Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e

I'm not claiming to be a veteran when it comes to watching anime, but I've seen enough where viewing shows with a typical high school setting just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Of course a lot of the shows in this genre come with a twist or two, and Classroom of the Elite is no exception. However just because an anime uses the classic school life formula doesn't mean that it will be successful. While it's true that some shows are able to effectively pull off the school life setting, lesser anime, like Classroom of the Elite, fail right from the get go. ...

Episode one dives right into explaining the setting and sets up the general story of the anime. Viewers learn that the school in which the characters are attending is a special academy where students are divided into four classes based off of skill and other criteria that is never really discussed (you'll soon learn that the lack of a proper explanation for things is a reoccurring theme with this anime). Unsurprisingly, the two protagonists, Kiyotaka Ayanokouji and Suzune Horikita, are put in class D, the lowest ranking class. The story is supposed to be about their rise from the bottom to the top of the academy's hierarchy, but there's one major problem; They make relatively no progress toward achieving this goal throughout the course of the anime.

Before I go into more detail on this, let me explain an unique plot element that the author introduced for the anime: a point system. These points are given to students and represent multiple things, including currency and class ranking. The students lose points for bad grades, behavior, etcetera and earn them by achieving various things, many of which are unexplained. Points are allocated after each month, and one of the first twists in the anime is that class D failed to earn any points after their first month at school (pfft. What losers), thus throwing them into a state of turmoil. Now this system could have been used in so many ways that would have easily benefited the plot of the anime. However the distribution of these points is so convoluted and rarely touched upon that in the latter portion of the anime I felt like their importance completely vanished. Characters would just go up to a chart and say things like "Oh look, our class has X points and the others have Y points. Cool." and then move on. The few exceptions are when Ayanokouji actually uses the points in an inventive manner to do things like purchase old test answers and boost the grade of a classmate's exam. Unfortunately, the point system wasn't nearly as explored as it should have been, and it failed to reach its full potential.

Remember when I said that the goal in this anime (at least from what I could discern) was for the core cast to strive to become the best in the school? While its true that class D (with the exception of Ayanokouji at first) desperately want to rise to the top, we rarely see anything significant done by them in order to achieve this goal. At one point Horikita gave a commanding speech in which she warned the other classes to look out for class D. From my perspective, this was just an empty threat. In fact, more often then not, the anime showcases the members of class D struggling to simply earn any points at all much less hoping to compete against their rivals. The anime constantly presented us with many "tough" scenarios that were supposed to leave viewers impressed with the protagonists for finding creative solutions to them. The problem is that many of these situations were too lackluster for me to even care about them in the first place. These mediocre events ranged from trying to have everyone in the class pass an exam without failing miserably to finding a panty thief. There are literally no stakes, and this was deleterious to the anime's success.

On a positive note, I did sort of like Ayanokouji and Horikita at first. Ayanokouji's casual and disinterested attitude was sort of refreshing, and his along with Horikita's social ineptitude was interesting, especially when they were forced to interact with other characters. Now the primary issue that I had was that both of them have a similar personality. They're both social outcasts who have a hard time fitting in with the rest of the class. Granted, they each posses differing views on things like friendship and whatnot, but it sometimes got really boring hearing both of them talk to each other in their monotone voices all the time. Also, they each hardly interacted with the other characters (Horikita more than Ayanokouji) unless they were forced to, which left the rest of the cast terribly underdeveloped. To compensate for this, the producers would give the other characters (most notably Kikyou Kushida) random quirks in order to make them seem more interesting. This ultimately failed because I didn't really care for the characters too much in the first place.

The majority of the budget went into eyes and fanservice. The characters' eyes always seem to shine bright with vibrant splotches of color. While high in detail, the focus on irises makes everything else seem lazily designed in comparison. The only exception to this is when a character is used for fanservice appeal. During these sacred moments, the characters' bodies suddenly gain a ton of depth, shading, curves, and enlarged breasts (unless they're male, in which case they become overly muscular instead). Hallelujah for these ecchi scenes, am I right!? Seriously though, if the animation quality was consistently like the short and almost always unnecessary fanservice scenes, then I would have been really impressed with the show's visuals.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't despise Classroom of the Elite or anything. I was just disappointed by the show's laid back attitude. Everything felt anticlimactic or unnecessary and it seemed like the creators were too afraid to take any risks and instead chose the safe and easy path. And in doing so, Classroom of the Elite became yet another mediocre anime that will certainly be forgotten by most as time goes by.

With no prior knowledge of the series, I only picked this anime up because I was seeing fairly glowing reviews and an impressively high score on this site. Unfortunately, I'm in the undesirable position of being one of the bearers of bad news: This show is dreadful.

Classroom of the elite starts off fairly weak, presenting some vapid quotes like, "Are humans really equal?" and an opening sequence that displays a general lack of care. It only took me a few minutes to decide to check if I was watching was yet another light novel adaptation (I was). The premise is almost entirely unoriginal, but I've ... always thought that it's not so much about originality of concept, but rather how one uses the ideas and inspiration they take from other stories to craft something unique or memorable of their own.

The problem, though, is that there is nothing of quality to speak of in this show. Not even remotely, and I'm really trying. The story is derived from countless battle school anime where kids in a given school fight for ranking and prestige. In this case, they prove their worth through academic standings. Ok, nothing groundbreaking but I'll go with it. To "spice things up" more, the kids have to live on campus and receive an allotted amount of funds each month that fluctuates depending on their performance. The class we follow starts out at the bottom rung of the hierarchy, class D, and we are to see their journey to class A. The execution of this concept is poorly handled, though, in part due to a simple lack of imagination and a pacing structure that would give Charlotte a run for its money. At this rate, I have my doubts the kids'll make it to Class C, as the show has quickly devolved into a sort of "adventures with Ayanokouji-kun and friends..."

Yes, everything about this is hacky, even down to the details of the kids having to live on campus, but again this wasn't even the upsetting part. The unfortunate truth is anyone looking for any sort of unique or inspired take on the already super saturated "highschool battle school" subgenre is going to be severely let down here.

All that's left worth talking about is our characters... I was hoping they could really carry the show, but they are all walking tropes. No attention to detail or complexity. no substance, no layers, just barebones cliche here.. You've got the hot-headed jock, apathetic student, the overly friendly chick, the perfect girl, the mysterious loli, the uninterested main character. And thats about as much depth you'll find. As I was watching I couldn't help but think, "Are these guys serious?" I'm failing to think of a show as egregious in its display of its cast, showing us, in earnest, how completely void of personality each and every one of them are. I was frankly embarrassed.

And let's talk about this terrible main character for a second. If one ever needed to know what not to do when creating a main character for a story, they'd need look no further than this. You may be inclined to believe he is a breathe of fresh air from the "whiny, spineless" main characters that we so often get from these adaptations. But it's just another variation of the same garbage, really. First off, to pull off the "uninterested main character" archetype to any degree of success, you have to be at least a competent writer (see oregairu). It's extremely difficult. The reason is because when you have a main character who doesn't give a damn about anything and has no goals whatsoever (or at least doesn't present them for the audience to know), you run the risk of the audience saying things like, "Why should I even care?" That's the one thing you don't want. Ever. Because if your audience doesn't care, they will stop watching.

Ayanokouji is bored in every scenario. Even in high tension situations where the mood of the scene calls for him to actually care about what's going on, he doesn't. And this is detrimental to the experience of the viewer. We're conflicted. What are we supposed to feel in situations where the scene is telling us we should be worried, anxious, mad etc. but our main character is looking into the distance with eyes half open, spacing out thinking about fuck all? This is what bad writing looks like. It's simply unbearable to watch if you've not turned off your brain.

There was one scene in the 4th episode that cemented to me the notion that this show, similar to Ayanokouji, just doesn't care at all. Our main character and a girl we had previously seen him personally interact with *zero* times had asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend so that she could let down her crush without them feeling as bad. The problem of this scene is blatantly apparent to anyone who made it to this episode. These two characters have built no prior relationship that merits her making this request of Ayanokouji. To our knowledge, they barely know each other. It was constructed solely to meet the demands of the plot, with no regard to upholding any standards of storytelling. It was kind of insulting to watch; I could picture the guys making this anime on their lunch break having a laugh going, "How unambiguously dumb can we make this show, and still get people eating out of the palm of our hands?"

It was at that moment that I truly realized this anime has gone nowhere and that it will never go anywhere. There is no passion anywhere to be found here. No feeling. No excitement. A grade schooler could tell just how little original thought and care went into the making of this story, its world, or characters. It's just another poor ripoff of something that is already dreadful. I could make this review much longer, criticizing everything in excruciating detail, but similarly to Ayanokouji, I just can't be bothered.

I'll get this right out there, this is without a doubt my most disliked show of the season and I believe it to be an objectively bad show. Here's why.

Before I start ragging on it, I'll say I don't mind either of the main characters too much (that said, I'll still tear them apart). Main characters referring to Ayanokouji, and Horikita. My problem lies with the pretentious attitude of the show, the frankly laughable story, and the down right cringy characters and character interactions. Due to the main characters being a carbon copy of the more famous Hachiman / Yukinoshita (which certainly were not ... the first couple of characters like themselves) and the awkward introductions with famous quotes, I get the feeling the show is trying do a few things. Be relatable to students, to be profound enough to spark critical thinking, and then the actual story itself is trying to be grandiose and dramatic to force a sense of excitement.

