Assassination Classroom

Assassination Classroom
Cover of the first volume of Ansatsu Kyōshitsu, as published in Japan by Shueisha
暗殺教室 (Ansatsu Kyōshitsu)
Genre	Action, Supernatural, Comedy, Slice of life
Manga
Written by	Yūsei Matsui
Published by	Shueisha
English publisher	NA: Viz Media
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Jump
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	July 2, 2012 – present
Volumes	10
Original video animation
Directed by	Keiji Gotoh
Studio	Brain's Base
Released	October 6, 2013
Runtime	30 minutes
Anime television series
Directed by	Seiji Kishi
Written by	Makoto Uezu
Studio	Lerche
Original network	Fuji TV
Original run	January 2015 – scheduled

Assassination Classroom (暗殺教室, Ansatsu Kyōshitsu) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yūsei Matsui. It follows the daily lives of an extremely powerful octopus-like teacher and his students dedicated to the task of assassinating him to prevent Earth from being destroyed.

Individual chapters have been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump since July 2012, and are collected into tankōbon volumes published by Shueisha. As of July 2014, ten volumes will have been released in Japan with a circulation of ten million copies. An event anime adaptation of Assassination Classroom was screened on the Jump Super Anime Tour from October 6, 2013 to November 24, 2013. The manga has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language North American release, who will release the first volume in December 2014 in both digital and print formats.

A live action film has been announced and an anime series based on the manga is scheduled to premiere on Fuji TV in January 2015.

Plot

The Earth is threatened by a powerful creature who destroyed 70% of the Moon with its power, rendering into the shape of a crescent moon forever. The creature claims that within a year, Earth will also be destroyed by him, but he offers mankind a chance to avert this fate. In class 3-E at Kunugigaoka Junior High School, he starts working as a homeroom teacher where he teaches his students not only regular subjects, but the ways of assassination. The Japanese government promises a reward of ¥10 billion (i.e. 100 million USD) to whoever among the students succeeds to kill their teacher, whom they have named "Korosensei" (殺せんせー, Korosensē, lit. Unkillable Teacher). However, this has proven to be an almost impossible task, as he has several inhuman abilities at his disposal, including the capacity of moving at Mach 20.

Characters

Class 3-E

Class 3-E (nicknamed E as in 'End Class') is a subdivision of the Kunugigaoka Junior High School. Class 3-E is notorious for containing a group of students with naturally low grades. Conventionally, it is composed of thirty students who could not either compete with the school's standard level of study, nor comply with its overly rigid code of discipline, among others who were subject of some kind of unfair punishment. Obliged to attend class in an isolated, run down school building, the students of Class 3-E are largely discriminated against by the rest of the school. The students of this class are assigned the mission to assassinate their homeroom teacher, Korosensei, for the compensation of ¥10 billion ($126 million). This become the primary motivation for most of the entire students in the class to kill Korosensei, so their teachers, friends, and family able to acknowledge them.

Teachers

Korosensei (殺せんせー, Korosensē)

Voiced by: Masaya Onosaka (vomic), Tomokazu Seki (event anime) & J-Stars Victory Vs

Korosensei is the main character of the series. He is the homeroom teacher of Class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Junior High School. He is the perpetrator of the explosion of the Moon, which has rendered it permanently in a crescent shape. Despite not having the intention to get killed, he offered to governments all over the world a chance to kill him under the condition that he is allowed to be the homeroom teacher of class 3-E until the end of the year, when he will destroy the Earth unless he is killed. He is dedicated to his task as a teacher and imparting his knowledge of assassination to the students, despite knowing full well that he himself is their target. He takes a form similar to an octopus with eight tentacles and his skin color changes depending on his mood. He is able to move at a maximum speed of Mach 20, and usually uses it to travel all over the world to enjoy the local food and attractions. This makes it hard for the students to kill him. While he is initially thought as an alien, he later reveals that he is actually an artificial creation from the Earth. In one of his flashbacks, he used to have only two tentacles and a more human-like appearance. His decision to become a teacher involves his promise with a woman who thought that he was suitable to become one. This has yet to be elaborated upon.

Korosensei appears as a playable character in the video game J-Stars Victory Vs.

