin he whips out a sneak attack pretty fast and tries to gas him with some poison he stole from the previous one. However Karma swiped some poison too, and turns the tables on him by just outright having everyone gang up on the guy. Though funny as it is, it wouldn’t quite be Assassination Classroom without there something of a lesson out of it. When the assassin asks Karma how he knew to anticipate that sneak attack, Karma says that he trusted the guy’s instincts as a pro would outweigh his desire for a fair fight. Compared to how cocky he was previously, it’s nice to see him actually learning to take others more seriously and it makes for some solid character work.
From there though the episode takes a surprising swerve into somewhat more lighthearted fare, though it how overly serious this arc’s been it kind of needed the breather. Specifically, it turns into drag jokes at Nagisa’s expense when he has to disguise himself in order to go with the girls to get to the next floor. He’s even hit on by a skeevy looking guy to hammer in the cliches here, but once again the show proves it’s a bit more clever than that. The hipster kid tells Nagisa about his issues,from doing drugs, to having a complex about his dad, and claims girls have it easier. Though while Nagisa’s busy dealing with him, the girls are the ones actually getting things done. Most notably so when they need to get by a bodyguard and take advantage of the guy ticking off a yakuza member with his dumb show-off antics (featuring awkward dancing to the show’s current opening song) and promptly knock the yakuza member out and tricking the guard into getting him some help, taking a page from Irina’s bag of tricks. It works as a nice little “girl power” thing as Nagisa points out to the hipster kid that girls have it rough too, and the show manages to avoid being too cliche about it, by poking fun at Nagisa for more or less doing nothing the entire time aside from getting the hipster kid to stop doing drugs after seeing how effective the girls were. Things do end on a more serious note though as after meeting up with the others and a couple of fun gags involving tasers, it’s time for the next assassin. Here’s to that being fun.
In Summary:
After making things a little too straightforward the last time, the goes back to it’s usual cleverness and it makes the usual cliches of this arc a lot more fun. With a couple more episodes before the season wraps up hopefully that continues and this arc can end on a high note.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
