Title: Assassination Classroom Vol. 17
Author: Yusei Matsui
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Genre: Shonen, Battle, Comedy
Publication Date: August 1, 2017
The Story
Volume seventeen of Assassination Classroom didn’t have much of a story to it, but it doesn’t mean the volume was bad by any means. The class was divided into students who wanted to kill Koro-sensei and those who wanted to save him. Nagisa and Karma end up getting a bit physical with each other over their stances when Koro-sensei breaks the two of them up. He then states that he has brought red and blue paint balls as well as anti-Koro-sensei knives dipped in red and blue paint. Those who want to kill him will join the red team and those who want to save him will join the blue team. The two teams will then have an all-out assassination war with the winning team deciding Koro-sensei’s fate.
The battle between the two teams encompassed about 90% of the entire volume which is why I stated that there wasn’t much of a story. Instead, the volume took the time to develop their cast of characters, but not from a personality standpoint, but rather a combat skill assessment standpoint. We got to see just how well-trained the students of Class 3-E were when it came to assassination.
In the end, it was quite predictable that it came down to Karma vs Nagisa. They ended up ditching their weapons and went at it in hand-to-hand combat. Just when Karma was about to win, Nagisa pulled out his trump card and clapped in Karma’s face. He placed him into a triangle choke and forced Karma to submit. Since Nagisa was on team blue, that means that the decision was to try and save Koro-sensei. This decision brought us to our final chapters which, to be honest, seemed really far-fetched. They did some research on organizations that were looking into the Koro-sensei situation and only found one that was doing research on saving him. The only problem was, the research was being conducted on the International Space Station.
This lead to Class 3-E sneaking into a government-controlled facility in order to sneak upon a rocket and get blasted into space. The two students chosen for this mission? Who else but Nagisa and Karma! I guess we will see how their espionage pays off in the next volume as their launch into space concluded this volume.
Characters
I am going to keep the characters section pretty short this time around because all the volume did was get us caught up on individual combat skills.
For instance, they talked about how Kaede was much more agile now that her tentacles were removed from her head so the blinding pain wasn’t there, allowing her to concentrate and how she attributed that to training for acting roles. There were some hilarious moments when some team members knew that they were blatantly being used as cannon fodder, though!
The only real development we saw was when they mentioned how Nagisa and Karma knew each other from their first year of junior high and despite being close friends, they continue to be formal with each other. That was about it on the character development side of things.
Final Thoughts
While story progression came to screeching halt, this was still an action-packed volume of Assassination Classroom and, honestly, this was much-needed. After two straight volumes of amazing backstory that took you on an emotional roller coaster, readers needed a break and this was exactly what this volume was. The survival game was interesting from start to finish and there really wasn’t a dull moment. Karma showed off his great analytical skills and the one-on-one fight between Karma and Nagisa was well-done.
Again, I didn’t really care too much for the plan to go into outer space. I know this manga has done some really “out there” things before, but this one was a little too much. It would have made much more sense for the class to help Koro-sensei go to the I.S.S. rather than the students because having a couple of high schoolers sneak into a high security government building, board a rocket and carry out an espionage mission on a remote space station filled with people that could blow the whistle at any moment is a big and bitter pill to swallow, but I’m sure Yusei Matsui is going to find a way to keep us entertained throughout this next plot point.
Bring on Volume 18!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
