Classroom of the Elite indeed took me by surprise with a first episode that grasped my attention. It takes place in a prestigious school where the good and the great are separated. Or in this case, the good and the bad. However, just as I feared, it started to fall off quite a bit.
COTE started off quite strongly, with an intense atmosphere in the first couple of episodes. It supposedly grasped the attention of the viewers and it sure has grabbed mine. We see early the ambitions or goals of some of the people in Class D, which is to get to class A together. While some may strive to reach this goal, some others rather not care.
Some of the problems that occurred in the series is the feeling of rushed pacing, although not quite. It’s not terribly rushed, but I feel like they wanted to get things done faster than usual. But one of my main concerns lie within the inconsistent storyline, where things are just clustered and messed up.
In the beginning it was fine that the fact that the show was a narrative, but now I think that they tried just a little too hard to be a narrative focused show at this point. The “deep” and “meaningful” seeming dialogue felt a bit weak and felt like it had little impact for me to care at all about it.
One of my main problems with COTE lies within the lack of any sort of character growth throughout the series. I feel like they tried to focus the anime too hard on our 2 main characters Ayanokoji and Suzune. Even with all that focus on those 2 I still didn't feel any significant development between the 2 besides becoming friends or something.
Still regarding the characters, they like they had no significant role since most of the focus were on our main characters. Which is a shame because I would’ve loved to see more and learn more about some certain characters. Something that I didn't appreciate was how some character reveals something, but after that, it becomes irrelevant to the story whatsoever. It felt like they just threw it to the side and we see either little or none of those reveals anymore.
Now to talk about the fan service. Listen, I am someone who does not mind fan service whatsoever. I will admit, the fan service in this series is good. The girls make you wanna bust a nut and the art quality when it comes to the service is tremendous I will give them that. However, I feel like it’s been used wrongly and just for the sake of fan service of course. I feel like they tried to somehow tie that into some sort of plot progression and I didn't like that.
Now with the problems concerning Ayanokoji. Don’t get me wrong I did enjoy his character and how he was initially written. I feel as though they didn't bring out his true potential as a Main Character. I felt like more could’ve been done to give him a more fully developed type of character.
The initial goal of reaching class A started to fade while the second half of the series played. Honestly, it felt like I was watching 2 seasons of a show into one 12 episode anime. They start leaving things that were probably critical plot and left it behind, later one there’s no real connection between the situations that were given to us.
Overall this anime was a disappointment, although it had its moments and it was still kinda entertaining, it still failed in executing a proper written story that had a nice concept at the beginning. The only things I can praise about regarding this series is the beautiful art and animation as well as the soundtrack. Even if this anime fell off later one, they still kept the same uncomfortable atmosphere throughout the show, well executed or not. It is indeed a shame however that it was only 12 episodes. If Classroom of The Elite had more time and episodes to develop the story as well as the characters with a good written narrative, I truly believed that this could’ve been a fantastic anime. It is indeed very unfortunate.
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