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.