ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM (2015 - Japanese)

Studio:       Toho
Director:    Eiichiro Hasumi
Writer:       Tatsuya Kanazawa, Yusei Matsui
Producer:  Juichi Uehara
Stars:     Ryosuke Yamada, Kippei Shina, Jiyoung Kang, Masaki Suda, Seishiro Kato, Kanna Hashimoto, Masanobu Takashima

Review Score:

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Summary:

A sentient squid creature becomes a schoolteacher and threatens to destroy Earth unless his students figure out how to kill him.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After putting a hole in the moon, a seemingly invincible creature who later comes to be known as UT, short for “korosensei” or “unkillable teacher,” threatens to destroy Earth. However, UT makes a deal with Mr. Karasuma from Japan’s Ministry of Defense to become the teacher of Class 3-E, a group of outcast students at Kunugigaoka Junior High School. As a challenge to himself, UT trains the students to become killers in addition to their regular studies and tasks them with finding a way to assassinate him. If they are unable to do so by March, he will destroy the planet.

Mr. Karasuma outfits the students with special knives and guns that can destroy UT, but are harmless to humans. Karasuma promises to award ten billion yen to whoever destroys UT. Ms. Irina Jelavic works as an assassin alongside Karasuma and also doubles as 3-E’s English teacher.

UT pledges to never allow any harm to befall his students. Through foiled daily attempts to kill him, Class 3-E gradually learns about UT’s many abilities, which include regenerating tentacles, shedding his outer skin once a month, cloning himself to be in multiple places at once, and traveling at speeds up to Mach 20. Student Nagisa Shiota keeps a notebook documenting assassination attempts in order to deduce UT’s weaknesses.

Previously suspended for bullying, Karma Akabane comes to Class 3-E. Taking advantage of UT’s pledge to protect the students, one of Karma’s assassination attempts involves jumping off a cliff with a gun, prepared to shoot UT when the teacher comes to rescue him. UT surprises Karma by using his tentacles to form a sticky safety net instead.

Disappointed in Karasuma’s lack of progress, the Ministry of Defense installs an A.I. in weaponized box armor, STAR (Self-Thinking Artillery Robot), as a transfer student in 3-E. Because they have to clean up the spent artillery casings after her unsuccessful assassinations, the students take a disliking to STAR until UT teaches the machine to assimilate with the rest of the class. UT helps STAR transform into a data-processing app supporting everyone else’s assassination attempts.

Young assassin Itona arrives as a transfer student, accompanied by his adult guardian White. Itona claims to be korosensei’s brother by blood. Itona and UT have a showdown after school. Itona reveals that he can also sprout tentacles, though UT ultimately wins their fight.

UT tells Nagisa that he became their teacher to fulfill a promise he made to someone. Assassinating UT is the only way for the students to learn the entire truth behind UT’s motivations. UT has occasional flashbacks to an apparent lab accident and a human woman whom he loved.

To sharpen their assassination skills, UT hosts a weekend boot camp for 3-E with Irina chaperoning the female students.

Military man Akira Takaoka becomes 3-E’s new P.E. instructor. The class takes a liking to Takaoka until he slaps student Kanzaki. Karasuma stops Takaoka, prompting Takaoka to initiate a confrontation in which Karasuma is forced to choose a student to combat Takaoka. Karasuma selects Nagisa, who wins by fulfilling the condition of touching Takaoka with a combat knife. Takaoka leaves disgraced.

When it rains, the students learn UT has a weakness to water. Okuda is disappointed by her unsuccessful attempt to poison korosensei. UT teaches 3-E the importance of always having a Plan B strategy.

UT shows his students that he loses clones when he loses tentacles. To stimulate learning, UT hosts an assassination event where students are eligible to eliminate tentacles. After personal study with UT, the top students earn the right to sever several of UT’s tentacles.

During the assassination event to remove UT’s tentacles, the students douse UT in water to exploit his main weakness as they shoot at him. UT emerges in an energy crystal in the shape of a small sphere, which he reveals is his ultimate defense form. The crystal is impenetrable, but will break down after 24 hours.

Several students suddenly collapse in the schoolyard. Takaoka returns and reveals that he poisoned the afflicted kids with a virus. Takaoka demands that Nagisa turn over UT in exchange for the antidote. It is revealed that Itona has joined Takaoka.

Nagisa and Karma flee carrying UT. Itona chases them. Karasuma and Irina tend to the poisoned students.

Nagisa and Karma face off against Itona atop an electrical tower while protecting UT. A storm eventually breaks and the rain subsequently renders Itona’s tentacles powerless. UT invites Itona to join his assassination class.

STAR summons Nagisa and Karma back to school with a text message. At the schoolyard, Takaoka threatens to torture and kill one of Nagisa’s classmates if he does not hand over UT. Nagisa tricks Takaoka with a decoy ball and the students end up capturing Takoka and his henchmen. The time Nagisa buys by confronting Takaoka gives Okuda and the others an opportunity to create their own antidote for the poison.