School settings are popular because everyone has been, or is a student. Everyone can relate to being in school. This anime has done nothing wrong with trying to use a school setting to be relatable. The problem is the pathetic drama, and the narcissistic attempt at philosophy. This show is far too melodramatic. It's trying to cram too many settings into one anime. I can't take anything the characters do or say seriously. The school setting itself isn't an issue. Nor are the unoriginal, less interesting (than others of their kind) main characters. The issue is the drama. It's trying to hard to force drama and some great big power struggle, which would never, ever happen in any kind of high school. It's that kid in the 8th grade trying to act like an adult. It's pretending to be serious, mature and edgy. The only settings you MIGHT seeing something even remotely close to this is in some American Ivy League college. Not in some Japanese private school. Sure you might get some pretty hard core bullying or rich kids throwing money around, but you'll never see some billion dollar completely self sustainable campus. That is because there is no return. If you're going to try and force this kinda conflict down our throats, at least have it be a college / university. This kinda thing doesn't fly in a modern day setting. No way in hell is any country, or business entity going to blow literal billions of american dollars on HIGH SCHOOL. Not to mention a high school with a bunch of luxuries for pretentious teenagers. Things like malls, pools, luxury cruise ships, fucking islands. If you're going to try and be relatable through something like a school, keep the setting realistic. Otherwise you get that contrast of putting a Picasso next to fucking Jimmy who's failed to get a engineering degree and is now trying for an Art degree in modern painting. It's laughable, and completely incompatible //Excuse the rhyme.

The next problem is the point system. There is literally zero risk involved in having zero points. The school gives out everything you need to survive for free at a no cost. Obviously it's not as nice as the higher priced things, but it's by no means inhumane or even of "bad" quality. The threats and repercussions of having zero points, and going against school rules seem to be non-existant. Everything that is a hard no in the school's rulebook get's brushed off by some bullshit teen logic or some all power Student Council. The only incentive to have higher points is for vanity and to ascend to 'A' class, which itself seems to have little incentive other than bragging rights and the aforementioned vanity.

As I said, the philosophy is down right pathetic and narcissistic. The first episodes opens up with the everlasting "Are humans truly equal" and then breaks into a poorly thought out monologue that the 14 year old high school kid posted on r/im14andthisisdeep. Each episode opens with some profound quote and then proceeds to have an episode completely unrelated to that quote. Every attempt this show makes at being profound, philosophical and mature breaks down to some poorly though out drama between 'D' class and their oppressors which has practically no relation to the quote at the beginning of the episode.

The characters are a travesty. And while I don't dislike them, this complaint encompasses each and every character in the show, including the main characters. All these characters, from class 'A' to class 'D' all fit some boring archetype or stereotypical image. They are completely flat in both dimension and character. They're boring to say the least. From having 6'10 pure muscle bald monks who act like Yakuza, to 5'3 big boobed redheaded airheads that are secretly evil back to 6'10 black men who only speak broken english. The characters are laughable. Everyone praising Ayanokouji as the second coming of Hachiman is wrong. The only relation they have is their intelligence. Ayanokouji is nothing more than your average self insert protagonist. Sure he's more enjoyable than your average lucky pervert harem protag, but he isn't any more complex or better written. Horikita on the otherhand is just a poor attempt at Yukinoshita. Her 'cold attitude' is actually a facade to cover up her incompetence regarding human relations, and her own emotions. Comparing Yukinoshita and 8man is like comparing a Porsche to a beetle. Yea they're both cars, but the difference is jaw dropping.

This story's pathetic attempt at stimulating intellect, refined philosophy, and exciting drama is down right insulting. This show started bad, got worse and ended horribly. It's a failure through and through.

Such a horrible premise.
First the story is bland and generic, i don't really get why is there a Comedy tag in MAL when from 5 episodes i haven't seen any comedy bit, or maybe they are just trying too hard because i haven't noticed. The concepts of the series were good at the first episode, they fell apart in episode 2 and so on, there's barely an introduction and the characters are dreadful.

The art is the best this show has (And it is still bad). the character design is generic like your typical school anime, and no one stands out from the others. You get ... your typical "yandere" girl followed by your typical shounen protagonist, then your typical tsundere "female dog" then your typical bad guys and that's about it. It's nothing from the other world, but it is certaintly better than most anime.

Character development is just horrible, disappointing. The protagonist is cold and has somthing hidden, well, not that that's new. But him not having a real personality is the problem, it has been used for the last 2 years and and it's just of the same, can't they do something else for a protagonist with no personality? This is too much. The female protagonist is a tsundere with no development, we don't know anything from her as well as the whole cast. At least a bit from the past wouldn't be so bad, to have an actual plot at least.

The Story makes no sense, they are dragging the whole mystery thing with the case for at least 3 episodes, is that really necessary? I get it, with 2 episodes its ok, you get the mystery in the first episode and the second its solved, but no, they are slow as a crap river. That aside, they have the clues right there yet they don't use them, again, the creator of this is trying way to hard to do something that's not worth it by this time.

Overall: 2

People often think that because an idea seems uncommon on paper, it is already good.

No, it's not. A plot may seem to be as attractive as possible, a character may appear to be interesting for not following a common stereotype, but if those are not developed correctly, or at least, they are not well used in the universe that the same serie proposes, then can’t be said they are good. This is the case.


Two things to keep in mind before continue reading:
1. Minor spoilers ahead.
2. This is an ANIME ONLY review.


Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e, also known as "Classroom of the Elite", this ... name already summarizes what the series is about: a prestigious school where only "the best of the best" attends, students are separated by categories (classes) and a score system is managed according to the test results, which are necessary to literally survive on this island/school. Of course the best class usually has most of the points, while the worst, that is, the D class (where the series focuses) have few to none, so the goal of these students is to improve on their exams in order to get more points and survive, even thinking ambitiously and trying to get down the other classes. If we ignore the fact that no one in the D class except the protagonist group was so smart to not see the obvious working of this system that promotes competitiveness and instead they all believed they would earn 10.000 points at the end of the month just for their pretty faces (was not supposed to be a school of elites?), we have a plot that, on paper, sounds very good, and can lead to a story with an interesting development.

Among other positive aspects, animation is very good, has enough fluidity and is very colorful, character design is generic but well done (especially girls design). Soundtrack is not bad but it's very forgettable, and there were few times where it actually stood out, however, the serie has a good handling of audiovisual quality and a decent sound direction most of the time, they really knew how to make the few scenes where the sound is important (intrigue or "revelations" scenes) able to impress and engage the viewer.

And those are the only good things I can say about the serie...


Now, what's the problem with this show, having so much potential? Just the fact that they don't take advantage of that potential, and instead, the series focuses purely on exposure: they show MC analyzing and understanding how the school system works, and then acting when it's required; but not the reason of his acts. They show several background characters moving around and prowling, as if they had some evil plans (even with funeral background music included!); but in the end, little or nothing happens. They show how protagonists pretend to make their class climb ranges; but they are so rough and socially inept that they don't even bother to relate with their classmates, classmates who are shown as mere extras or victims, in order to make protagonists shine even more. This is not a story about "how the D class improves and climbs ranks", protagonists go on their own way, and the rest of the class have little to zero presence in the plot. Then, when the show tries to give them characterization or at least some screen time in the moments where they were meant to be important, it isn't even done well, just extra dialogues that mean nothing and call it a day (Sudo, Ichinose, Sakura, the sensei, etc.). Characters remain plain and dull all the plot.

Another aspect is that most arcs feel disconnected, add little to nothing to the plot, or are unnecessary. In some cases it's not even explained how things turned out like that (survival test arc, for example). It almost feels like most arcs were only introduced to force the plot and create artificial drama, because at this point it's hard to feel something for such a shallow character cast. With all this, the central issue in this serie is practically lost, it's unknown what is the point the serie tries to reach. Everything ends up being boring and disinterested.

The worst part is this: The serie pretends to be a serious and dark story, with discrimination and arrogance from high-ranked classes issues, people prowling in the shadows, and D class being victimized by being the lowest rank. But then, the series resorts to exposure of this arrogance and this "dark atmosphere" (the high-ranked classes bullying Sudo, Ryuuen punishing members of his "gang", the almost rape scene, the president plotting things, cane girl and bald guy talking cryptic nonsenses so they appear to be planning something "interesting", etc.), everything in a really exaggerated and nothing subtle way, to the point where the series ends up being immature, bordering on stupidity, instead of being serious and dark as they would have wanted. Inmature and stupid, for not knowing how to handle such issues with the seriousness they were meant, and instead, the serie just uses them to pretend to be intellectual and interesting, or in the worst case, to "shocking" the viewer and thus disguise the poor writing and development, even resorting to cliches and fanservice situations that just buries even more the serie's real pretentions.