Tadaomi Karasuma (烏間 惟臣, Karasuma Tadaomi)

Voiced by: Kōsuke Toriumi (vomic), Junichi Suwabe (event anime)

He is a government worker associated with the Ministry of Defense. He first appeared announcing Korosensei's deal with the government and their mission to assassinate him before the end of the year. He later became the assistant teacher and P.E. instructor of class 3-E to train the students. He is well known amongst militaries for his outstanding reputation and is a powerful individual, which he has proven when he easily overpowered Irina's master, who is a retired professional hitman, and even Korosensei himself is afraid upon seeing his capability for the first time. He is strict, but kind man, though he keeps a distance between himself and the students due to his status as an agent and his own professionalism. He is one of a few who is very perceptive enough to see Nagisa's talent as an assassin. He seems to know Korosensei's past, though he has no intention to indulge into it further.

Irina Jelavić (イリーナ・イェラビッチ, Irīna Yerabitchi)

Voiced by: Masumi Asano (vomic), Yui Horie (event anime)

She is a professional hitwoman with Serbian accent who is hired to kill Korosensei by becoming a part-time foreign language teacher in class 3-E. She uses her charms to seduce Korosensei, making him at first obeys to whatever she asks. However, her first assassination attempt was foiled when Korosensei able to suppressed her 3-men's attacks, ending in her humiliation and swore revenge. She teaches the students how to seduce people from other countries, so that with this method, they can learn foreign languages, and usually would punish male students who failed answering her questions during her lesson by kissing them. She is nicknamed "Bitch-sensei" after Karma shortened her name when she told them to call her "Jelavic-onēsama." It is a pun; the -vić in her name is pronounced -bitchi because of the students' accent. She develops genuine feelings for Karasuma later on, even trying to go on a date with him. Unfortunately he misreads this as a new assassination trick that she is working on.

Students

Nagisa Shiota (潮田 渚, Shiota Nagisa)

Voiced by: Nozomi Yamamoto (vomic), Nao Tōyama (event anime)

He is one of the students in Class 3-E. Nagisa is seen as one of the weakest students in the class due to his small stature and mediocre physical abilities that are comparable to some of the girls in the class. However, he is actually the most talented to become an assassin out of all the students, something that is acknowledged by Korosensei and Karasuma. He is able to draw closer whilst hiding his bloodlust to make a surprise attack and is able to make his opponents falter through his bloodlust alone. Nagisa usually writes Korosensei's weaknesses that at first seem minor (since they don't look like major weaknesses) down, but some of them are eventually revealed to be useful as the students are almost able to almost kill Korosensei because of one of his weaknesses that is the same as one that Nagisa has written down in his notes. Outwardly friendly and polite to his friends and everyone, he hides a somewhat darker side of him as an assassin that won't be able to be found out during daily classes and will only shown during training and assassination time. According to Karasuma, whenever Nagisa unleashes his killing intent, he isn't training and truly goes for a kill.

Kaede Kayano (茅野 カエデ, Kayano Kaede)

Voiced by: Yō Taichi (vomic), Ayana Taketatsu (event anime)

She is one of Nagisa's classmates and close friends, being the one who is mostly seen with him. She hasn't shown any capabilities during her training to become an assassin, and so far has only been shown to discuss Korosensei's weaknesses along with Nagisa. She experiences a slight inferiority complex when it comes to sex appeal, resulting her to get angry whenever there's a woman with big breasts and readily protest. Kaede is the smallest student in Class 3-E and is even shorter than Nagisa and Manami.

Tomohito Sugino (杉野 友人, Sugino Tomohito)

Voiced by: Yūtarō Honjō (event anime)

He is one of the students and Nagisa's close friends. He used to be a baseball player in their school's baseball club until he was assigned into class 3-E, making him kicked out from the club. He dreams to become a professional baseball player like his idol, Arita, and emulates his techniques to improve his own performance in baseball and is shown to very dedicated to it. He also sometimes used his baseball techniques in his attempts to kill Korosensei. He has a crush on Yukiko.

Karma Akabane (赤羽 業（カルマ）, Akabane Karuma)

Voiced by: Nobunaga Shimazaki (vomic), Nobuhiko Okamoto (event anime)

He is one of Nagisa's classmates and considered to be the strongest amongst the class 3-E students. He is the first one to be able to inflict injuries on Korosensei during their first meeting. He was suspended from school prior to Korosensei's arrival as the class' homeroom teacher due to his mischievous behaviour. Unlike most students in the class that were relegated there due to their low grades, Karma is one of the school's most gifted students, but developed a rebellious attitude due to his previous teacher's betrayal after he severely wounded a top third-year student while saving a bullied student from class 3-E, as despite believing he has done the right thing, his teacher revealed that he was only siding with him due to his grades to increase his reputation and did not want to be held responsible for what happened. Because of this experience, Karma at first distrusted Korosensei he is shown that he is unlike the other treacherous teachers at the school, making him slowly accepting him.

