Manga
The manga that were hits in Japan in the 2010s.
2010S HITS
About
Meet the would-be assassins of class 3-E: Sugino, who let his grades slip and got kicked off the baseball team. Karma, who’s doing well in his classes but keeps getting suspended for fighting. And Okuda, who lacks both academic and social skills, yet excels at one subject: chemistry. Who has the best chance of winning that reward? Will the deed be accomplished through pity, brute force or poison...? And what chance does their teacher have of repairing his students’ tattered self-esteem?
Character analysis
Koro-sensei is the creature responsible for blowing up most of the moon, and the government's solution is to let his own students try to assassinate him for a massive reward, while he spends the year actually teaching them better than any instructor they've had. The story never lets you fully forget that his students are also planning to kill him.
Nagisa starts as one of the class's less noticeable students, but his calm observation and knack for reading people make him unexpectedly good at the class's actual assignment. His soft-spoken manner contrasts with how coldly effective he becomes in combat.
Karma is intelligent and competitive in a way that regularly gets him in trouble, and he approaches the assassination attempts with more relish than most of his classmates. His rivalry with Nagisa over who's better suited to land the kill gives the class's mission a personal edge beyond the reward money.
Kayano is friendly and easygoing around her classmates, which makes the later revelation of her private motive for wanting Koro-sensei dead land as a real gut-punch rather than a twist for its own sake.
Irina is brought in as an English teacher specifically because of her assassination skills, and her open contempt for the students slowly shifts as she realizes how much more effective Koro-sensei is at both teaching and surviving her attempts.
Status evaluation
Character art is expressive and clean, and Koro-sensei's exaggerated faces carry a lot of the comedy on their own.
The assassination premise keeps escalating in creative ways while still leaving room for individual backstories.
Koro-sensei's absurd speed and silly personality quirks keep the tone light even during serious arcs.
Individual student backstories, and the class's growing bond with the teacher they're supposed to kill, build to a genuinely moving finish.
Koro-sensei's design is strange rather than frightening, and the tone stays more adventurous than horror-driven.
Fights involve weapons and explosions, but the violence is played more for action than graphic detail.
A large classroom cast and shifting assassination plans add some tracking without becoming hard to follow.
This figure has not been verified against a current source and should be treated as approximate.
“A monster who destroyed the moon turns out to be the best teacher any of these kids have ever had, and somehow that's the believable part.”