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I really don't understand the hype for this show. It's currently rated at an 8.05 on here and I'm so confused.

I get it was 2009, but the art style is very classic shoujo and dated. The cutesy moments are okay enough, but they get grading after a time because sawako is the most bland carbon copy female protagonist of all time. In general, I think I'm just tired of this type of show. So if you're still pretty new to romance anime and are going through the old ones first, you might enjoy it more.

The main guy is pretty chill, although I forget his name ... which is kind of a problem considering how much sawako says it. He's just kind of there though. He has enough charm because as male protagonists go he's fairly normal. In a genere filled with either a shoujo MC who's a cliche nervous wreck, or a MC who's ridiculously perfect in a cringey way, this guy was pretty chill. There just isn't that much to him at all. He's just there.

Ryu was interesting. Him and Chii and the other girl were the only reason I got this far through the show. Ryu and Chiis dynamic, although pretty played out, was much more interesting then anything to do with the main girl. But their plot lines didn't really go anywhere either.

There's a lot of typical 2000s romance anime drama in here, the shit you've seen a million times before, the timid MC crying over every misunderstanding under the sun. I think it's the fact that anime has got a little more realistic in terms of relationships and character dynamics nowadays, and the ones that aren't that come out now are the ones I don't enjoy as much.

Dandadan and blue box are great examples of great modern romance, where there's internal drama but it's done in a grounded, realistic way. Even the losing heroine show that came out last season had that.

Again, if this was like 5 years ago, I mightve enjoyed this show. It's similar to the miad sama era,a show I had fond memories on but rewatched a few years ago and struggled to get through it.

Times have changed I guess.

The art is pleasant enough, the soundtrack is mid af but fits the show well enough, the OP is pretty decent, I skipped the ending, and the voice acting is okay. I think the VAs were well cast and well performed (I watched the sub), its more that sawako as a character is so annoying so her voice needs to accommodate for that soft "cute" style of voice. But yeah, that's just another thing I'm sick of.

If you're bored of timid main characters and shows that move at a snails pace and never feel like they resolve, don't watch this.

This review is for people who saw the show and are intrigued about the light novel, and/or people who have read the light novel and have similar feelings. I'm not gonna describe the plot or go over general things, in a pronounced order, I'm just gonna start yapping about what I'm conflicted about.

So, for context, Classroom of the elite was the second light novel I've ever read. Even though I've never hated reading, I've never really fell into doing it much. Recently, I've been really enjoying reading, and classroom of the elite is the biggest cause of that.

I have very weird feelings towards this series. ... I watched season 1 around 4 or 5 years ago probably, and loved it and wished it got a season 2. Previously the only things I read stemmed from shows that I loved at first but heard were better in their original forms. Shows like Tokyo ghoul and sword art online, with Tokyo ghouls manga and SAOs original light novel and the progressive series, blowing their original source material out of the water, it made me think Classroom of the elite (COTE) would be worth it. Upon rewatch, I enjoyed it again, but felt I'd outgrown it a little, and because everyone said the light novel was infinitely better, and the cliffhanger of season one was all too apparent with no whispers of a season two, i thought what the hell.

I don't think I've been so heavily invested in a series where I've bought virtually every book, aside from the first one, paperback, without much of a thought about how much im spending long term. For some reason, I'm that engaged in the plot. I don't see myself dropping this series anytime soon, I'll bleed my money dry until it ends. I've currently read up to year 2 volume 7 and am reading 8 now. The problem is half the time I don't know why I'm invested.

Like I said, the reason why I picked this up in the first place is because of the outrage season 1s adaptation brought from the LN readers. I was promised better writing, development, more thought out situations and challenges, and generally just better storytelling.

In many ways, I got that. Ayanakouji is far more engaging: his thought process is so important and is missing in the anime, the points system and exams seem easier to understand and have well organized descriptions, character development seems more natural, and things aren't moved around awkwardly (like the entirety of episode 7).

But these are all the bare minimum I expected. It is better, yes, but how much better is left a bit open. Like, people pretend like this series is incredible with a bad adaptation, but it's more like the series is pretty decent with a cool main character and premise, with a pretty mediocre but fairly accurate adaptation. It's not a masterpiece by any means.

I know it's unfair to compare since it is technically slightly different, but the way the general writing compares to other books I've read (not many) is just not the same. It's very clearly for teens in the way it's written, but is weirdly too complicated for typical teens. Everything feels very straight-forward and obvious in the way interactions are written. The settings are blandly or quickly described; they allow the reader to understand the setting but aren't as gripping, and don't give you that scarily accurate and ineffable sort of relation that you may find in other books. I'm not saying the books need the convoluted and otherworldly descriptions of its setting(s) similar to the lord of the rings books, or the naturalistic interactions and conversations of a Sally Rooney novel, but the truth is it just doesn't quite compare in any traditional way of writing, and it would honestly benefit from them, particularly the latter. It's very simple, even though some of the exams and mastermind moments delude you to thinking it isn't.

It's very much a light novel, but I wish it read more like a typical book. Sometimes I wish it didn't have the fanservicy drawings and the general design of the characters shown both within the book, on the books covers and promo material, and in its adaptations. If it was treated with more of a typical novel's respect, I think it'd deserve to be as good as I sometimes feel it is. That way, The characters and their interactions could be written with more nuance.

