Assassination Classroom Review

The premise is a joke and the show knows it. A yellow, grinning, tentacled creature destroys seventy percent of the moon, announces that the Earth is next in a year, and then asks to teach class 3-E at Kunugigaoka Junior High, the school's dumping ground for failures. The government agrees, arms the students with weapons that can hurt only him, and offers ten billion yen to whoever succeeds. The students name him Koro-sensei, the teacher who cannot be killed, and he turns out to be the best teacher any of them has had.

That is the whole trick, and Yusei Matsui's story runs it with real discipline. Every assassination attempt doubles as a lesson, the school's cruel ranking system is a genuine antagonist, and Nagisa and Karma grow into characters with futures rather than roles. Lerche's animation is serviceable rather than special, and the first season spends too long giving one student a week the spotlight before the plot starts moving. The second season is stronger, and as the truth about Koro-sensei arrives the series turns what could have been a gag into a graduation, with a finale that lands as moving rather than manipulative.