Saying Goodbye to ‘Assassination Classroom’

The final volume of Assassination Classroom arrives this week, officially bringing the story to a close in all of its English formats. It has been a wild road with the shonen manga surprising comics shops and bookstores alike as a smash hit. One of the stranger concepts to make its way from the Japanese manga scene, Assassination Classroom was much more endearing and sincere than its title might suggest.

The series, created by Yusei Matsui, focused on a single year in Classroom 3-E, the lowest ranked students at a Japanese prep school used to encourage higher classes (A-D) not to fail. However, these students also had a new teacher in the octopus-like Koro Sensei, a mysterious being who destroyed part of the moon and demanded that world leaders allow him to teach this specific classroom. Over the course of the year, Koro Sensei acted as both their teacher and assassination mentor, training his students to kill him before the end of the year lest he destroy the Earth.

If you’ve never read Assassination Classroom, it may be difficult to believe that premise builds one of the best comics of the past decade. That’s the truth, though, and here’s why we recommend checking out all of Assassination Classroom now that the story is complete.

A Grand Adventure

Like every shonen manga, Assassination Classroom included plenty of action. It was built into the premise. The students of Classroom 3-E were given knives and guns made of a special material capable of only harming Koro Sensei at the very start of the series. It didn’t take very long for them to start lunging at their teacher and plotting far more complicated maneuvers to take him down. In addition to standard subjects like math and science, they also had a training regimen where they learned all about the art of assassination. Removed from the rest of the school on a nearby mountain, they enacted grand battles in the woods, making games like capture the flag feel every bit as vital as a real battle.

Koro Sensei was never satisfied keeping his students bottled up in a classroom, which led to many adventures around Japan as well. Field trips to distant cities and vacation resorts resulted in some of the most thrilling moments in the entire series. There is a tower-based hostage scenario that could give Die Hard a run for its money. The extraordinary circumstances of this particular class led to some equally extraordinary settings and adventures. Whether they were working in their own backyard or as far away as a space station, the children of Classroom 3-E felt as much like action stars as typical prep school students.

Focusing on Strengths

The students of Assassination Classroom aren’t seemingly superpowered action heroes though. They are young men and women preparing for high school, which makes the action in the series so much more exciting. While there are ample exaggerations, most of the plans enacted rely on specific strengths of individual students. There’s no Bruce Lee or Bruce Willis in the pack, but there are lots of talented students learning to recognize their own strengths. One student excels in the sciences and works to craft poisons, another is an excellent photographer who loves to set traps, and yet another is keen with spatial calculation and makes a top-notch marksman. Assassination Classroom takes a variety of passions that could help students in school and uses them to form a team of more than 20 specialists, each with their own personality. There are threads of the best heist films present as so many specialists work together on various plots throughout the year.

That focus in storytelling connects to the educational core of the series as well. Students are never treated as part of the same mold. While they face the same requirements of every other class, taking standardized tests and competing in various competitions, they are not pushed to accomplish the same sorts of feats. Every person is treated like an individual by Koro Sensei, and his teaching helps them to discover and develop their strengths. There is an element of the StrengthsFinder test in Koro Sensei’s approach, believing that people are at their best when they do what they are best at. He acknowledges the specific needs and strengths of every student in order to help them become their best selves.

The Power of Education

For all of the hijinks, action, and prep school fun, what Assassination Classroom was really about was education. “My main theme and idea is that teachers watch their students,” Matsui said in an interview with ComicBook.com. “Even if you can’t move around at Mach-20, you can still be a great teacher by being observant of your students.” Even while training his students to kill him and threatening to explode Earth, Koro Sensei somehow remained a constant force for good in the classroom. While his point of view and motives were kept a mystery for much of the series, it was always clear that he was the hero at the heart of it. That was obvious because of the care and attention he provided each of his students. Matsui didn’t simply create a classroom that seemed like fun; he created a model for ideal learning (minus the violence, of course).

The premise of the story doesn’t undermine Koro Sensei’s value as a role model by the end of the story. His place in the world is clarified — no spoilers on how — and his core motivation remains just as obvious as it was in the very first volume. Koro Sensei understood a few key elements of great education and Matsui’s story models these for readers. Teaching was a relational pursuit, always focused on understanding students and building bonds of trust and respect. Teaching was built on a positive and supportive environment, where every student was given what they needed to succeed and helped even when they stumbled. Teaching was a team exercise where Koro Sensei acted as a leader, but students were just as important to the overall classroom and able to lead as well.

Assassination Classroom is a story about education and while it occurred in a relatively normal school environment, it reminds readers about how important learning is anywhere you might go. Whether we envision ourselves as students or teachers or, hopefully, both, it’s a series that encourages us to be our best selves. That’s why we’ll miss Koro Sensei and his wonderful class of students.