Anime Review: Classroom Crisis

Classroom Crisis features an elite group of High school students working for the Kirishina corporation led by the prodigy engineer and teacher. The goal is to build rockets with cutting edge technology. One day all of that changes when a transfer student, who also happens to be the chief of technology, comes to shut down the facility, leaving the students to scramble to find a way to save their job.

Length: 13 Episodes

Genre: Comedy & Drama

Language: Japanese

Hot off the heels of watching Citrus. Classroom Crisis was next on the list. I’ve learned to go into new shows with zero expectations. Every new show is a clean slate. To make things even more interesting, I skip the about page now.

Being in my 20’s, I always feel disbelief and unaccomplished when teenagers have better careers than I do. This show makes me feel straight up depressed about it.

Nagisa is 18 and a business executive. How he accomplished this at that age? It still confuses me. Somehow over the years, he’s been able to turn failing companies into success stories. This further reminded me this is a fictional story and not to read too much into it.

All the kids are 15/16, learning advanced Aeronautic concepts. I could barely grasp the basics when I majored in Aerospace engineering. But I digress. The show is only fictional, and I’ll cry in the corner about it later.

Kaito Sera is one of the characters that have an accurate portrayal of many engineers. He’s brilliant and emotional but lacks the common sense to see past the current view of other’s actions. This trait makes him the most likable character of the show. Not only does he love what he does, but he will stop at nothing to see the dreams of all his students succeed.

Storyline: Decent

As unrealistic as the people and their careers may be, it shows a good representation of kids with no concept of money. The depth of the story and characters are minimal. The biggest plot twist was that Iris was the true heir to the founding family. I love characters that are strategic masterminds and fool the world with their plans. The writers show Nagisa in this light, but they could’ve capitalized on this more.

The comedic portions of the show make it more entertaining than Nagisa’s undermining. These light moments help to show a shift in the character to leave his previous ideals of seeking revenge on the Kirishina Corporation for doing him wrong in the past.

Art: Average

Nothing about the art is over the top or terrible. Most of the characters have a dull or muted skin tone, which extends to various background images. There are some uses of brighter colors on spacecraft and different technology. While there are moments when the animation looks good, there are others where the picture is rough and looks like it came out of the early 2000s.

Acting: Average

Most of the characters sound either monotonous or overly done. Some parts that are overly done try to make light of the show’s comedy aspects and fail. Other voice actors reduce what would be exciting or likable characters into an afterthought.

Overall:

The show is entertaining for a few hours and gives a few laughs. I enjoyed the future of space travel is as simple as hopping in a ship and flying off. It isn’t too far out like most Sci-Fi shows; it has some almost relatable realism.

The best parts of the show came in the last episode; the emotion I’d been waiting for 12 episodes finally came through. The tradeoff is this comes with less comedy, but it was worth it.

Iris, who’s been a robot the entire show, we find out has a personality. Mizuki maintains the status of being a strong independent woman. They all start a new company, and I sit waiting for a season 2 that probably will never come.

I admit I was rough on some aspects of the show, but it wasn’t terrible in the slightest. It was for the most part enjoyable. If a second season were to come out, I would watch how the new company turns out and get more character development from some of the minor characters. The show is average, but with another season, it has the potential to be great.

On that note to the creators.....