It's not really bad to have cliches and fanservice, as long as you make use of them in a way that are acceptable to see, this is not the case. Hell, even the fanservice is explicit to the point it's just ridiculous! Other series show you subtle, fleeting or according to the situation scenes: falls, wind raising skirts, rays of light coming out of nowhere, etc. Here, they throw out tits in the whole screen just because, without conceal, without having nothing else to show in the scene, not even people talking, and with no other goal but to appeal otaku pandering. Yes, even fanservice in this serie is shallow and dull! The real issue is that this actually creates a contrast to what the series is trying to achieve, and instead of being serious and interesting, ends up being ridiculous. At this point, the serie is just pretending to be something that it will never be, resorting to exposure to hide its failures and showing exaggerated and unnecessarily explicit situations in an attempt to simulate maturity, which ends up being the opposite.

Pretentious, that's the perfect word that describes this trainwreck. Yes, this is a term often used as a "generic argument that people usually use to denigrate a job they do not like", regardless of if it really applies or if those who use it know what it really means, but personally, I wouldn't use it if in this particular case it doesn't apply, and DOES apply. With all the issues previously mentioned, the series insists that those points must be taken completely seriously; despite the big failures in development, despite their cliche characters and exaggerated situations, bordering on ridiculousness; all this creates a big contrast with the heavy atmosphere. If one tries to take the serie seriously, it's not possible, because the atmosphere is very forced and doesn't go according to everything that happens on the screen: complete arcs that contribute little or nothing, cliches in the middle of a plot that tries to be dark, irrelevant characters doing nonsense here and there and "serious" situations so anticlimactic and explicit that they end up being simply stupid, so the seriousness the show tries to transmit is not given. And if one tries not to take the serie seriously, it's not possible either, because the plot tries to convince you that EVERYTHING that goes on screen, including the most insignificant nonsense and the most exaggerated situations, is serious and dark, situations that obviously you can't take as such. They went to far to even try to put comedy, which was so dry, forced and simple that ended up being shameful and cringy. In more than one occasion I ended up banging my head on the keyboard, because I couldn't bear the cringe of those pathetic attempts to be "comic."


Another negative aspect is this series doesn't know the term "subtlety": every time something happens, it is shown in the most crude, explicit and anticlimatic possible way:

—Starting with the same plot. Being an elite school that seeks to mold highly skilled people, a fairly realistic goal, is the highly exagerated competitive environment that even people are talking about "destroying the other classes" so necessary ? Is discrimination so necessary ? Are the "evil" and complicated plans to only expel a single student so necessary? Is a Btooom! style Survival Test in a high school with relatively normal students so necessary? Things that have little or no place in the genres that the series handles, just to forcing the plot and generate dramatic situations that ultimately mean nothing, because arcs development is so random that they don't transmit what they want to show.

—Horikita's traumatic past and her inferiority complex towards her brother, the student council president. This character is so bad written that she changes from a strong willed person to a weakling waifu bait at script conveniences just because of him. Similary, the way they show her brother as an almighty guy whose presence is terrifying, and a sort of evil final boss who even went so far as to almost hurt his sister to "show her that she can never reach him". It's not necessary to exaggerate the situation to that point that it's so unbelievable.

—Kushida's revelation, where she went from a caring and friendly girl to a soulless bitch, and the way she showed it was so cringy: screaming, flailing and threatening MC with rape accusation if he reveal it... There're not enough words to express how stupid this was. If the intentions were to reveal a dark secret, at least, do it maturely, otherwise, it ends up being edgy and ridiculous.

—Constant fights with the other classes, which were portrayed as a kind of mafia that punishes its members when they don't fulfill their duties and always go for the most violent and problematic option possible, as if they were real criminals. Would not it be enough to portray the friction between classes without trying to make the whole situation looked as a yakuza war?

—Sakura's trauma with the potential stalkers, exaggerated to the point that they show a man like a sick and obsessive who almost raped her, which was not necessary to show his problem (just by making it clear that she was being harassed and then doing the pertinent report would've been enough), and shows how the serie handles a serious subject in a very immature way, because of course, all men are disgusting beings whose first thing they do when they see sexy photos of a girl is harass her to try to rape her... Also the fact that she is an excessively shy girl who shows her provocative photos both on the internet and in the middle of a serious trial, supposedly to increase her self-confidence, but then she implies she "doesn't like to show a lot of skin" and being looked in a "lustful way" makes her feel uncomfortable. Is not this a bit contradictory?


Now, let's talk about the other aspect that ends up completely burying this serie: characters. I would like to remind you what I said at the beginning: the fact something looks good on paper or looks different at first glance doesn't imply that it will be good. The fact the characters, mainly the MC, do not seem to be the stereotypes commonly seen in this kind of stories doesn't make them automatically good. Characters are by far the worst aspect of this serie, flat and completely artificial, but with "plot twist" added to make them look more interesting and complex, complexity that doesn't really exist:

—Ayanokouji,the main character. At first he looks like he doesn't care about anything, but actually he is someone analytical, who only observes what happens around him and then he draws conclusions about it, plus he does not want to highlight. In this sense he's very similar to Hachiman, which is the reason a lot of people consider him a good character (Hachiman is not that good to begin with), and in fact, this sounds like a good approach, but, SURPRISE! it turns out that the guy is super smart but he gets mediocre scores apparently on purpose, he is an expert in melee combat because why no? it's something cool for a high school student, and he ends up being surrounded by a lot of girls who "notice how special he is" just by being his boring and personality-less himself. Why is he so skilled? The most silly excuse: he was a laboratory rat created to be perfect; and no, showing a character flashback is NOT characterization or character development if they don't portray how he develops his way of being and thinking from this fact, which they never did, they simply said "MC is perfect because he was created as such, and he's cool!", that's all. Based on this, the main problem with this character is: he doesn't really have a background to make his actions coherent, and then it's evident that he is not boring or doesn't care about anything, he simply has no personality. But even so, the series doesn't waste any opportunity to make him shine, since everything he does turns out well, everyone talks about him, everything important involves him and he seems to be the only character who thinks and acts rationally, basically a perfect example of a self insert character and a Gary Stu. He is with the same face all the time, immutable to everything that happens around him, even his own actions, How can be portrayed that he is living a tense situation (when the president confronts him, for example) if he doesn't express it? Besides, because he doesn't have personality or characterization, it's hard to know what really drives him to act, his actions can't be taken seriously because what motivates him to act is basically non-existent. He only acts because the plot says so. He doesn't move the plot: the plot moves him. Even though his inexpressiveness makes it somewhat unpredictable (despite it's implied Almighty MC-kun will always be there to save the day), which plays to his advantage, that is not enough for make up for all the issues surrounded this character. And this needs to be cleared up once and for all: The fact a protagonist doesn't seem to be your typical dense MC does NOT automatically make him a good character, much less "the best MC of the season".

—Horikita is the typical edgy elitist bitch who believes herself better than the rest, looks down on the whole world because "making friends is unnecessary" and she's all the time with her arms crossed to show superiority over "scum". Currently she is the one that really wants to raise the class despite treating her classmates as trash. Why? SURPRISE! (again), she also possesses a typical traumatic past (which is never explained), an inferiority complex toward her brother, and a lamentable desire to show him that she can be at his level, all in a pathetic attempt to make her see her not so rude and viewer can feel empathy for her. Then, the rude and super serious elitist who tries to do everything for herself (although she knows she should collaborate with others, which she never does) becomes a passive weakling which the MC has to rescue, and a kind of tsundere badly made to justify his mood changes at script convenience. She is the the synonym of inconsistency... And speaking of script conveniences: it's funny how she doesn't trust anyone because she thinks everyone has a double face which can be dangerous, but she fully trusts Ayanokouji who obviously hides many things, just because "he saved her", when all he did was to be in the right place "by casuality" (that is, when the plot told him). Curiously, she was the only one to have something vaguely close to a development (yes, THE ONLY ONE) as we saw how little by little she began to trust and appreciate her classmates more (although she is still rough). Apparently, some of those scenes must have been from another character, and I saw a lot of people complaining and whining about that, but in fact this change was partly a success, mainly because the other character in question (Karuizawa) was never introduced correctly in this adaptation. Would not have been something out of place to give too much screen time suddenly to a character we barely know? Instead, they gave this screen time to a previously established character, so it was not a bad decision at all. As a side note: that Senjougahara-style compass scene was very pathetic, andthe tickle scene was even worse, a bad attempt to make it look more moe. Not to mention the bathroom scene in Chapter 11, because it was clearly important for this dark and serious plot, right?... right?!

—Kushida is the typical cheerful and caring girl, with more breasts than brains, who wants to be friends with everyone, but in such a obsessive way that it's just annoying to see, but SURPRISE! (again, again) it turns out that the girl actually hid a kind of second, darker and manipulative personality, all in a very pathetic attempt to give complexity to the character and to "shock" the audience that perhaps did not expect that. The worst par about this? That second personality was never explained, never showed the background and also had absolutely no impact on everything that happened in the rest of the show, so what was it all for? A cheap way to make a character look interesting and keep people to the expectation.

Now you see why did I say complexity in these characters doesn't exist? All of them are just cliches already seen with a plot twist that tries to fill the void of a real characterization.

The rest of the characters are not worth talking about. Sudo is the typical rude and troublesome boy, Ichinose is another less annoying Kushida, Sakura the typical excessively shy girl who is complexed by his past and/or actions, Hirata the popular, kind and helpful guy (SURPRISE! He also seems to have a "dark" personality), the president the typical evil boss "just because" who is even more elitist than his sister, Ryuuen the gang member, Ibuki the Rem— I mean, the passive dependent girl with no personality, Arisu the mysterious loli THAT DID NOTHING, etc. Do you see how all of them can be described in a single sentence? The worst thing is that no one was given some screen time to even know more about them, in fact, in their respective arcs they were treated more as victims or plot devices than actual characters... And do you pretend I take all your plot seriously with this cast of characters?


