Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review
Title:
Assassination Classroom: Volume 2
Who wrote it?
Yusei Matsui, author of Neuro: Supernatural Detective.
Plot in a box:
Class E, the last stop for misfit students, has a new teacher. Koro Sensei already vaporized the moon and has promised the same for Earth next March, unless one of his pupils can kill him first.
Invent a new title for this book:
Killing Mr. Koro
Read this if you like:
The robust anime/manga genre about high schools for things there are not really high schools for, like vampires, mages, aliens, ninjas, etc.
Meet the book’s lead:
Koro Sensei is the strange, squid-like and seemingly indestructible alien who has promised to destroy the world next spring, but in the meantime he has decided to dedicate his ridiculous suite of superpowers (he can also turn invisible, create clones of himself, and fly at supersonic speeds) to being the best teacher these kids have ever had.
Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:
A CGI creature voiced by George Takei.
Setting: Would you want to live there?
The school administration purposefully keeps the Class E kids down, in order to inspire the other students to work harder to avoid their sad fate. In addition, the Ministry of Defense is totally comfortable recruiting the kids left behind to assassinate the most ludicrously dangerous alien creature ever encountered. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t send him there.
What was your favorite sentence?
“What’s the rush?”
“A band from Canada.”
The Verdict:
Assassination Classroom: Volume 2 is a competent entry in a very well-worn genre. While the art is fun and the irreverent humor can be charming at times, it doesn’t really do anything newer or better than the hundreds of other manga about bizarre concepts for high schools. Other than the enigmatic Koro Sensei, none of the other characters leave much of an impression beyond their obvious defining character traits. Some of this is no doubt a symptom of picking up in the middle of an ongoing series, but there didn’t seem to be any character development, any advancement of the plot, or any memorable scenes after the first failed attempt to kill Koro. It’s not a bad manga, but if you really want to read about high school assassins, I would recommend Darker Than Black or Gunslinger Girl before Assassination Classroom.
About the author
BH Shepherd is a writer and a DJ from Texas. He graduated from Skidmore College in 2005 with degrees in English and Demonology after writing a thesis about Doctor Doom. A hardcore sci-fi geek, noir junkie and comic book prophet, BH Shepherd has spent a lot of time studying things that don’t exist. He currently resides in Austin, where he is working on The Greatest Novel Ever.
