Spy Kyoushitsu

After a gruesome war wreaked havoc on the general populace, the governments of the world turned to a more elusive tactic to further their agendas—a war fought in the shadows.

Lily, a beautiful girl with white locks, is a student in one of the many institutions that train youths into becoming capable spies. Unfortunately, despite scoring well in the written exams, she only manages to barely pass her practicals. With no real world skills to speak of, her hopes of graduating are dismal—until she is offered an opportunity to join the mysterious team "Tomoshibi" and partake in an Impassable Mission.

Excited by the prospect of working with the elite, Lily enthusiastically accepts. However, she is struck dumb when she arrives at Kagerou Palace and the true purpose of Tomoshibi and its hopeless situation comes into light. Joined by other problematic female spies along with a mysterious young man spearheading the operation, Lily realizes that this is not the ideal escapade she had pictured.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Spy Kyoushitsu placed second in the Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! ranking in the best light novel category in 2021.

The series has been published in English as Spy Classroom by Yen Press under the Yen On imprint since August 24, 2021.

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Lily

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Thea

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Grete

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Monika

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Erna

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Annett

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Klaus

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Sibylla

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Sara

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Matilda

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Reviews

May 6, 2022

Dhafindaffa

Recommended

Preliminary (5/? eps)

~ SPOILERS ~

If we use Gigguk's method to describe this light novel, it would be :

"Re-skinned Assassination Classroom."

This Light Novel is the Grand Prize winner of the 32nd Fantasia Taisho awards, with the submitted title of "The Spy’s Sweet Temptations—All the Other Students Are Beautiful Girls" (NOW this is a light novel title lmao).

...

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Feb 14, 2021

enricocaliolo

Recommended

Preliminary (20/? eps)

A refreshing, wonderful and entertaining light novel.
For all of you who are fed up of fantasy or school’s setting, give a try to this novel!

Ok, for starters. I found this light novel for pure chance almost a year ago. I was starting to read light novels, and the theme sure piqued my interest instantaneously: spy girls. Just that was enough to buy me. And, wow, I never expected it to be that good. I literally love all the things, from the characters to the prose.

So, what is Spy Room? To give you a quick summary, seven girls were reunited to form a special team of ...

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Jul 21, 2023

Phasar2022

Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (33/? eps)

Spoiler

With the latest James Bond movie No Time to Die finally being released, many of us are starting to think about stories featuring spies. To capitalise on this trend, Yen Press have brought the light novel series Spy Classroom to the West, but does it deliver an interesting read? Let’s find out!

The story is set in a world where a devastating military conflict between countries has left millions of innocent people dead. Eventually, a peace treaty was signed but behind the scenes a new war is brewing – one fought between spies. One such spy is Klaus who is tasked with completing an Impossible Mission. ... There is more than a 90% chance of failure and the world-class team he belongs to already tried and lost their lives for it (Klaus only survived due to not being with them) but the fate of the world rests on someone being able to complete it.

Before he can take on the Impossible Mission, Klaus must first recruit a new team but the members he selects are all spies with no practical experience and on the verge of dropping out of their respective spy schools! One of the spies selected is our protagonist, Lily, who’s overjoyed to be given a mission and escape the confounds of school. However, once she and the other girls whom Klaus has selected have met their new leader, they begin to fear for their lives. Klaus is supposed to be giving them training to help them survive on their mission but, perhaps because he’s a genius, Klaus is hopeless when it comes to teaching.

Klaus quickly gives up on the idea of teaching and instead instructs Lily and the others to fight him. After all, If they can defeat him in combat, then they’ll be more than ready to take on the Impossible Mission! This naturally leads to many failures for the girls, but each defeat serves as a learning experience and brings them closer together, if nothing else.

As you may suspect from my write-up so far, most of Spy Classroom Volume 1 is focused on Lily and the others trying to defeat Klaus. Through these scenes, we slowly get to understand why Klaus chose these spies for his team and it’s largely because they’re all extremely skilled in one area. Lily, for example, can send out poison from her body to immobilise enemies, while she herself is immune to poisons. Another of the team called Erna can ‘smell’ misfortune and lead her enemies straight into unfortunate accidents. With all their talents combined, they could become an even stronger team than the one Klaus used to belong to.

Although the majority of the book is spent on training the girls, this volume does also see them take on the Impossible Mission so we’re not left hanging to see how that will resolve. The volume as a whole doesn’t serve all that well as a one-shot, given its clear that future instalments will focus on some of the other girls and flesh them out, but I do find myself grateful that Takemachi got the Impossible Mission plotline over and done with, rather than stringing the readers along.

This is Takemachi’s debut work and was the winner of the 32nd Fantasia Taisho awards. Reading through it, you can certainly see how it won the judges over, given its charming cast and interesting idea. It might not be the best spy thriller out there (at least not yet), but there is a lot to be said for how interesting a story can be about a bunch of seemingly useless characters becoming some of the best in the world. I also appreciate that, despite how many girls are around Klaus, this doesn’t present itself as a harem situation and even if one or two of the cast develop feelings for him later on, I think it’ll at least feel natural.

The other thing Takemachi has in their favour is that Spy Classroom is one of the only spy-focused light novels on the market right now. Lately, we’ve seen a trend involving stories about assassins, but those usually also double as isekai stories which this refreshingly isn’t.

I think Volume 1 serves as a solid foundation on which to build on going forward. Now that Klaus has trained the girls and established the team, it means the next book should be more focused on whatever mission they embark on and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how that unfolds. If nothing else, this series is fun and it never strays into being unbelievable within the world Takemachi has created.

As previously mentioned, Spy Classroom Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press and has been translated by Nathaniel Thrasher. The translation reads well with no issues to note. Illustrations for the series are handled by Tomari (My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me! and There’s No Way a Side Character Like Me Could Be Popular, Right?) and they’re fairly underwhelming, given the decision to focus on closeups of the girls. The colour page at the front is the most memorable since it’s a fold-out illustration showcasing all of the cast along with their codenames.

The series is ongoing in Japan with 6 volumes and there is also a manga adaptation, which Yen Press will start releasing in January. Volume 2 of the light novel series is scheduled for an English release in January as well.

Overall, Spy Classroom brings something new to the English light novel market and proves to be a delightful read. It may not be the best spy book out there nor the best light novel, but it’s a lot of fun to read and I think that’s more than enough to captivate readers for this first instalment.

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considering picking this up but the “romance” tag worries me removed-user - Oct 20, 2022	5 replies	by Baoyeuconpo9999 »» Aug 12, 2023 11:02 AM
Poll: Spy Kyoushitsu Volume 3 Discussion YosepRA - Apr 28, 2022	4 replies	by MadanielFL »» Nov 30, 2022 10:02 PM
Poll: Spy Kyoushitsu Volume 2 Discussion YosepRA - Mar 20, 2022	1 replies	by Wunder428 »» Oct 25, 2022 9:25 PM
Poll: Spy Kyoushitsu Volume 1 Discussion YosepRA - Jan 25, 2022	2 replies	by MadanielFL »» Aug 30, 2022 9:56 PM
Anime adaptation announced AkeZZZ - Mar 13, 2022	6 replies	by Haneken2086 »» Mar 13, 2022 2:51 PM

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