Dialogues and interaction between the characters are almost as bad as themselves. To name one of many examples: Chapter 4 was particularly stupid, another "friendly girl" of another class gets a love letter, but since she doesn't know what love is, she makes the only "logical" choice she has: Asks MC, with which she hasn't crossed more than 10 words before, that he pretends to be his boyfriend to reject the girl who sent her the letter... This was so contradictory and senseless in almost any way. How many cliches in such a forced situation, literally a beautiful girl with big tits fell from the sky to our personality-less MC and asked him to be her boyfriend "just because" so that in the end, he gave a her sermon where he was portrayed as a mature guy... a complete situation of self-insertion that also adds nothing to the plot (like almost everything else up to that point). Then in chapter 5 we have our Almighty MC advising a "shy girl" to be honest with herself and only with these simple words that anyone could say is enough to make her fall in love, from this point onward, this character (whose excessive shyness is FREAKING ANNOYING, "Best Girl" my balls) only was dedicated to be fanservice and otaku pandering material by trying romantic approaches with MC... Ah, and let's not forget about Chapter 11 when MC tells Ibuki that he trusts her and immediately she falls in love with these "pretty words" like any Rem— I mean, passive dependent girl with no personality... Of course he is not a self-insert! Similar situations happened throughout the series, which are summarized in boring, out of place and edgy dialogues that are just cringy, and relationships so forced that feel fake. Characters are not related naturally, but because the plot says.


Seriously, why does this serie get so much praise and high scores? At this point more than one may be thinking this review is written by an elitist that "don't enjoy watching anime", but if you look at my list you may notice that I'm someone of simple and irreverent tastes, and doesn't prevent me to enjoy series like this or any other series that even I may consider bad, but in this particular case, when the flaws are so notorious, the plot pretends to be taken so seriously by putting such ridiculous and stupid situations that it's impossible to do so, development is disastrous and characters are so horrible and poorly done, even with low standars (because it would be idiotic to expect a "Mushishi" or a "Rakugo" from series like these, right? The correct thing for these genres is to lower the expectations to have an at least enjoyable experience) the same mediocrity of the series prevents it from being enjoyable.


This BY FAR IS NOT AOTY. And no, it's not that "the show started good and became bad in its second part", the series already started bad and became worse with the passing of the chapters.


I will end with this phrase that summarizes this anime, again: the fact something looks good on paper or looks different at first glance, doesn't imply that it will be good.

The best way to describe this show to someone who watches a decent amount of anime is "baka and test that takes itself seriously".

As it turns out, baka and test does not work when it takes itself seriously.

For starters, the basic setting, while it seems interesting at first, makes no sense on anything but a surface level. For some shows, (slice of life and comedy) this is okay, as deep reflection on the setting is not an essential part of the experience. However, in a show that prides itself on its deep philosophical aspects, the fundamental flaws in the setting make ... engagement impossible.
The core plot of the first episode is simply that the students go to a prestigious school, where everything is provided for them, to be bought with points allotted at the beginning of each month. The loser class that the story follows spends their points frivolously, and is shocked when they discover that the amount of points they have is lowered by their bad behavior. Their teacher mocks them for not figuring this out, mentioning that she had said that their point allotments were based on merit in the beginning. The show brings to attention how obvious this was, to the point where I did not even realize that it wasn't supposed to be while watching. Yet, for some reason, nobody even considered it.
This starts the show's trend of lazy writing with selective idiocy on the parts of the characters, where despite being students at the nation's premier prep school, regularly fail to understand basic concepts, rather than coming up with a reasonable reason for the characters to fail and create conflict.
Furthermore, along with the forced conflict, the stakes riding on this conflict are equally nonsensical, with the big reveal that any character who fails a test will be permanently expelled. This is treated like the end of the world, and due to the structure of the series, from the viewer's perspective expulsion of a character would be equivalent to death, being their complete removal from the story. However, to the characters, if they were already failing with no hope of recovery, expulsion would be an actively good thing, so the only shocking part about this consequence is that anyone in danger of being expelled wouldn't have dropped out or transferred already.
The story then proceeds to use this faulty setting as a premise to try and explore deep and philosophical questions such as "does equality truly exist". However, this question's meaning is almost completely lost, because when the premise is this divorced from realism, we know that the plot will magically contort itself to drive home whatever moral the author feels like forcing on us. Characters will act absurdly, impossibly unlikely coincidences will occur, and certain key aspects of society and human behavior will be overlooked, just so that the main character, and by extension the author, can be proven right in his morals.
Fiction is an incredibly powerful tool for investigating philosophy, and a well crafted story can do very well as an example of a particular branch of philosophy. However, rather than doing this, classroom of the elite simply makes bold statements like "equality does not truly exist" and proceeds to simply showcase supposed examples of "inequality" while ignoring all factors that would contest its viewpoints.

Classroom of the Elite


Story: 2/5

- At first interesting idea of a school that is based on the idea of wealth and
money being determint through money(but this is barly touched upon)

- certain things feel extremly forced

... - There are a lot of plotholes

- Two episodes are complete fanservice, while one is more like a filler episode
rather than being in the actual plot

- The last arc is kinda interesting

- "Read the light novel for more"-type, cause the goal is too far out of reach

- the title of the show makes no sense.

Characters 2/5

- main character Ayanokoji is the center of the show. The story is mostly told
through his Point of View and most of the important characters talk a
lot about him in the story

- he is a self insert main character, that utilizes machiavelistic tactics to get what he
wants. Other than that he has a lot of elements of a Gary Stue. He is good at
martial arts and always seems to be ahead of things, which reduces the tension in
the story by quite the large margin.

- Kushidas charaacter also has issues cause there is no explanation to the way she
acts.

- Horikita starts of strong, but becomes more unlikable as the season goes on. Also
her motivation makes her look weak.

- On the other hand Sakura feels like a generic character that you can find in every
harem anime too.

- antagonist characters like Katsuragi or Ryuuen are cliched to the point of being
laughable, with no deeper motivation at all

- Characters like Kouenji completly miss the point of what a comedic character is
supposed to look like in a more serious setting.

- Sudou is a generic troublemaker that mainly serves as a plot device to get the story
going, however there is barly any explanation of who he got through the entrance
exams or what a character like him does in an "elite" school.

- other than those most of the side characters barly get any screentime and are not
worth mentioning, the group dynamic of the characters is ok, yet predictable in a
lot of ways.



Soundtrack: 3/5

- Songs for the Opening and Ending are quite catchy. Yet the visuals for both are
heavily lackluster.

- For the Opening we have mostly style over substance. A lot of random philosophic
quotes paired with characters standing around in a well shot scene.

- The Ending on the other hand is just lazy consisting of two images were one is an
empty Classroom

- The rest of the soundtrack is mostly forgettable, yet it still is in some scenes
overbearing. The only scene were that worked for me was on Episode 8.

Visuals 3.5/5

- uncreative character designs

- female characters have too much fanservice, while male characters look mostly
generic or overdesigned

- There a lot of different backrounds and most of them are pretty solid. The lightning
effects are mostly good too and the animation is fluent.

- Some scenes and have specially colored lightning effects and they put a lot of effort
into making the eyes of the characters stand out.


Overall 2/5

Ok now to sum up all the things that I said up and give a last insight. First this show is NOT like Oregairu, yet it TRIES to be like it. However in doing that it completly misunderstands the core elements of it. You can see this the most in the main character of Ayanokoji. He is more of a Tatsuya Shiba from The Irregular at Magic High School than a Hikkigaya Hachiman. The difference is here that Ayanokoji feels like someone that is above the entire cast so far. On the other hand Hikkigaya stood out through his alternitive view points, which made him different from the rest of the cast.
Also through the entire show all the characaters felt more like they would come from a show like Asterisk War rather than Oregairu.
In terms of storytelling I like the way the setting is meant to be a "survival of the fittest" type. Yet the comedy and the huge amount of fanservice ruin the serious nature of it. In the end I think Classroom of the Elite is a pseudo-intellectual bait show for people that do not understand the basics of storytelling or characterization. It can be a good time if you can identify yourself with the power fantasy which is the shows MC. If you don't you will have a hard time liking the show and I would not recommend it. In the end Classroom of the Elite is my disappointment of the season,
that, after a solid start, got worse with each passing weak.

Basically, if anyone has seen Oregairu then you will probably see the parallels. in fact, as someone who has seen Oregairu, and liked it, I see more than parallels - I see a ripoff. Except it isn't a good ripoff - by making the protagonist hyper-competent he can't Hachiman (pretend not to care and play scapegoat at the same time) his way through the story, and that takes a lot away from the narrative. In fact, the protagonist Ayanokouji reminds me most of Kirito - a soul-less, personality-deprived screen for an anxious otaku to project themselves onto. the two main girls - Horikita and Kushida, ... play the roles of Yukino and Yui from Oregairu, respectively, and fail to varying degrees, but I cannot elaborate on why because that would be a spoiler (who cares though?).

