Jazz-Hands

In terms of unrestrained silliness, no one does it more bizarre than the Japs. Maybe it’s a West Pacific sort of thing considering the Australians are the land of ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’. Whatever the case, ‘Assassination Classroom’ (Ansatsu Kyōshitsu) lays claim to be the more barking mad programme ever made.

Here’s the plot – please be sober when reading this:

An alien creature (or is it? He denies this to be the case on the first day if you watch carefully…) destroys a large chunk of the moon, leaving it as a permanent crescent. He promises the naturally terrified inhabitants of earth that in one year’s time he will do the same to the Earth, unless someone amongst a classroom of school students can kill him. To make it fairer, he will teach the kids in the ways of assassination.

With Japan being the land fixated in classroom dramas since Japanese schoolgirls account for almost half of its total exports (the almost other half is Hello Kitty…), of course the creature chooses the Land Of The Rising Sun as his base for the contest.

And school’s up early and soon we’ll be learning, and the lesson today is how to kill…

Equally predicable, he chooses to be teacher of Class 3-E at Kunugigaoka Junior High – the worst, most useless class in the whole school made up from all those the rest of the school despises (their classroom is in a ramshackle shack at the back of the campus).

The Japanese government – represented in the school by the morose Karasuma – decide to sugar the pill by offering ¥10 billion to whoever can accomplish this (that’s only £59 million, plus £9 815 and 98 pence in real money, but never mind) – as if the prospect of a truly horrible death as the planet is blown to oblivion isn’t incentive for them enough.

It’s almost like Boys Over Flowers meets Battle Royale written by Jamie Hewlett.

‘Of course I’ve not corrected your homework yet, I’ve only one thousand pairs of hands, you know…’

The alien creature in question is something else. A yellow octopus type with an internet smiley face (which changes shape and colour according to mood): Boss Smiley from the old Sandman comics meets Cthulhu meets Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men‘s Mr Happy.

Amongst his many, many tricks, he can regenerate limbs and move at Mach 20. He wishes the students to address him by a name they’ve come up with for themselves – they settle on Koro-Sensei (a portmanteau gag on korosenai – unkillable- and sensei – teacher), and on top of normal lessons and assassination lessons, he helps them beat the bullies the kids of 3-E endure daily.

‘Don’t mind me, I’m having a Far Cry 3 moment.’

Which simply adds to the bizarreness of the entire show: the students grow and mature under the tutelage of a creature aiming to kill them all if they don’t kill him first (and to be honest, despite one proper near miss and one pretend one, they don’t look like they have an ice-cube’s chance in hell of ever doing so), and amid the traditional love-hate relationship which develops between teacher and students, for the latter comes the inevitable dilemma of whether they have the right to kill someone who has given them more of a life than they ever had before where other students were allowed to even spit on them with impunity from the staff.

Of course, they’ll all end up dead if they don’t, but yet…

This becomes a source of friction between the two main secondary protagonists (debatably, since everyone has their favourites) – the rough diamond red headed Karma (whose problem is letting his arrogance get ahead of what talent he has) and the asexual blue haired Nagisa (who everyone thinks is a girl to begin with but doesn’t bother to correct them) who also acts as the Greek Chorus at times.

That Ritsu mentioned above is another of the sillier elements of the show as they take the rise out of the old trope of androids trying to be humans and that particular Japanese one of the game changing ‘transfer student’ (hello again Battle Royale!).

Of course you are dear, and the Model of A Modern Major-General too, now run along and play.

Ritsu – or to give her (her?) real name of Autonomous Intelligence Fixed Artillery – is what Holly is to Red Dwarf, and gets on the wrong side of everyone on her first day by repeating the class’ first day mistake, except with far heavier fire power. Still no joy, and Koro-Sensei makes the entire class clean up the not-inconsiderable mess made when several thousand rounds of small to medium ordinance are fired in a classroom. Ritsu makes lots of mistakes (bursting into tears in the process), and it takes her a while to learn she needs to work with her classmates to have any chance of success – although what she’d do with the prize money is anyone’s guess.

She’s also Norwegian. You probably noticed that. It’s so obvious, right? The lilac hair and the eyes that change colour.

What makes her even more bizarre is that it later turns out Koro-Sensei put her in the class himself. Why? As a mirror to the students to their own stupid mistakes in trying to kill him solo instead of as a team? Who knows. She’s able to travel in digital form in the mobile phones of her classmates and infiltrate just about any computer system the class requires – for Ritsu is a virtual reality student.

Context really is everything…

As the story wears on, so the dilemma does about whether killing their teacher is the right course of action, or whether to wait until closer to their graduation and learning more first. Which increases the chances of someone else beating them to the punch.

