Classroom Crisis comes to an ending with a fairly respectable final episode. I really liked how all the narrative/character/thematic pieces came together in this one – it felt very gracefully composed, which is honestly something this show has often struggled with. There were cute moments and fist-pump moments and some nice silly faces, and overall this finale didn’t quite manage to match the show’s best moments (namely the Nagisa-Kaito and Nagisa-Mizuki conversations from the last few episodes), but still ended things in solid fashion. Of course, it apparently couldn’t end without one more dip into stupid animeisms, so obviously the ending was set up as introducing a possible love triangle between three of the leads. Win some, lose some.

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

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Classroom Crisis spent this episode ramping up to a high-speed finale, strapping Nagisa into a jury-rigged X-2 ship just to give Iris a future opportunity to show off her stuff. The road there was enjoyable enough, though having Yuji come back as a newly unhinged villain didn’t do much for the series. Fortunately, this episode also gave Angelina a big opportunity to get mad and kick all kinds of ass, which is always a good time. It’s looking like Classroom Crisis will be ending respectably but not fantastically, which is a fine compromise for a show that’s been a series of compromises from the start.

You can check out my full review over at ANN. Notes below!

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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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