Another show this reminds me of is Hyouka, where they also have detective work in school. except that there, it is done in a very classically Sherlockian fashion (with references to the works of Conan Doyle and other great detective authors) and it looks insane. here, it's just plain bullshit because they gloss over all the details that actually make a detective subplot fun and go straight to the artificial drama that this show is awfully fond of.

Another similar show to this one is this season's Kakegurui - both are set in an elite school, both have a cast of obnoxious and unnecessarily-dicky characters, both have red uniforms and both have fan service. except Kakegurui is a cock-tease with a gambling twist and it flaunts this shamelessly at every chance it gets, while this show aspires to being intelligent in the same way that the BBC version of Sherlock does. and it doesn't work. because telling the audience that the story is smart doesn't make it so - as an author, you have to show it.

this show's usage of pretentious quotes reminds of Call of Duty 4, except that they're a little less out-of-place here, but, of course, the series fails to make full use of the opinions of great historical thinkers.

As someone who has been to a boarding school I find the premise of this show just plain retarded. shutting people off from the outside world for THREE YEARS is a terrible idea - they will begin to view their artificial world as the real world, and you don't want that. what you would get in that case would be "elite" assholes who would know nothing about how the world really works, and hence be completely inept once they graduate. no meritorious university would want to touch these people with a 3 metre pole. and not giving them the rulebook? why? to create some contrived hoops for characters to jump through to increase the runtime? I must say I'm not hopeful.

I've seen 4 episodes so far and I don't like how bored I am of it, but I have recently found that I am more entertained by bad anime than I am by good anime, so I fully intend to finish this one. who knows, maybe this "elite" classroom can surprise me.

Is it dread; is it disappointment? No, it's even worse. It’s welcome to the classroom of the elite’s opening line: “If I may, I’d like to pose this question: Are human beings truly equal?” In a single moment, the writer has already shown that he is a talentless hack and has exemplified in a neat sentence why this show is awful. He began with this line thinking that it would make him look intelligent, but all it did was make him look edgy and stupid. Starting a story out with an obvious, rhetorical question shows that you ... want to show off how cool and smart you are touching on “deeper” theme like you ever even knew what that meant. And the way the show precedes every episode with a title card displaying a quote of a famous philosopher makes me want to take the author with me to the grave from how disappointing it is to see the names of people whose intelligence not just dwarfs, but annihilates the “intelligence” of this clueless writer of this light novel on his piece of shit that he cobbled together. Another thing this awful opening line tells me is that the author is not discrete at all - not one bit -, and he has to constantly shove everything down the audiences’ throats because not only is he not good enough to show instead of telling, he has to make sure that they don’t miss of spoonful of shit going down their throat. The final thing this line tells me is that this show will take itself to seriously and be even worse for it because the writer probably can’t write well enough to make serious scenes that are both well crafted, smart, and engaging.

Let’s talk about how this man knows nothing about writing characters.
It’s obvious that if you took a picture of the cast of My youth romantic comedy SNAFU and pit it against this shlock, you’d see the blatant “influences” (borderline theft) that come from that other, better show. He thought that he was fit enough to also write a smart, cool show. Little did he know that not knowing what makes a story work when trying to incorporate elements of it (or the whole thing) into your own show, doesn’t turn out very well. While the main cast of My youth romantic comedy SNAFU has some level of depth to them. Like Hachiman, the main character of the show, being both lazy, when it comes to what he wants to do in life, straight-forward, cutting to the chase when most people would fluff things up, and a loner, not working well with others and preferring to do things his own way and not really meshing well in groups. This show has none of that. All the characters can be boiled down to one thing. The main guy is “mysterious”; The main girl is “uptight”/“straight-forward”; the secondary girl is “cutesy”/”friendly”. The author seems to look over the fact that people are more complex than this. How many times do you find someone that when you get to know them really, that all they have for personality is one trait and one trait only. None. When every character only has one-character trait, they become boring and predictable because they only react one way to everything, they resemble a computer more than a human, and they’re not layered enough to be relatable and engaging to watch. Even the main character, who we follow around the whole time and are in his head constantly, has nothing more too him than a guy who doesn’t talk much whose “mysterious”. The author tries to write him as badass, intuitive, and analytical, but he’s none of those things. Even if there are a few scenes of him being kind of aggressive, he’s too passive most of the time for it to matter. He’s not intuitive because what the author passes off as smart is average or below average ideas. I’ll leave the last point for later. Another thing that gets on my nerves is how serious the tone tries to be. Every character takes things way and I mean wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too seriously. They’re all in high school, they act stupid, and they’re all boring and edgy as fuck and the author expects that I take this seriously and be engaged? Hell no. They act so serious and so gangster to the point where it’s not only fake but childishly fake. They might as well all be playing pretend. Actually. If they were all playing pretend, I’d be more engaged. At least then I’d know the characters weren’t taking this seriously which would lift off some of the disappointment.

The characters may act like rocks, but the crap that leaves their mouths… It’s all a big mesh of boring blah. I don’t know how else to describe it. Most of the show is boring, pseudo-intellectual dialogue that makes my brain go blank from all the stupid. Dumping piles and piles of information with no interesting visuals, scenes, facial expressions, body language, or anything of the sorts. Just really, really bad dialogue that is supposed to be deep, philosophical, and important. Too bad he can’t write anything resembling that if his life depended on it. About how I was talking about how the main character was “analytical” earlier, well I feel that it’s only fitting here. When we are treated to dialogue by our lord and savior, the great Ayame, our main character, it is… awful. Our author decided that stating the obvious passed for analytical. I don’t even think he understands what it means to analyze something because all that happens is the audience sees something and our main character states exactly what just happened because we're all mentally deficient… Whoops, I spelled the author wrong. The other thing our main character does beside stating the obvious is spouting vague crap about friendship, equality, innocence, life, and other topics as if they were valuable words of advice. HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA. Yeah right, try again next time when you can actually write worth a damn.

A little interjection here. I want to say how most to none of the logic adds up in the show when you think about it for more than a second. He doesn’t know how to write and he also has no grasp on the concept of logic.

I think it would only be fitting to close with the structure. The one that this show lacks. Scenes in this show just don’t mesh together. Not once scene. For instance, in the beginning of the show, there’s a bus scene, and it’s completely pointless. The scene is already stupid on its own, but it serves no purpose other than to show the authors point about people not being equal, I guess? I don’t know, but this goes for a lot of what happens in the show. It’s usually pointless and not only that but boring. Scenes are just hobbled together like nothing and were expected to just go along with it? Another thing is the pacing of this show. It’s horribly slow. Scenes go on for way too long. They get their point across, like in the first scene, but then they overstay their welcome. Once the audience gets the point, there’s no more reason to keep on going. Does he want the ideas to stir? Does he think after he gets his point across he can try and instill some emotion in the audience? I don’t know, but I think people are smart enough to get the point once it’s presented, yet I don’t think you're good enough to instill any other emotion than contempt, disappointment, boredom, and unintentional laughter.

So that concludes my taking a dump on this offensive, wasteful piece of media that should be burned in the flames of hell as to never come back. If you want to watch this, at least ditch it for My youth romantic comedy SNAFU. I may have problems with it, but it's still a trillion times better than whatever this writer shat out of his miniscule mind. So have an awful day and welcome to the classroom of the brain-dead.

I dont know why nowadays so many anime is overrated? Is it because there are many pretty hot chicks in the anime? Or is it just because "everybody said that this anime is good" bullshit?

So here is our main character ayanokoji... this typical silent and weak looking guy but turns out to be he is a badass guy who excel at everything including fighting and ends up saving the day for all of his hot chicks friends...

The school in this anime is one of the best school in the country, it have the best facillities, the best school rules which is no rules for the ... students, and of course the finest hot chicks with their bitchy attitude and some typical plot twist. The odd thing is the school looks like a cheap school that have deliquents,gang,stupid kid and bad bitch that clearly isnt SMART but idk why they can enter such a great school like that, even some of them failed at their first test.

Im interested on this anime because of its psychological genre and im expecting a deep meaning story,some mystery and a LOGICAL story.
It feels like sometimes the anime is trying too hard to make the characters looks cool,slick,smart people that can solve everything, i dont want to spoil the beans for you but this anime is on different league with other school themed psychological anime like angel beats,little buster or even charlotte. I cant even call this anime psychological at all and dont deserve a 7.9 score at all, the only things that good with this anime is its art especially many of the girls have a big boobs and thats the only good thing you got from this crap.

The idea of elite students going to one school is an interesting idea, the way this was adapted ruined the idea. It continuously drags on the boring plot of the main character being the strong silent type. After a few episodes the rest just felt like fillers and it became boring to watch. I didn’t like a lot of the characters because of how basic they were, none of the touched on traits were really added to. The characters were annoying, predictable, and boring. Overall there was just so much more they could’ve added to make it a way better series.

This has to be the worst anime I have ever watched and I have watched a lot of anime in my life.

I was told that the main character was of the same intellect as L and Light and people were comparing this show to death note and code geass and I went into this expecting something intellectual and stimulating I received nothing of the sort.

It was disgusting.

It was a cesspool of pantyshots. Ridiculous situations that smart people would not get themselves into. Classroom of the elite took itself far too seriously and then fell short. It began each episode with a pretentious quote so you ... would believe the anime is more serious than it was. How is anyone supposed to take this show seriously? It's a joke and a waste of time.