Her badly proportioned eyes are up there, you know. Of course you were only reading the caption, Sharkloverplayer…

They are even given a Slavic teacher (who makes Koro-Sensei blush!) Irina with all the right qualifications to be an object of lust but is next to useless for teaching anything (she’s actually been put in there by the school to try and kill Koro-Sensei so they can acquire the ¥10,000,000,000). The students – even the boys – swiftly rebel and demand their ‘proper’ teacher back (this is a sly dig at the educational debate in Japan over Eastern Europeans being employed as teachers because they’re aesthetically pleasing and dirt cheap to employ, but without necessarily being any good at the job…), making her relegated to occasional tasks such as teaching them English (badly, of course).

Showing they’re not averse to poking fun at Japanese stereotypes as well, the old one of Japs getting their Ls and Rs all wrong when trying to speak English comes out. Everything is fair game for lampoon in Assassination Classroom.

So unimpressed are they with their alternate teacher (who they call Bitch-Sensei) she threatens to French kiss any student who keeps screwing up, whilst continually accusing Koro-Sensei of perving over her all the time.

Is it still sexual harassment if you are elegantly sipping tea? On such pertinent questions, the fate of nations is decided…

It’s debatable whether he truly is lusting after Irena (or addicted to porn, another running gag), or is merely trying to dissipate the tension with other staff members and his students – who tell one another loudly how much they hate Irina – what some of the students will be doing secretly anyway…

The Japanese government in turn, getting rather nervous as time wears on of Class 3-E succeeding (they give the kids all the weapons and explosives they could want, all in vain…), hire an assassin who goes after Koro-Sensei on the inevitable school trip.

It says much that Koro-Sensei’s more concerned for the welfare of his students being accidentally killed than himself – despite the levity of his ridiculous Undercover Elephant style attempt at disguise. Cynically, he also knows the students will work to keep him safe because they don’t want anyone else getting the prize money.

Cool shades? Check! Cigarette of nonchalance? Check! Air of passionless cool? Check! Always gets the job done? Um…

As the series goes on, you will find yourself wondering whether Koro-Sensei is being completely honest as to who or what he is. Has he truly destroyed the moon beyond repair? Is he truly a creature from another world or dimension or whatever? Or is this another anthropomorphication of Death, going into Time Lord mode instead of sticking to his day job, having decided that humanity is needing another helping hand and concurrent boot up the backside?

A novel approach. Utterly stupid, but novel. Kuro-Sensei makes Minami the class geek stay behind after school to learn how to make poisons properly (to add to her fail, her ‘poison’ wouldn’t have killed the weeds…)

Moveover the students learn one very important lesson which is beyond not merely their peers but everyone else in their lives they encounter – that the best things in life, especially success, have to be earned with working and patience.

Assassination by kinkshaming didn’t work either. This is Japan after all.

The key to success isn’t killing teacher and being able to retire on ten billion yen before you’ve even taken your first final exam – it’s about planning your work, working your plan, and trying again instead of giving up when they don’t work the way they should. As such, the kids go from being losers to winners in increasingly larger ways in their lives. In a world obsessed with instant success by TV talent contests and lotteries, it’s a lesson worth restating.

One particularly wonderful moment of over-the-top silliness comes when green haired Kaede shares a bonding moment with Kuro-Sensei and he confesses to her he’d love to dive into a giant pudding.

Such ‘weaknesses’ moments are a running gag of the show, and occasionally the students are ham-fisted enough to think somehow they will make for this week’s sure to succeed Cunning Plan, without ever considering maybe Kuro-Sensei’s manipulating them to teach a new lesson.

Yes, they make the giant pudding. In secret. No one sees them doing it. As you would expect.

Of course, it also fails miserably, since Kuro-Sensei can smell the giant bomb inside and merely burrows his way in to defuse it before sharing the rest with the class as their just desserts. Once again, Class 3-E learns that Kuro-Sensei is not to be trifled with.

The second animated series has started in Japan, and the second live action film version (the first last year was a monster hit) ostensibly about their final year at Junior High, comes out this summer. Will it be the end of what’s proven to be a surprise hit beyond all expectations?

One of the many spots of comic relief peppering the series which make it such a joy – the students get banned from the local fairground as a result of all their training in weaponry making them too good, even with the usual crappy guns and .

Hopefully not, and when the inevitable Hollywood remake happens, fingers and tentacles crossed it won’t lose any of its wacky humour and overall charm.

Since someone has been kind enough to post up an English dub version of the very first episode on YouTube, watch it yourself, and see what you think.