Classroom Crisis is back! After two straight episodes of tedious and emotionally sterile boardroom shenanigans, Classroom Crisis finally returned to what it’s actually good at – demonstrating remarkable humanity in the conversations between its lead characters. And jeez, was this episode’s big conversation ever a stunner. The cathartic reunion between Nagisa and Mizuki here honestly justifies the series for me pretty much single-handedly. Satisfying romance is one of those mystical white elephants of anime storytelling, and these two have all kinds of character-coherent and endearing chemistry. Couple that with the dramatic stakes of Nagisa being at his lowest point and Mizuki dragging him out of it, and you’ve got a scene that will pretty much permanently endear me to this series regardless of all its other (numerous) failings. Scenes like this are what I’m in fiction for – I built my first novel around a scene that was basically exactly like this, and I will probably be always be a sucker for “I know things are bad, but god damnit, I care about you. We can get through this together.” Nice work, Classroom Crisis. You got me.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!

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This week’s Classroom Crisis was… an episode. For the second week straight, the show focused largely on Nagisa’s political dealings within the Kirishina Corporation, and for the second week straight, those dealings failed to have basically any emotional grounding or sense of coherent internal drama. Nagisa’s stuff here is really just “stuff happening” – it all exists to the side of the conflicts that either have some earned emotional weight or drive at the contrast between pragmatism and idealism (which is a conflict that’s itself largely confined to the conversations between Kaito and Nagisa, since the actual political stuff is way too simplistic to carry much meaning). This episode had one great conversation between Iris and Mizuki that reflected what the show is actually good at, but aside from that, this was a dreary wash.

But anyway. You can check out my breakdown over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Well, we finally hit Nagisa’s big “betrayal,” and it honestly felt kinda underwhelming. He didn’t actively help A-TEC, but his move here was more an incidental betrayal of convenience than a strong dramatic choice between friends and revenge. But I guess that’s somewhat reflective of Classroom Crisis’ fundamental strengths and weaknesses – it’s very strong when it comes to building these characters and putting them in a room together, but its ability to tell a tightly composed story isn’t the sharpest. I’d figured that was likely due to the need to add a bunch of nonsense anime diversions like the beach episode, but maybe this writer just isn’t as good with plotting as he is with writing people. Either way, this episode still worked nicely when it leaned into the show’s strengths, so I’m still fairly confident everything will turn out well in the end.

You can check out my full writeup over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Classroom Crisis had likely its best episode yet this week, using Kirishina’s school festival as an opportunity to contrast Kaito and Nagisa against both their past selves and the political interests they each theoretically represent. It was a very nuanced performance when you break it down, but it came off very lightly in practice, with the show once again riding on firmly constructed character relationships. It’s kind of sad that it seems like Classroom Crisis is somehow slipping through the cracks of this season – it’s an odd and occasionally awkward show, but it nails the best stuff a show can nail, the important character stuff that makes everything else worth caring about. It’s a very endearing production.

You can check out my full writeup over at ANN, or my notes below!

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