People go on about the writing and development of characters throughout the show, and how it takes stereotypes in anime and flips them on its head.

The thing is, that's all it does. And it still has all the tropes to begin with: the popular girl, the popular guy, the overly dirty minded losers (who really don't make sense to be in the advanced school), the cutesy nice to everyone girl, the overly shy girl, the athletic thug, etc. The twists in these stereotypes are overly dramatic ones, and instead of making the characters seem very dynamic and unique and even well written, they often come across more like gimmicks. Like, "what if the cutesy girl was actually horrible", or "what if the popular girl was actually bullied", or "what if the shy girl was actually an influencer" (which I find creepy, she's literally like a sex icon at 15).

The characters aren't one-dimensional, that's better than a lot of anime out there. They're two-dimensional though, not three, or four, or five, like most people seem to want to believe.

People complain about the show, saying that every character is dumb so it makes ayanokouji seem smarter than he is. I both 100% agree with this but also disagree. This is definitely one frustrating reason why ayanokouji stands out, but he is undoubtedly very intelligent and very interesting in the way he approaches situations. The best parts of the novels are the monologues and little observations he has, and even though some reveals feel a bit card flippy or "aha, it was moi all along", the way they're written are usually pretty dynamic, some being gradual reveals built up throughout many novels, some being started and resolved mid way through one specific novel, and some being cliffhangers or ending reveals. And the way he nonchalantly reacts to them, and the interesting miscalculations that he and you as a reader has/have within his day-to-day approaches to his life and his "mastermind" moments are so to the point and on character that it really does feel rewarding. Those, as well as his general interactions with characters and little appreciations of general life things, really reinforce why he is such a complex character, and are the times in which i want to rate these novels a 8 or 9.

Also, although every character gets their fair share of dumb moments, the dumber characters do flesh out the other intelligent characters, like the first years in COTE year 2, as well as Horikita, Sakayanagi, Ryuen, etc. I also forget these characters aren't fully developed people yet: they're literally in highshool and most of them think way more intelligently about these situations than I probably would. But there in lies another problem.

But all the other characters are off the charts stupid, and they are all conveniently so at times, which makes no sense given the circumstances of the advanced nurturing high school. Like Sudou is fair game, but why was Yamaguchi and Sakura in the school? HE passed the exams?

There are also stupid things that happen that could be avoided even involving Ayanokouji, like why he got a 50 in everything instead of varying his results in a more natural way, so he didn't stand out from the start, which was what he wanted. People will make excuses and pretend like it's part of his development, because he didn't know how the general society worked and couldn't properly assess how people worked, but that wouldn't make sense since he studied with at least semi normal kids in the white room, and surely they would've got more typical score fluctuations across different subjects, even if somehow he didn't.

I also think the development of said characters aren't anything special, like, yeah I'm glad they happen, but they're really obvious. Sudou starts to take his grades more seriously, which he neglected because he never really thought he'd need them until Horikita showed him otherwise. Good, solid development, and a reason for him to be interested in horikita. Nice. It's solid development, it's not bad at all. Every characters' motivations, for the most part, make sense and are well formulated, which makes me like them.

But thennnn, they're done in such an obvious and unnuanced/unnatural way. The way these characters talk feel like exaggerated anime characters or moments that should instead be treat like normal people. Even the way the characters look is too anime like for me. The series needed to feel more grounded, and it comes accross as very cliche, tropy, and edgy sometimes even though the stuff on paper works.

The way the characters talk is too typically "anime", but their character moments are earned. But even then, they're over-dramatised to hell. Hiratas' backstory and Ichinoses' add to their characters well, but the way they are depicted are just so dramatic when they could be treat as much smaller issues. I suppose Hirata's is a little more direct and understandable, but everything still feels very dramatic rather than feeling natural, which takes me out of the narratives sometimes. It also becomes an issue when it's up to Ayanokouji to fix these people and issues, because its constant, and its rarely any other character, which is hard because it's also the best parts about the novels, how he uses people as tools for better and for worse and is trying not to do it but does it on instinct. You see the predicament as to why I have mixed feelings on this series.

But that's the main issue, it's that the concepts and ideas of everything are generally pretty decent to amazing, but the execution of them sometimes feel like filtered versions of what should have actually been.

It's honestly hindered by being an anime/light novel, and appealing to teens. If it wasn't, it wouldn't have to rely on its visual components like it's character designs and fanservice, and could treat the viewer into conjuring up their own thoughts on what they would look or feel like. It wouldn't have characters like Ryuen, Katsuragi and Albert, all of which look nothing like high schoolers. It wouldn't have boxes to tick or archetypes to fill, it wouldn't be as dumbed down and straight forward in its writing style, and it wouldn't feel as two dimensional.


Overall, I don't have an overall. That was it. Sometimes I want to give this series a 9/10, Sometimes I want to give it a 5/10, I settled for a 7, and depending on the quality of the novel I'm currently reading that could go up or down. However, the fact is once I finish it, I'm undoubtedly gonna buy the next one, and the next, until the series comes to a close. Because I can say whatever I want, but I'm invested now. It's accomplished that at least, so take that as you will and if you do decide to read enjoy.

But yeah, that's it.

(If anyone actually read all this you are an absolute legend, I mostly wrote to gather my own thoughts but thanks 👍).