Reaper Time, Part 1

Synopsis

With Irina’s birthday coming up the students come up with a plans to surprise her. One group holds her attention whilst another group buys a present. They buy a bouquet of flowers and convince Karasuma to give it to her.

But unfortunately thanks to Karasuma’s objective focused mind he blows the classes cover by a poor act, and Irina reverts back to what she was when she first came here, all business. Turns out Karasuma was never dense, he just didn’t want Irina’s ‘blade’ to be blunted by romance.

Whilst Irina disappears off the face of the earth for a few days, the class is given a shock as a new assassin know as the Shinigami shows up nonchalantly in class. He’s captured Irina, and to save her, the class must go to a location he specifies.

The class gears up and steps into the Shinigami’s trap. They are caged in a large room, but manage to escape. The Shinigami seems quite happy and gives chase viewing it as a ‘warm up’.

The class had split up into two groups, one to rescue Irina and one to take on Shinigami. The group that tries to take on Shinigami are wiped out within minutes. The group that rescues Irina are taken out by her who was pretending to be captured. Everyone is captured again but it looks like Karasuma and Koro are on their way.

Thoughts

So we get half an episode dedicated to some, out of the anime’s comfort zone, romance, and the other half back to an old plot line of someone very dangerous taking on class E. I’ve never found the romance side of things this anime’s strong point, and you’ll probably agree.

Aside from the fact that the romance between Karasuma and Irina usually ending up as some sort of comic relief, it’s also taking far too long to develop into anything remotely interesting. And the reason? Well, Karasuma isn’t dense, he just doesn’t care. He’s your typical one track minded person who always has their eyes on the prize. Which is absolutely fine, it only adds to his already composed personality. He is fully aware of his surroundings which makes him that more dangerous, he’s a fun character and acts as a good contrast to the rest of the casts’ comical style.

Whilst I didn’t think the romance side of things was great, I have a feeling it was to set up Irina’s resolve at fully committing to killing Koro and stop fooling around. Even resorting to teaming up with someone who obviously don’t care about the children’s safety. Though from this anime’s usual carefree and, good guys will always win attitude, it’s very likely, almost definite, that Irina hasn’t really changed sides.

The new villain answers my question of who took out Lovro and also brings the anime to its tense story telling again, which is also not one of its strong points. As we all know the anime is best when everyone is fooling around, in a serious manner of course. I expect this battle to turn comical at some point though, because I feel they’ll have something to break up the tension or it won’t feel like assclass. At least I’m expecting something fun to cut up a tense moment somewhere. Like the hacking thing.

Hilarity to come aside, the tension that was built up in this episode was actually quite good. Partially due to the new villain’s nonchalant approach which is very intimidating and shouts out danger without having to do much. And partially due to how fast everyone was taken out, without any idea of what happened it’s already over. It’s another change and offers an interesting comparison to Takaoka’s intimidation through sheer brute force approach.

I have to say that aside from the bits of hilarity coming in which I can only associate with the assassination classroom brand, these stories have been getting much better. The tension build up is better and the seriousness of these dangerous situations have also been emphasised better as well. With back up arriving, it will be quite a fight and we can see how the best assassin in the world deals with the most powerful being in the world.