Manami Okuda (奥田 愛美, Okuda Manami)

She is a student of class 3-E who uses aspects of chemistry to her advantage in assassination. Manami is naive, guileless and honest; when she has handed bottles of poison over to Korosensei, she informs him of their intoxication, but begs him to drink them anyway. Manami admits that she is terrible with language and speech and has difficulty to communicate with others due to this. She favors math and chemical formulas because the solutions are precise and unambiguous and deems clever wordplay and analyses of complicated emotions as unnecessary. After Korosensei's lesson, she gradually grasps the concept that the power of language is also important, and not simply science alone.

Yūma Isogai (磯貝 ユマ, Isogai Yūma)

Yūma is the class president of class 3-E. He is well-liked by his classmates and the ladies who regularly visit the café he works at. He is considered to be an "Ikemen" by his classmates, because of his good-looks, friendly, hard-working and modest personality. According to Kaede, he even receives love letters from the female students of the main school buildings. He comes from a poor background; living alone with his mother, who is suffering from an illness. Due to his background, he is said to be very versatile with food, able to cook and consume goldfish.His classmates also note how he is able to look stylish, even whilst wearing bargained clothing, further boosting his "Ikemen" image. He is also shown to be a good leader, as he was able to lead the class 3-E boys to victory against class 3-A in the Boutaoshi.

Yukiko Kanzaki (神崎 有希子, Kanzaki Yukiko)

Voiced by: Rina Satō (event anime)

She is a student of class 3-E. Yukiko is diligent and ladylike, she is popular with her classmates and the most popular girl in the class. She comes from a high-class family that is very strict and demands her to get only good grades, good background, and good job. Last year, wanting to runaway from her lifestyle, she changed her appearance and went to play in arcade games without no one recognizing her. However, because of her "playing background", she is assigned into class 3-E. However, after listening to Korosensei's words, she starts to have confidence in herself for who she is.

Media

Manga

Main article: List of Assassination Classroom chapters

The series began serialisation in Weekly Shonen Jump on July 2, 2012. The first collected tankōbon volume was published on November 2, 2012. The initial print run for the first volume was 300,000, but after several reprints over 1 million copious were printed. As of July 2014, ten volumes have been published and 10 million copies are in circulation. The series has been licensed in English by Viz Media for physical and digital release from in December 2014.

Anime

An anime adaptation of the series was produced by Brains Base for the Jump Super Anime Tour and shown at 5 Japanese cities between October 6 and November 24, 2013. An anime series based on the manga is scheduled to premiere on Fuji TV in January 2015. The television anime will be directed by Seiji Kishi at Lerche, with Kazuki Morita as character designer and Makoto Uezu as the lead scriptwriter.

Other Media

A live action film is in development.

An Assassination Classroom themed textbook for learning English was published by Shueisha on August 4, 2014. Illustrations were provided by Yūsei Matsui and Yukihiro Abe created the short stories.

Reception

Over one million copies of volume 1 have been printed, and individual volumes frequently appeared on the lists of best-selling manga in Japan. Volumes 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, and 6 placed 26th, 32nd, 36th, 37th, 41st, and 50th respectively on the list of the best-selling manga volumes of 2013, making it the seventh best-selling manga series in Japan of 2013 with 4.5 million copies sold. It was ranked second in Zenkoku Shotenin ga Eranda Osusume Comic 2013, a 2013 ranking of the top 15 manga recommended by Japanese bookstores. It was nominated for the 6th Manga Taishō. It placed second in male-oriented comics category on the list of "Book of the Year" by Media Factory and manga news magazine Da Vinci. Nippon Shuppan Hanbai elected it the best work of 2013 in their "Recommended Comic Books Across the Country Clerk's Choice". It was number one on the 2014 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! Top 20 Manga for Male Readers survey by Takarajimasha.

External links

• Assassination Classroom (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Official Ansatsu Kyōshitsu Twitter account Template:Ja icon