UT is turned over to the Ministry of Defense. The students watch regretfully as UT is held in an inescapable container filled with explosive pellets as his energy bubble is about to disintegrate. UT gives a final message expressing pride in how much the students accomplished in their studies. The dome imprisoning UT detonates. The students cry as the military celebrates UT’s apparent destruction. However, UT pleasantly surprises everyone when he reveals that he somehow escaped the dome and is still alive.

UT resumes teaching duties for a second semester with Itona as part of the class. Another assassin with tentacles also joins. Karasuma’s Ministry of Defense boss reminds him that to maintain elite student status for the rest of the school, Class 3-E must remain dejected, weak, and hopeless. UT once again recalls promising his dying human love that he would teach the children.

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Review:

What’s next on the destruction agenda for a sentient squid creature appearing from nowhere to tear a hole in the moon?  Obliterating Earth, of course.  But being virtually indestructible, that would be too easy for this pleasantly-smiling yellow monster with the face of The Comedian’s “Watchmen” button.  So he makes an arrangement with Japan’s Ministry of Defense to become a schoolteacher in the meantime.  In addition to their regular curriculum, he’ll instruct his students to become top-tier assassins focused specifically on his possible weaknesses.  If they can figure out how to murder him before the school year is up, the planet is saved and the killer kids will be awarded 10 billion yen.  If they fail…

There’s just one problem.  Well, one problem aside from assassination-foiling abilities like respawning tentacles, kid-sized clones, and moving at Mach 20.  Korosensei is the best teacher the misfit young teens of Class 3-E have ever had.

Whether that premise sounds sublime or just silly determines how hip you’ll be to the wonderfully warped weirdness of “Assassination Classroom.”  Unsurprisingly, since it spawned from a Japanese manga that in turn inspired an anime adaptation, this live-action film version of Yusei Matsui’s popular comic is fit to burst with childlike style bearing adult appeal reminiscent of the maverick mirth and mayhem from a classic Saturday morning cartoon block.

“Assassination Classroom” could only have come from the Land of the Rising Sun, where an Eastern pop culture sensibility creates an entertainment experience for Westerners that is best described as outrageously oddball.  Despite students being armed with guns and knives harmless to humans and only effective against korosensei, children wielding weapons in the classroom brings less comical connotations on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, where gun tragedies on school campuses is a gravely serious issue.  I’d be surprised if an American studio would come within a million miles of an English-language remake for this reason, though “Assassination Classroom” is infused with enough imagination, humor, and heart for its violence to maintain a tone of endearing playfulness instead of being bleakly inappropriate.

A problem it actually has is a hole in the script as big as the one korosensei puts in the moon.  Much of the movie is structured as a series of vignettes, perhaps mirroring the chapter format of its source material.  Act one rolls through a series of character introductions starring a suspended bully, an artificial intelligence installed as a transfer student, even a Japanese Jonathan Taylor Thomas dressed like a Final Fantasy villain squaring off in tentacle combat against korosensei.  Yet for all the time spent populating 3-E with personality, “Assassination Classroom” comes up short in developing individual children any further beyond their initial roll call.

Subplots include the usual suspects of junior high soap storylines like an unrequited crush on an out-of-this-league dream girl, difficulty fitting in as the new kid, and father’s firm hand at home.  Don’t expect fully fleshed resolutions for any of these themes, however.  Those brief father flashbacks feature the film’s only parental appearances.  And for as many times as the spotlight swings in the direction of various students, you’ll have a hard time feeling like any one of them is more than a skeleton of a “what could have been” opportunity to tell a meaningful side story.

Maybe “Assassination Classroom” doesn’t want its heartfelt sentimentality to become sappy by focusing on such ordinary woes.  Instead, korosensei stands proudly at the center throughout, and it’s hard to wag a finger at the movie for choosing not to sling rocks with the supporting humans when it has a Death Star-sized cannon of characterization in the otherworldly teacher.  Korosensei is so delightfully fascinating that fading everyone else into forgetfulness becomes a forgivable fault from which the film’s fun factor swiftly recovers.

Fresh, funny, irreverent, intelligent, sarcastic, sly, this sentence does not have the space to include all the adjectives fit to describe the gamut “Assassination Classroom” runs.  From korosensei’s infectious signature laugh, which you are guaranteed to attempt imitating at least once, to the film’s relentlessly energetic spirit, the unique concept fueling “Assassination Classroom” makes for endlessly appealing eccentric entertainment.

NOTE: The film’s Japanese title is “Ansatsu kyoshitsu.”

Review Score:  85

Click here for Culture Crypt's review of the sequel, "Assassination Classroom: Graduation."

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