STORY/CHARACTERS-
Recapping the plot, the school year is almost up and the classes have more exams to do. It has been 7 years now since season 1. I have made up my mind about this series more clearly. COTE is a series that has good ideas, but they are executed in really underwhelming ways. There is a lot of buildup for these dumb exams they're taking(ie people talking to each other)for multiple episodes, but when the exams happen, it's anticlimactic and boring. There is just no conflict or sense of consequence, it's just people talking to each other about what they plan on doing. It’s so mind-numbing.
It also…..ugh… im sorry CAN WE STOP WITH THESE STUPID EPISODE TITLES? Not only are they pointless and fake deep but they have nothing and i mean nothing to do with the episode itself
Also, the whole high school gimmick dictating these students' lives starts to get tiresome. Because the anime never really convinces me to care about any of them. There are too many goddamn people in the show to keep up with. And even if that is the point, these characters are ridiculously hollow and boring to see on screen.
The antagonist this season is basically Ayanakoji: Part 2, but with more emotions, I didn’t hate her, just the characters around her. Horikita couldn't save this season because despite warming up to others. She tries negotiating with people who hate her, which is just dumb. I appreciate the plot with her brother, but the anime does little to no justice, no sense of artistic direction, or enhancing it from its source material. It felt like I was watching a history documentary at 12 am on a Wednesday. I completely fell asleep on the episode that concluded her character arc, because surprise surprise, it was painfully boring.
And the anime still does that bullshit where it takes itself way too seriously. Some of the most dramatic moments in this show are super immature and dumb. For example in this season, a girl has a mental breakdown over a hairclip she stole in middle school. Lol im not joking. Then you have the main antagonist in this season who goes around spreading unconfirmed rumors, just for Ayanakoji to go tell the teacher to make her stop. What the hell, I thought this was high school, not kindergarten. This right here is the “mind games” you are in store for with Classroom of the Elite.
One quote that sums up my frustration with this anime is when one character,Green haired short dude, is talking about his past in middle school dealing with bullies. He says that him dealing with them is like “seeing the darkest depths of the human psyche”. Wow…. I just can’t. Serial killers? parasitic politicians? domestic abusers? suicidal people? trauma victims? and the mentally ill? Yea fuck 'em all, truly the darkest and most depraved of the human psyche come from a bunch of bullies in middle school. This is the most r/im14andthisisdeep thing possibly ever. I mean yea I get it, school bullies are pretty ruthless, but the “greatest depths of human darkness”? Give me a fucking break, writers.Such an ignorant and closeminded representation of how humanity works.
'THOSE WHO CAN NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT"-
Ok so I ripped this anime a new one, so I guess I’ll talk about the best episode in this entire franchise. Episode 8. What can I say? I enjoyed it a good bit actually. Only because of the concept. Instead of having these stupid and complicated exams to test the students….wits?This time, it's a popularity poll to determine which student should be expelled from each class. And things I was asking the series to do, it did! A simple yet effective concept? A sense of consequence resulting in tensions rising? A shocking revelation that wasn’t calculated by Ayanakoji-sama? And I can't believe it! An actual exam that seems to simulate the harsh and cutthroat reality awaiting these students after they graduate? Nooooooo wayyyyyyyyyyyy! My prayers have been answered.
I guess God was on a budget though, because the rest of the show was like overdosing on melatonin.I legit don’t even remember what happened in like 80 percent of the season, not because I didn’t pay attention, but I just did not care at all. Even when I get invested, there are just some really stupid and convenient plot moments that just take me out of the show. The ending is absolute ass. Someone literally hacks into the final exam and cheats, but Ayanakoji just doesn't care to tell the staff. And the last two episodes were an absolute snoresville. Sure it ties loose ends with Horikita and her brother, but its executed in the stalest way imaginable. Also, it teases some new things like Ayanakoji’s past but fool me once, shame on you. It did this exact same thing in the last season, teasing his past and that basically was not developed until the last two episodes of this season. Just get on with it already.
MY THOUGHTS ON AYANAKOJI THREE YEARS LATER.
So after three seasons with Kiyotaka, do I like him as an MC? Not really. I'm still sick of his lack of a personality, I'm sick of him coming up with solutions out of nowhere and ruining any tension. I'm sick of how many times he talks about how he is the best at whatever but doesn’t try too hard because it would be boring(not like the anime wasn’t boring enough already). I'm sick of how the show just makes him this Messiah who just solves everyone’s problem conditionally, I’m sick of how everyone just likes him despite how boring he is. I don’t like any of his interactions because as seen from the past two seasons, his interactions and connections mean nothing to him……but hear me out. He actually developed a little. Don’t get your hopes up, I did say a little but I am concerned with how he’ll play out. The anime caught me off guard for moments, because it felt like at times Ayanakoji cared about someone, saying he would protect them, buying them presents, and whatnot. I wasn’t convinced with these moments because I felt like the anime was bullshitting me for that“aha gotcha moment i actually dont care” plot twist that he did in both seasons.But this time around, Ayanakoji wanted to feel more of these moments, not for some prize or intel, but to at least understand more of these emotions. This is a commendable angle that I'm sure the anime will just disregard in later seasons.And there was one time I related to him. The facial expression Ayanakoji makes is the same facial expression I made while watching this anime.
ART/ANIMATION-
The anime still looks very bland and boring with subpar animation and character designs. Its like, why even bother being an anime when you don’t take advantage of the endless artistic choices that can be made in the realm of animation? At this point, COTE could just be a live-action show, even then, the actors would be able to show more emotions than the multitude of characters in this anime who make one facial expression and nothing else.One notable shot in this anime was when two people were playing chess, and their hands were so obviously CGI. It looked like crap, to be honest. It reminded me of the CGI hands Kakegurui had back in 2017. And then my mind wandered off and thought, if COTE had the same visual flair and lavish artistic direction that Kakegurui had, it would be really good. Im not asking for this anime to be a style over substance type of thing, or give the characters kookie faces; I just want the anime to dooooooo soooomthing that justifies its existence.
MUSIC-
And the soundtrack isn’t intense yet bland now. This time, its intense and annoying. It repeats that bass drop creepy track literally every time a character speaks now, and there was one track that sounded like something from Death Note. It was this over-the-top choir opera ballad. But it was so on the nose that I just laughed every time I heard it. I guess the anime was really feelin itself trying to channel all the Light Yogami vibes, but I doubt this anime has the balls to kill people. I mean we all know that life in anime just ends when you leave high school.
ENJOYMENT-
So as you can tell…I enjoyed this anime a lot and I think it is a really good one. As much as I wanna say “I'm too old for this shit”. I can’t. Season 1 of COTE aired when I was in my senior year of high school, so I thought I was the perfect target audience for it. But I found it mediocre. Then more and more seasons started coming out of the same crap. What makes this season hard to rate is how good it is compared to season 2. I barely remember the first two seasons, but I remember even less from season 3 which I just finished a day ago. All I remember is this season having more bullshit than the first two. It goes back to that internet argument on if forgettable is worse than bad since bad is more memorable. In my opinion no. That time you broke your leg is more memorable than that time you got a paper cut, but would I rather get a paper cut than break my leg again? Yes. Real talk though, I still think episode 8 is the best out of the three seasons, but the other 12 episodes of pure boredom/frustration/sleeping/head shaking do not make it worth the time.
