Assassination Classroom is definitely an interesting and unique manga falling into the genre of comedy/shounen/action category. Students of class E-3 of the elite Kunugigaoka Junior High School are ordered by the government’s representatives to eliminate their homeroom teacher named Koro-sensei, who is an alien that destroyed half of the moon with plans of destroying the Earth as well. Koro sensei has a big round face and a wide smile and tentacles for its limbs distinguished by its yellow appearance. With a bounty of 10 billion yen on its head, no one seems to be lacking in motivation in completing this task. However, Koro-sensei is impossible to kill possessing supernatural abilities that exceeds everyone’s imagination.
Class E-3 is made up of 30 students who are not able to compete with others academically, physically and also delinquents along with a few others who have been put into this class unfairly as a form of punishment. This class is located on a mountain far away from the school’s premises in a run down school building. Because of Koro’s abilities, it isn’t one bit worried about what kind of antics the students pull in attempt to assassinate it. In fact Koro rather enjoys and amuses himself from the students’ assassination attempts. The students have one year to kill him and failure to do so will result in the diminishing of the entire planet.
However, as dark as this may sound, this manga has more light comedy to it than you might think. There are many funny and random moments between the students and Koro as well as scenes where things get serious. In fact instead of teaching the students as a normal teacher would, Koro teaches and tests them on the ways to assassinate. As to why Koro is even teaching these students to begin with, you will see a few pages explaining the reason briefly early on in the manga.
There are many characters in this manga such as the students, the governments’ agents, the alien and more towards the end of the manga but the main protagonist is Nagisa Shiota. He is someone who is calm, collected, polite and friendly towards others. He is definitely not a kid that you would even think of being an assassin. However, deep in his thoughts are where he collects and analyses everything around him hoping to find Koro-sensei’s weakness. Nagisa isn’t someone who stands out among his classmates and we don’t see much of his skills in this volume but I am sure there are a lot more in stall for him in the upcoming volumes.
We do get to see a few attempts by some of the students to assassinate Koro and it ends up being more of a comedy than action as each attempt results in failures. We also see how versatile and strong Koro is. I see great potential in this manga with good artwork and the introduction of multiple characters, along with the humor that comes from them makes this manga great for someone looking for something not too serious. This is definitely a very good Shonen manga and I will definitely be looking forward to more. It has gotten me very intrigued and I wonder if Koro even has a weakness. Will the students be able to assassinate him before time’s up?
A review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment to the author for the purpose of this review.