If you want something with a similar plot that is more serious watch assassination classroom.

If you want something with a similar plot that is a more fun watch baka and test.

Don't watch this dumpster fire.

Honestly complete and utter trash. This anime tries too hard to look thought-out, intelligent and smart or whatever. Decided to suffer through this piece of garbage with my friend, who by the way, is an awesome guy unlike this thing. This waste of time couldn't even be a meme. I shouldn't waste my time further writing a review on this pretentious mess. We are going to make better use of our time and watch some anime that are worth watching at least a second of, which would be Zombie Land Saga. Also, I'm willing to fight any fan of this dung pie, anytime, anyday. Would ... be my pleasure.

Anyway, go ahead and watch it. You'll learn to appreciate even anime like Log Horizon which is also trash, just not on this level.

I have to admit I was tricked by this show the first time I watched it. I had yet to be confronted with anime series such as monster which uses nihilistic themes, quotes that actually live up to the standards set by the show. I also didn't know about evangelion, a show which goes balls deep into the human's psyche giving an accurate representation of depression, making the characters feel real. I thought that classroom of the elite would end up being something of the sort. A show with philosophical, ethical themes or even psychology.

The first episode opens up with a quote of Friedrich ... Nietzsche, already setting incredibly high standards for the rest of the series. The main character's monologue about equality also stood out to me, as he was actually elaborating on what Yukichi Fukuzawa's quote about equality really meant. It stood out not because it was some sort of mind blowing monologue, but just like the quote of Nietzsche it tricks the viewer into thinking that these are the issues which the show is going to address in the future.

The setting is the main thing that stands out in this show. Each class has some sort of "leader" who is the only student able to take decisions. Most of the students are either complete morons or average students that you would find in any other school and the reputation doesn't matter. For a school that pretends to be the best in Japan, the glaring issues don't stop there. Our class D for example, is made up of defective students. Many of these characters have some sort of issue which I'm not going to spoil in case you decide to watch this clickbait. That's a failed attempt of the author, to prove that this show is psychological. The characters are bland and that "defect" is there just to trick the viewers into thinking that this show has depth and realistic characters. If you think about it, it has none of that. I'm fine with mentally unstable characters as this is not the first show that has attempted that, however I'm having a hard time believing that the best school in Japan would serve as a mental health institution for the low ranking defective students. It's fine if one or two have it but it appears that many class D students aren't normal. The rest are just bad at studying or average in everything they do, again proving that the elite in this school are just a few selected individuals.

I mentioned before that I got tricked by this show. I'm not gonna lie, I thought the series had potential and I went as far as reading the light novel. It appears that the anime changed a few scenes here and there and the last monologue doesn't exactly happen at the end of the exam in the light novel. Which again brings us to the reason why I'm making this review. If you happen to read this, just know that this is not a deep story by any stretch of the imagination. As someone who's read the ln, if you like the anime and decide to read it, don't expect anything like that first episode monologue. The only good thing about the series is the 4D chess here and there which you don't really have to go as far as reading the novels or watching the anime, if that's what you want. Now I don't have any problem with shows which do not have any deep philosophy behind them. But that's not the case with classroom of the elite as it's trying to advertise itself as such, only to butcher the viewer's expectations in the end. If 4D chess is your thing then you might like the series but I still think Death Note is much better in that regard because that's its main appeal and the show doesn't try to present itself as something different.

I decided to watch this because I’ve seen some clips that caused me to be interested. The premise is an interesting one, but I feel it wasn’t executed well. I was watching the episodes on 2x speed yet I still found myself bored, and scrolling through my phone after each episode I finished.

A little rant:
I think fan service can be tasteful, but I did not enjoy it in this anime. I know the type of fan service in this is often used in others too, but I don’t enjoy it in those either! I hate the sexualization of high school kids so much! It ... makes me want to gnaw the wood off my desk, what is the reason for you to show a chest shot during any conversation with Kushida? There is none! In another forum, I also saw someone say “Well uhhh…have you been around any 16-year-old girls in the past recently? They’re pretty developed.” Okayyy let’s not be presumptuous that other people focus on the bodily development of teens as much as you do. ALSO it’s not that common for girls to be thin like a pin and have G-cups. Hate to break it to you bud! Also, the teacher looks like she came straight out of a hentai.

What I expected to be a good thriller or anything exciting, ended up being a fanservice show for horny teens with a failed attempt to create something smart. This series has such a huge ammount of plot holes that I would have preferred to see a documentary about Emmental cheese or something about Cenotes instead.

Minor spoilers ahead. I'm just judging what I saw from the anime, I'm yet to read the novel (as of 09/2021).

If you are going to adapt a novel like this, it would have been WAY better to not have done this anime from the beginning. This anime was something so bad ... that couldn't even stand by itself. It feels like they grabbed the novel, then passed it though a shredder and grabbed random bits to adapt the anime, and one could tell that without even having read the novel.

This series is an utterly disasterous attempt to create some kind of psychological anime that ended up not knowing where to go or what even the series was at first, let me explain: It's like the series forgot what it was about in just 6 chapters, what an achievement for a 12 episode series! I hoped the series would get better through the latest chapters but, it didn't.

Yet another tragic case of a very good premise with a terrible execution. They tried to do a series that would cover several seasons like many other series do, thinking that they could fill anything lacking in the next seasons, but the case is that this anime ended up being so full of plot holes, inconsistencies and an annoying ammount of deus-ex-machina that made me despise this anime.

I'd like to another thing: WHY adding a filler in a 12 episode series that doesn't adapt the full story? They could have used that time for making a story done slightly better.

Let's talk about the art, nothing outstanding, but for such this series, the ammount of leg shots and bust shots made me think this was rather to raise the audience to fill out the... plot they forgot they were doing. This anime could be easily categorized as ecchi if you asked me.

The soundtrack is mostly forgettable (except for the opening, which sounded cool), and voice acting is pretty generic. Except for some characters that sound pretty good, but still there's a voice I CANNOT stand: Ayanokouji. He sounds like he was forced to voice act, like he was dead inside. PONELE VOLUNTAD LA CONCHA DE TU MADRE, AYANOKOUJI.

The characters... I think this could be the reason this ended up being so bad, they are all so empty, one-sided and they fail to make watchers (at least me) to feel any kind of empathy for them, they all seem to be taken from a wikihow guide on how to make an anime. Except for Ayanokouji, I know I said I hated your voice, but you're the least hateable of the cast and the only one that is actually interesting, if all of them were as good as you... (not in the benevolent sense though).

As a conclussion, you'd be wasting your time if you want to see something about a meritocratic school, because it seems like this won't be for you. The novel seems to be actually good tho, I might give it a try later. Back to the anime: If you're a teenager in the verge of an hormone breakdown, you might maybe like this anime, but as for me, this wasn't definitely for my taste.

okay, first of all, this is the first real review I have written and I will use DeepL translate due to my bad english, I apologise if you notice any spelling or semantic errors, so let's start.

First of all, what is cote or also known as classroom of elite? As the name suggests, the anime takes place in a school of elites, I don't know much about this school, so I won't talk much about it, but I remember that it was founded with the money of the state or something like that, which means that almost everyone in the school should be the best ... in their field in a certain field, but since I'm writing this, it's not hard to guess that this is not the case, if you've been to school even once in your life - which I have - you've noticed how simple and ordinary students this "school of elites" has, Actually, this is not the problem, the problem is that these students are in such a school, I swear to you, in my middle school high school years, I knew people whose future was brighter than the students in this school, well, maybe there may be 2 or 3 or even quite a lot of idiots, there is something called torpil, after all, maybe these idiot students entered this school by torpil, but there is no mention of such a thing in the anime, this is literally a dead end, so I'll leave this part here.

So let's take a look at ayanokoji, the main character of the anime, which is the most important factor in the series becoming a popular series,

ayanokoji is an intelligent, cold-blooded, organised and in many ways charismatic character and that's what makes him one of the shittiest main characters I've ever seen, but why? There are many reasons but probably the biggest one is that the story doesn't focus on ayanokoji when it should focus on ayanokoji, it's hard to explain since I don't know technical terms, you'll probably understand what I'm talking about better when I talk about episode 12 but for now I'll keep talking about ayanokoji, the most important factor that makes ayanokoji boring is that he is predictable, yes, an anime main character who is both mentally/intelligently and physically superior is strangely rare, usually either his intelligence or power level is cut down somewhere, I don't know what the purpose was, but these do not change the fact that ayanokoji is a predictable and therefore boring main character, I might even be exaggerating a bit, but ayanokoji is no different to me than an isekai main character who doesn't get flustered when he sees a woman, he's not as deep as most people talk about because he's so simple, what he says is just rhetoric, and once you realise that, he becomes an even shittier main character, I have no idea what kind of character ayanokoji is in LN, and although I don't want to be prejudiced, if the story processing is even remotely similar to the anime, then probably the "ayanokoji is better in LN" comments people talk about are just an illusion.

