The past and the future
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):
After a couple of unfortunate delays, Assassination Classroom makes a triumphant return and it’s stronger than ever. There’s quite a bit to unpack in this pair of episodes as they deal with both Kayano’s situation and the truth about Korosensei’s mysterious past. Those two things ended up going together even better than I expected, however, and end up bringing what is hands down the most compelling material the show has offered thus far.
Where we last left Class E, Kayano’s situation was looking to be pretty dire, and her drive to kill Korosensei was coming dangerously close to killing her. In order to prevent this, Korosensei comes up with a plan to fake dying while someone else helps to calm her down when she’s distracted. This duty ends up falling to Nagisa, and after realizing none of his usual methods will work in this situation, he resorts to the only technique he hasn’t tried out yet: a killer French kiss. It’s certainly a big enough shock to snap Kayano out of her craze, and while it does seem an odd time for the show to resort to a punchline to solve things, it’s delivered well enough to achieve the desired result so I can’t complain. As Kayano returns to normal she confesses that in the time she’s spent with Class E, she’s had doubts about taking her revenge on Korosensei, and envies the others for how straight forward they’ve been in comparison. Before she can go any further on that, though, the class is interrupted by Shiro pulling yet another sneak attack on Korosensei, as his true identity is revealed. In truth, he’s a scientist named Yanagisawa who’s also connected to Korosensei’s past, and after fending him off, he decides to spill the beans about all of it to the class.
With Korosensei’s wealth of knowledge and tendencies to use assassination as a teaching metaphor, it mostly comes as no surprise that he was once an assassin himself. In fact, he used to be none other than the Reaper until a couple of years ago, and having grown up surrounded by death, he lived as a heartless killing machine, taking life without a second thought. All that changed when he was sold out by his apprentice (aka the Reaper we met a few episodes ago) and sent to a testing facility where he was subjected to experiments based on fusing antimatter with living organisms (don’t try to think too hard about that one). There he became acquainted with Kayano’s sister, Yukimura who worked part-time as Class E’s teacher while being engaged to Yanagisawa and dealing with his constant abuse.
As time passed, he grew closer to Yukimura and through her, Korosensei began to understand the importance of truly acknowledging others: something he’d failed to do with his apprentice. The true significance of this lesson would later come into effect when part of the moon got destroyed after a space lab rat who was also infused with antimatter ended up self-destructing. Upon learning the same thing would happen to Korosensei in a year’s time. and said explosion being capable of taking the whole world with him, Yanagisawa orders Korosensei’s termination. Realizing that he’s dead no matter what, Korosensei breaks himself out and tries to take everyone with him, but when Yukimura tries to stop him she gets caught in the crossfire.
Finding himself unable to save her, Korosensei realizes for the first time just how much of a difference he could have made if he’d channeled his abilities more positively and how much his single-minded focus as a killer limited his ability to act. Just as importantly, he realized that he never managed to view her as an equal and he had been too caught up in his own perception of things all this time. Before dying, Yukimura’s final request is for Korosensei to look after Class E as she feels they are similarly troubled and that by facing them head-on, he would be able to better confront his own weaknesses. Thus, he adopted his current identity, and developed the class’s current assassination system as a way of making use of his remaining time while also learning how to view others as equals.
This has all been a long time coming, and it’s nice to see Korosensei’s past deliver on those expectations. It all gives a complete view of the kind of person Korosensei really is, and despite some of the goofy sci-fi involved it ties everything together in addition to showing why he’d go to such lengths to teach Class E. The direction here certainly helps things, and I was actually pretty amazed at how effective it was. To be kind of blunt, series director Seiji Kishi’s track record has been one of strangely perfect mediocrity. His style generally neither elevates nor detracts from most of his projects, and even when it comes to this show, it’s been carried more by the strength of the source material than anything with a few instances (such as the stuff with the over the top portrayal of Nagisa’s mom) stumbling on the execution a bit. That’s certainly not the case here, however, as everything concerning Korosensei’s past is presented with the right sense of atmosphere. and even some of the bits concerning Yanagisawa’s heavy abuse of Yukimura is just restrained enough not to ruin the mood of the flashbacks. The final scene between Korosensei and Yukimura is genuinely touching, and while Assassination Classroom’s never been the kind of show to tug at my heartstrings, this left me feeling a bit somber.
However there’s still a bit more left to the episode, and the kids now have to deal with learning the truth about Korosensei. With everything they just found out, the kids come to the realization that despite all the antics they’ve gotten into the past year they don’t really want to kill him, and find themselves at an impasse over whether or not to continue with the assassination. While that’s happening, Kayano’s character arc wraps up, as locking lips with Nagisa has made her feel a bit closer to the class than before, and she realizes there’s not much use in trying to keep up a facade as the others already acknowledge her as a true member of the group . Quite a bit of this is played for laughs, and it comes eerily close to clashing with the somber mood of the rest of the episode, but it thankfully ends up serving as a breather more than anything, and there’s just enough sincerity behind it to keep things consistent.
As things shift back to the Korosensei situation, the kids get some resolution when Irina decides to give them a piece of advice. She warns them that anything done at the expense of losing themselves is something they’ll ultimately regret, and Nagisa takes that to heart as he knows none of them can bring themselves to continue trying to kill Korosensei. Instead, Nagisa consults the others in trying to find a way to save Korosensei before his imminent demise in the next few weeks, and it serves as a major turning point for the show. There’s no going back now, and as we get closer to the end of the series the events here have me hopeful that the remaining episodes will be just as strong.
In Summary:
Assassination Classroom returns after some delays, and it wastes no time getting into the heat of things as the show wraps up Kayano’s character arc and gives us some long awaited answers on Korosensei’s past. Both of these are handled pretty well, with the latter, in particular, standing out due to a combination of compelling material, and great direction as we see the events that shaped Korosensei from a soulless killer into the lovable goof we know today. It’s a huge turning point for the series, and also for the characters too as the kids are forced to come to terms with the fact that they can’t bring themselves to continue trying to take out Korosensei and instead want to find a way to save him. This will likely help the remainder of the show going forward, and now that we’re close to the climax, I’m hoping the series can manage to stick a solid enough landing to turn it from a good show into a great one.
Grade: A+
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
