Leila Anani's Reviews > Assassination Classroom, Vol. 01

A grinning yellow octopus alien takes out 70% of the moon and then comes to Earth threatening to destroy the planet in one year. In that year, he demands to become the teacher of class 3E - the dumping ground for all the school rejects (kids with poor grades, bad communication skills or general delinquency). class 3E becomes the Assassination classroom where the students attempt to assassinate their teacher Koro sensi - for a monetary prize as well as of course to take him out before he destroys the world.

This is incredibly surreal and yet a great deal of fun - Think The Breakfast Club meets Battle Royale with aliens. Koro Sensi is an excellent teacher and gives motivation to kids who have pretty much lost all hope.

It's a clever way to highlight the flaws in the tracking education system - Once the kids get sent to 3E, they are written off and shunned by their more able ex-classmates. They are ignored and poorly treated by staff, banned from all extracaricular activities and given substandard equipment and resources. It's an educational death sentence - and while it motivates the higher achievers - do well or you'll end up in 3E - it demoralises those sent there - they are the worst of the worst and will never amount to much so why bother?

Throw a freaky alien octopus into the mix and suddenly these kids have the will to try again - plus since they already hate the establishment who shunned them - who wouldn't want to assassinate their teacher?

I rather enjoyed this first volume and look forward to seeing how the story pans out.