Then the other thing I didn't like and even openly hated was the ending, the 12th episode. episode, the last episode of the anime, which was obviously made just to increase the popularity of the novel, should naturally leave an atmosphere like "holy shit that was so good" or "omg I have to read the rest of this" in the viewers, and the anime did the cheapest thing it could do to do this, leaving everything to the last episode, briefly like this, nothing is told until the last episode and suddenly everything turns out to be ayanokoji's plan, ok, first of all, this is literally insulting to the viewer, not showing anything until the last episode and at the last moment the story says "ha ha ha actually everything was his plan", I would like to talk more about it, but I'm tired of writing and as I said, I don't understand technical terms.

pros and cons (this part was added later, most of the things I wanted to tell but could not tell because I could not create the correct sentence structure and my technical knowledge was low).

pros:

+fantasy of non-phenomenal power

+although the characters are poor quality and poorly written, some scenes are entertaining

+the scenes where the characters interact with each other are not boring

+ the background of the main characters is intriguing

cons:

-both ayanokoji and suzune (I may remember the name wrongly) are boring, monotonous and predictable characters, there is no surprise elementary

-the story is monotonous, predictable and very repetitive

-characters are not introduced properly due to poor story presentation

-the fact that almost every character shown has a middle school level vision and behaviour destroys the believability of the setting and story

-the fact that the main character is perfect in every respect makes the plot unexciting, for the same reason the viewer does not get nervous or excited

-simple problems that arise in the story are conveyed as if they were very complicated and inextricably difficult, similarly, all kinds of events are magnified and unnecessarily complicated

-characters are either stereotypes or do not even have enough character traits to be a stereotype, or their screen time is too short to decide which of these is which.

-empty scenes that pretend to be clever but are meaningless and unnecessary for the story, characters and plot

-unnecessary fanservice

-that no-one is as clever as they should be

-no credibility or realism (because it does not contain any magic-like fantastic elements in it, even if it is fictional, and because it tries to have a realistic universe).

-no character development, the main character does not learn, realise or discover anything, we only learn that he knows these things, this is not character development.

I'll be honest, even I didn't think I could find such a bad direction, if I push myself a little more here
I could probably find more bad points, but I'm tired


Of course there are many more things that could be mentioned, side characters, suzune who is the second main character or enemy characters that I haven't mentioned so far, but no, enough of this hate spewing,

if you, the person reading this review, my advice to you is to either watch the anime at all or watch it with zero expectations, assuming that it is just a shitty power fantasy, I wish everyone a long life, a healthy and happy life.

Absolute Garbage. The premise is intriguing, but that's where the praise ends. The whole show makes it obvious that the author had no clear idea as to what they wanted to write about. Misunderstood philosophical quotes thrown around, completely random arcs that add nothing to the story(which usually isn't a problem, but in such a short show, is far from ideal), annoyingly excessive fanservice.

It tried to combine Death Note level genius protagonist with Psycho Pass style philosophy plus generic anime drama. The only thing that kept me watching was the slight chance that the show would go into more detail about the main character ... and/or premise, it doesn't happen.

I don't know what this was supposed to be, and I doubt the writer did either. This is one of the worst shows I have ever seen, by a long shot.

“The more disastrous the mishaps the simpler the reviewing task” - Donal Henahan

And boy does this show have a lot of mishaps. Classroom Of the Elite is the latest in a long line of anime that have a school setting that try to be distinct with its premise and setting, but only end up being as derivative as the ones that came before. COE spin is that students are sent to a special prestigious fully backed by the government academy that only the most best and elite of students can enter. But the best students of what? Athletics? Education? Prestige? I don’t know and the ... show doesn’t bother to get into the specifics with that, as it wants to mesmerize you with it’s seemingly student paradise. Students are to remain in the campus, and are given points that are akin to money that refills every month allowing them to do basically anything they want without parental notice. What was an interesting premise as is with the beginning of titles similar to this starts to rocket down as i doesn’t know how to tap into the full potential of the premise and limp around to the very end with a dull cast of characters.

The story at least that is what i think it was trying to be, is an assortment of three arcs each one boiling down to being a test with only one of them being an actual test. Each Arc plays out the same way with the group being presented with a problem that continues to escalate until the final moment when Kiyotaka is able to swoop in and resolve the problem which is then explained by him on how he was able to do it. Rinse and Repeat. What makes it more damning is that there is nothing cohesive that binds the story together, i mean one of the arc is so far removed that it’s on another island they add nothing other than more characters the show has to juggle around but doing nothing with them.

This lead me to the characters. They’re all flat and 1 to 2-dimensional at best. Our protagonist Kiyo is basically a response to many school protagonist that tend to be overtly emotional and average in everything, but instead of changing for the better we end of with a stoic gary-stu. He’s a person that tries to be average when in reality he’s this super smart, athletic, machiavellian character who can impress the ladies without even trying. Yet he’s a character that is able to do all this but doesn’t have any motivation to do them other than that he does them, and even at the end when his “true” motivation is revealed it’s as meaningless as having none at all. Even his backstory is a vapid as the rest of him that creates this vagueness that allows to viewer to easily self-insert into an empty husk. Just to add more he is also a part of class D the lowest class with the failing students even though this is suppose to be a grand prestigious school. Why is he hear? Because if there is one thing people like more than being self-inserts, they also like being the underdog.

Other characters in the class are Horikita a student who is smarter than the others in her class and was only placed in the in their because??? I don’t think they bothered explaining why. Nonetheless she’s there and is the main heroine of the story who works along Kiyo in all the arcs but mainly there as a plot device for our main character to do something. Next is Kushida who is the friendliest of the characters until the show reveals her “dark” side trying to make her a more complex character than she actually is. Because in truth she is like a paper rectangle with two different colors on each side, they may both be different but they are still a flat rectangle with little depth. The rest of the class is an afterthought with their characters being info dumped by the main characters or just plastered on the screen with walls of text instead of putting effort into them, they are all one note. The other classes are just skimmed across except class C that the show plays out to be the antagonist that’s full of thugs that are out to beat class D but just come out to be one note as well.

Production values for the show are good as is with many modern anime. The character designs are generic but still are able to make them appealing. One thing that did stand out from them however where their eyes that are very vibrant even during the dark as if they were nocturnal animals, they also have this purple hue to them that gives their eyes to different colors. Other than this there’s not much else. The background is a contemporary japanese setting until they go to the jungle but even then really doesn’t serve anything other than a different venue. The voice acting was decent but i wasn’t anything new from what i’ve heard in other anime. The soundtrack for the most part is forgettable except for one part when there was electronic music playing, and i couldn’t take the scene seriously.

I dare hate to use this word as it has become a buzzword at this point when discussing shows, but this show in particular is just pretentious. Just from the beginning of the title screen when it shows a quote from a famous philosopher that is supposed to make us think on how it will relate to the show only in the end to just be a speck that’s never revisited. Characters also quote and use references as if it was trying to make a philosophical point only to mean nothing in the end. This is why i don’t like using quotes because you should use your own words to convey what you mean not anyone else. I only used quotes for this review because at least mine has more bearing than anything the show tried to present. This show is so up it’s own ass and not aware of it that any time it tries to be serious it comes off as ridiculous and when it tries to be ridiculous it ends up being dull.

If there’s one thing to take from this show than know this. Back in middle school my English teacher would give us quotes on famous people and we would have 5 min to write what it means with our own words. So just do that gather all the quotes from the show and make your own meaning because at least you might actually get something mindful out of it.

WARNING: Will probably be VERY LONG (~2400 words) and contain spoilers. Ranting may be frequent.

Classroom of the Elite fails at everything it attempts to do. Instead of being an interesting and thrilling show it's one of the most boring and pretentious pieces of media I had to endure. We have a show that tries to be intellectual but it's undercut by blatant fanservice scenes and characters cut-and-pasted out of a generic harem trash. The production values are so alarmingly terrible it feels that no one who worked on this show cared about it. I'll try and summarize exactly what makes this show so terrible but ... heed that warning at the beginning.

Classroom of the Elite takes place in some future where there's a highschool that divides it's students into various classes depending on some unexplained assessment of their character and traits. Our story follows a guy who finds himself in the D Class which is considered to be the class that the worst of society is dumped. His class is shit on by everyone else including teaching staff for being human trash and they continue to be trodden on. But wait, this guy is really smart! And he can solve all the problems with his big brain! And we follow his hi-jinks throughout the show as he confronts and tackles the oppressiveness of the system with his classmates from the shadows as he keeps himself out of the spotlight. There's also some girl MC with long hair and another with short hair. They're smart too I think.

I'm not gonna hide the fact that I am completely disinterested in all the characters of this show. If you can even call them that. They're all generic one-note personality traits that get extremely shallow development if they're lucky to get them at all. Look, if your anime's plot is being progressed by the same three idiotic comic-reliefs there's a point where it's impossible to take any of the characters seriously. The male MC is the main pull for this anime since people love the idea of being the edgy and intelligent bad-ass who works as a hero from behind the scenes. That's fine and all but the drop-off is that he literally has no personality. He's got a backstory, sure, but that's not touched much upon in the anime and that doesn't single-handedly build a character. Because of his lack of personality the story just writes him to do whatever for no rhyme or reason. Why does he help his classmates? What's his motivations? Why does he go super edgy during the last few minutes of the show? Having a mysterious character is fine and all but he isn't shown to do anything out of his own violation which makes him feel incredibly passive. He just ends up being another generic self-insert harem protagonist by the end of the show because of course he picks up chicks like they're pokemon without even realizing it. The anime's story almost bends it's will to this character because everything he does basically saves everyone else. Yet nothing he goes through sticks with him because he has to remain a blank slate for the audience to insert.

