Fiction for Utilitarians: Assassination Classroom

[feotakahari]

This is the most Japanese thing I have ever read in my entire life.

Kunugigaoka Junior High is one of the greatest schools in Japan, built on the ideal that 95% of its students should go on to academic and professional success. The motivating factor for its students? Not being one of the other 5%. Everyone knows that if your grades fall too far or you break too many school rules, you’ll end up in class E, “E-as-in-End,” with less resources, worse teachers, and virtually no chance of going on to a good college. Every aspect of school life is built to grind down and humiliate class E, while reminding all the other classes that class E is where they’ll go if they screw up. Class E is a warning to the best students (“Keep your nose clean, and stay out of class E!”), a comfort to the worst (“No matter how worthless you feel, you’re smarter and more successful than class E!”), and an institution that must not and cannot be challenged.

Class E’s new teacher may change all that. He’s the best teacher these kids have ever had, and their best chance at making something of their lives. Unfortunately, he’s also an evil tentacle monster, and they need to kill him before he blows up the planet.

I did say that this is the most Japanese thing I’ve ever read.

Narrowly speaking, Assassination Classroom wants to know what’s a better teaching method: giving someone a bar to leap, or a mountain to climb. Classes A through D are basically handed their sense of accomplishment, by virtue of not being class E, and this works to a certain extent! “Not being class E” is a sufficient standard to graduate and find a well-paying job. But it’s no incentive to excel beyond that minimum standard, or to develop your skills in ways that aren’t part of the conventional curriculum. It’s the school as factory, manufacturing reasonably competent, near-identical office drones.

The students of Class E start with a near-impossible challenge. None of their individual skills are sufficient to defeat their monstrous teacher, and as they are, even their combined knowledge won’t be enough. That means they need to each find and develop the things they’re best at. Together, they can raise each other to ever-greater heights as they search for a way to save the world and salvage their lives.

More broadly, Assassination Classroom wants to know what kind of society works best for developing individual potential. It’s not just a story about people who don’t fit in, but about where and how they would fit in, and what it would take for them to become the best possible versions of their current selves. This is not an idea that American fiction is equipped to recognize, let alone address! When American fiction cares at all about individual growth, it tends to go for a libertarian fantasy in which society is treated as an obstacle that should be minimized and kept out of the way. Reading this manga has forced me to think more deeply about everything from Boku no Hero Academia to Dragon Ball Z, noticing ideas and messages that passed right by me because it never occurred to me that I should be looking for them.

Assassination Classroom is easily available in both manga and anime form from a wide variety of sites. I haven’t seen the anime, so I can’t compare it to the manga.