Out of the two female MCs (or at least I think they're main characters. The comedic reliefs have more screentime than both of them combined I think) the long-haired one had the most potential. And she's also the one character I can singularly use to define this anime's garbage writing and intent. Yep you got a backstory. Yep you got a motivation: she wants to get to A Class and impress her brother. Yes she has a path of development - going from a cold, aloof person who works alone to someone who is encouraged by her situation to work with others and accept other people. And yet she never moves from her position in the entire series. I couldn't believe how little she got until I was suffering through episode 10 and realized she was just the same, cold character who whined constantly about how she hated working with others and could do things herself. Episode fucking ten people and she's still complaining about the most obvious shit like "B Class is better than D in every way". Well no shit because you haven't done anything about it. All you do throughout the show is just dump the most obvious exposition to the audience like we're five-year-olds. At this point we've been through a few arcs together and even had some intimate moments with other characters who seemed to be able to warm her up but no. Her character simply isn't written to have any development. She has the motivation but she isn't proactive about it. She does nothing to actually ascend to a higher class. Nothing. From this I can only conclude that she is bait and harem material for our male MC and that the author genuinely doesn't care about her at all other than her one-note personality. Everything she does manage to do is trivialized to make our male MC look good. Can't stand up to her brother who is going to do some casual domestic violence? Let the male MC come in and block the punch. Managed to beat another skilled martial artist (gotta admit Capoeira is so cool animated) while suffering from plot-induced fever? Sorry get wrecked the male MC is here to fix everything not you. How about declaring war on the Class system during the pool episode because you found your affirmation as a person and not because the male MC literally told you to do so? I almost feel bad for her seeing how little she actually does in the story.

I'm not gonna touch too much on the short-hair female MC since she suffers from a bad case of readthenovelitus. Having similar potential to the long-haired female MC but not actually doing much. Yeah you got your double personality but what does that accomplish in the overarching plot? I don't know why she's like this or what she wants to do so why should I care about her? The large cast of characters is indicative that there's supposed to be much more focus on them in the light novel and after reading some spoilers I see that the light novel follows a more character-of-the-week system where a spotlight is shone on some character or another every character arc. Seeing how horribly paced the anime was and how disproportionate some of the screentime was to the various characters based on their relative importance to the show, this method did not translate well from paper to animation. It's a shame because the show dicks around so much on pointless fanservice and terrible writing it could give us so much more of the characters. I want to know more about why each member of D Class is in D Class. I want to know why the B Class girl has so much money. But the anime doesn't give us any more than morsels. So in the end we have about 20 characters and none of them actually do anything because of how little screentime they get. None of them have any goals or motivations whatsoever. Tell me what makes any of the characters tick just from the anime alone.

The so-called villains are just so comically villainous. The anime uses the cheapest, most generic ways possible to build them up. How do you make the C Class guy even more of an asshole? Just make him some abusive asshole who wants to sexually assault our female MCs for no reason. The A Class "villains" have thin personality traits and don't do anything above walking around and looking smart. The anime tells us they're smart sure but what do they actually do? Isn't this girl with a cane supposed to be some master manipulator? What does she actually do in the context of the anime? Heck the C Class villain is probably the one that initiates the most conflict and only out of some stupid shenanigans and wild assumptions that the D Class are literal morons because of plot. Every one of them feels like they're just reading a script of a shitty highschool drama and are trying way too hard to be super edgy teenagers. None of them feel like actual people with relatable goals or motivations.

The plot is pretty terrible. I don't even want to know how the writing process went down seeing that one episode opened up with a literal three-minute argument on toilets. The plot just goes off in every direction without care so the entire show feels disjointed with most of it being explained in boring exposition. I thought we were stuck in a brutal regime of systematic oppression but then we become a mystery show then we have some shitty romance subplot with the big-boobs girl and finally we have a Lord of the Flies thing on a deserted island? Yeah it's good to change your settings every so often to explore your world and new scenarios but there are two major problems this anime faces: One is that the themes are never really explored in any fashion for the short story-arc they reside in and Second: the plot is moved by some of the most contrived garbage I'v seen since Aldnoah fucking Zero. On the theme side: Okay so we bring up the plot tread that points can be used to buy almost anything. Cool, that was repeatedly told to us and the characters in the first arc and re-incorporated it in a pretty decent finale where the male MC uses it to buy literal test scores to save a classmate. Cool we got it. But then it's dropped for the rest of the show and is never brought up until some final scene in the final episode concerning the B Class girl. None of the other themes in any of the other arcs carry over to latter arcs as well so everything that happens feels so inconsequential. On a tangent I thought this point system was supposed to be important? After suffering from no points does D Class do anything about it? Isn't it, like, a big deal to not have any money? No the class doesn't change at all. They go through the rest of the anime after the first arc like nothing happened and didn't suffer any consequences and needing the male MC to bail them out.

The plot progression is just so contrived and fake. Oh no the narcissist guy was a narcissist and ditched us costing us thirty points oh no. Oh no someone stole fucking underwear and we're going to spend a literal entire episode stalled on it instead of achieving the same plot progression with much less effort by just being better at writing. At least on 4 occasions is the writing progressed or initiated by one of the comedic relief characters. The red-haired guy is just an idiot...because? He initiates the C Class conflict but never develops from being an angry idiot. The other comedic reliefs also play non-trivial roles in the plot. It's just...why? Why give so much screentime to them if you're not going to do anything with them? And yes I am interested in them because they could give insight into the world of the story. Why are people who are talented and passionate in some certain areas (basketball in the case of red-hair guy) still considered the dregs of society and put in D Class? The anime never tells us this because it wants to keep espousing it's pseudo-intellectual crap of "we live in a society" or "humanity this humanity that". Ironically this anime loves it's fanservice scenes so I don't know which intellectual crowd this anime wants to draw in. And honestly I ain't even bothered to go into some of the themes this show touches on since the show itself seems like it doesn't care but it includes stuff like collective punishment and rewarding, individualism vs conformism, as well as the social implications of such. But the anime doesn't do anything about these themes. It just parades them around expecting us to go "ooooh so clever yeah yeah".

The animation is pretty terrible for the most part. There's a few times where it's quite obvious that they didn't check the final product because the characters sometimes look completely different between shots because they were drawn by different animators. They also have a bad habit of recycling shots especially in some wide-angle shows. There's one scene where this girl is playing chess and moves a piece but the very next shot is the same position as when she didn't move the piece. This was like within 10 seconds wtf. The art also just looks pretty...bad. The colours are so bland and there isn't interesting to look at in the environments. The direction is also just plain with only some sparse action scenes here or there that actually look good. There's parts where they sap on walls of text onto the screen which is clearly just exposition lifted from the light novel...but then they proceed to say the exposition...so what was the point? The anime also suffers a lot from using too many flashbacks. Like, 5 minutes ago sort of flashbacks. Yes anime we got it we're not idiots thanks.

The music is...odd to say the least. They have this hard bass playing sometimes in the intense scenes and it feels somewhat out of place and juvenile. Like the anime just wants to put as much edge as possible in it's soundtrack. I'm not privy to the word "edge" or "edgy" but this honestly feels like that. I've seen this sort of thing in other action-heavy and thriller shows but those were okay because it didn't feel like they were trying too hard. In this anime it's like the music is trying to distract us from the stark reality of the show- that this is just about some stupid edgy teenagers having highschool drama. It doesn't feel earned. The OPs and EDs were just generic and uninteresting songs. The OP is played to some crappy words and silhouettes montage of German, Japanese, French and English that doesn't describe the anime in any way. The OP isn't helped by the really shitty opening card which with every new episode has a different intellectual quote clearly not taken in context and just slapped on because it sounded cool. The voice acting is overall bad. I know Chiba Shouya is taking on roles of fairly emotionally inexpressive characters (very different from un-emotional characters mind you) with characters like the MCs of Irodzuku Sekai and Tsuki ga Kirei but this is just a low for him. He sounded genuinely disinterested in his character this time and I can't blame him. Kitou Akari was fine as the tsundere I guess. She works better with more emotional characters and there are indeed points in the anime where her character gets emotional and she works soemthing good out of it. I'm glad she went on to do very well as Iwanaga Kotoko in In/Spectre (but she then went to be in Ex-Arm. Damn). I haven't heard much from Kubo Yurika and she didn't do much here either seeing how little screentime her character got. The rest of the voice acting ranged from fine to decent with Touyama Nao probably doing the best which is normal. She's just the best.

This anime is a disaster. I admit that my expectations going into this anime weren't high but this is still so disappointing. The first few episodes actually bring up some interesting plot threads and characters but it all falls apart as the anime goes on. It's pretentious and pseudo-intellectual presentation annoyed me since it tried so hard to be smart but all of the solutions ended up being generic and predictable. The characters had so much going for them but the terrible writing gave them nothing to work with. The anime is overall just awful and I can't recommend this to anyone. I'm surprised it got so popular at the time of it's release. If I could recommenced anything else then watch the more recent Munou no Nana because ,while not great, has more interesting characters and character dynamics and the intellectual bullshit part is actually well-executed. Just avoid this one.

Thanks for reading I guess.