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The first season was awesome, and I rated it a 9. For some ungodly reason, this season seems to be rated with a higher average than the first one.
I don't know why but it took them 5 years to release the 2nd season which is a steaming pile of garbage. I eagerly awaited the 2nd season for many years wondering ''man, that Classroom of the Elite anime sure was something, I wonder when we will see what's next''. Half a decade passed, and the anime picks up from nowhere, and ends nowhere. I tried to pick it up in the summer of 2022, ... watched one and a half episodes, and dropped it at that. I recently picked it up again and dropped it at the 10th episode, it's just too damn BORING.
To compare, I'll give you a metaphor - if you're hungry and the 1st season was a nice gourmet high-end restaurant pizza, the 2nd season is like one of those cheap protein bars you get from vending machines in the college campuses of provincial towns of second world countries. It's going to have the consistency of a brick and you will break your teeth trying to bite it. Don't get me wrong, the 1st season was slow paced as well, but it was more dynamic and had some saving grace with the last beach episodes. And it also had that amazing OST especially with the ''Beautiful Soldier'' ending.

My problem with the second season was that it was going with an even worse snail pace and had a lot of useless scenes which felt like fillers - how do you make a 13 episode anime feel so terribly long and unnecessary? Felt as if I was watching the anime equivalent of a stop motion picture.
The first season had some re-watchability factor - this one, you couldn't pay me to watch it again. Shame they did this nice anime dirty. I rate it a 6 and not a 4 because I'm a lenient guy, and if you really want to see how the story continues from the first season, it might be worth a shot, otherwise, nah. Just be prepared and arm yourself with a lot of patience.

I postponed watching this for a long time, mainly due to my ADD, the anime is quite slow paced, it's a relic from the old world era after all, when time itself used to be much slower. I used to pick it up and drop it again and again, getting bored to death by the first episodes. Until I really ran out of things to watch.
Since most media after a certain ominous year feels artificial, as in, artificially generated, we look back at anime and media from the 90's and early-mid 2000s like archaeologists look at hieroglyphs from the Ancient Egypt, trying to find some ... soul, a missing piece from today's media.
Set in Central Europe in the mid to late 90's, this anime is a work of art. The fall of the Iron Curtain and its dark secrets, a cliche, but masterfully executed. The animation is quite poor in my opinion, but it's consistent. The anime itself does not feel as such - it feels as if you're reading a very good detective fiction novel, as the episodes go by. The slow pace allows for wonderful character development and the expansion of this fictional universe. One of the best story lines/plots I've ever seen in any media, not just anime, this stuff should be taught in writing schools.

I'll give it a 10 out of 10, though the animation is an eye sore, the story line is S tier, it just makes you want to binge it, if you survive the excruciatingly boring first episodes.

This is one of those short anime that kept me glued to the screen.

The story made me feel for the characters, and whoever practiced any sort of combat sports knows about the feelings portrayed in the anime: comradery, the will to keep pushing and becoming better.

I see that a lot of reviewers disliked the CGI and the story.
The art was amazing and so was the story in my opinion.

Hating CGI anime solely for the sake of agreeing with the status quo, that's just snobbism, and a poor attempt of achieving elitism.

Mediocre anime? The reviews do not do it justice.
...
If you like anime like Baki, or Kengan Ashura, this one is a nice touch, with steam-punk like cyborg boxing campaign, the premise is pretty wacky but then again, so are most anime.

I loved it, and I think you will love it too.

I don't know about you, but this anime left a mark on me. I watched it back in 2015 when it was "fresh" and it instantly became my all time favorite. It's only about two hours long, but ay I wish they made a full 26 episode series about it.
I don't know why it has such low marks from users. I loved it.
The characters are so well built and captivating in my opinion.
It tells a story about the real dangers of a dystopic utopia - admedistration - life in this setting has become scarce after a nuclear war that begins in...2019 (oh well), ... so humans are protected and treasured. Basic economics, the less you have of a good the more expensive it's value, and vice versa. So is human life. Sounds awesome! Only that if something sounds too good to be true, there's probably a catch, like we can see in this anime.

Humans in this anime have 0 privacy - they literally have a contact lens that has a camera that records all they see, 24/7, that they have to wear all day long until they go to sleep. They also have thousands of nanobots inside their bodies that measure their vital signs.
Humans are perfectly healthy, they look 30 at 80, but what is the price?

Major spoilers ahead -

This anime feels like a mix of Brave new world and Evangelion, considering the Instrumentality project is similar to the Harmonix project - a violation of the human soul, removal of consciousness and all individuality.

Satoshi Itoh was ahead of his time when writing the novel that was the backbone of this film. You should read the novel too!
He predicted the Chinese social system - good boy points for good citizens, who can in turn get better services and goodies, while the bad boys are being punished. Just like in this anime.

Is Satoshi's book and hence the anime of fruit salad of previous science-fiction works? Hell no, this stuff is original asf. Like I said - any science fiction connoisseur would throw off their hats to this.
Considering the fact that Satoshi wrote it on his deadbed, while fighting cancer...we must pay our respects.

As for the anime, well yeah they used CGI here and there, so what? Beat it, don't judge a book by it's cover.

The art is the only downside of this movie in my opinion.
The message it sends, the lesson it teaches however, heavily outweight the downside.
This anime is like a diamond in the rough. A valid, and truly original, modern masterpiece.

My review is pretty late, since I first watched the show many years ago. I remember seeing a random episode back when I was like 12 back in 2009 on Animax. I couldn't really understand much of the action but I saw the bald guy (Yasu the drummer/lawyer) and I was like "oh wow that guy's so cool!". Also, this review will be quite wacky, I suck at structuring my ideas.

The action of the anime happens in the year 2001, before social media became a huge influence in our lives. Like some users before me have said, this anime will be a glimpse of fresh ... air of the time before all of this digital madness started to affect us.
It's like a portal to the past.

I have such a weakness for this anime and I will tell you why - two girls I fancied really liked this anime. It is quite a girly anime to be honest; but that shouldn't stop you from viewing it.
I always think of it and remember my freshman year of high school 2012-2013 trying to impress this girl I liked with my anime knowledge about Nana haha.
The song "Wish" from the anime is my favorite. Right - this anime has a f**king amazing soundtrack for pop-rock lovers.

I've been playing in a band in high-school and I could really relate to the struggles of Nana and her band mates - it's an anime about being in a successful rock band after all, prior to being an anime about romance and personal struggles.

It is a very mature anime, the characters are in their early to mid twenties. The character development is very good.
The stories range from silly relationships to actual real, cold, serious problems.

The downsides of this anime and the reason why I will rate it 9 and not 10 stars are the following:
- this anime (and manga) seems to promote smoking, like damn it seems that the animators had a fetish for smoking or something, every couple o' minutes in this anime some character is smoking a cigarette. Ok we get it, you vape (ok I will show myself out).
- the artwork is also pretty weird, the characters seem disproportionate, with very long legs and short torsos, it can be hard to get used to, and can make some people uncomfortable.

and the most important reason I rate it only 9 instead of 10 - this anime is similar to that time when you edge yourself for hours only to have a mediocre climax. It is 47 episodes long, pretty slow paced, and ends abruptly, it doesn't really have any closure. It doesn't actually end anywhere - it gives us those "to be continued" kinda vibes if y'no what I mean.

The manga was still at work when the show aired, and people had high hopes for a second season, but it has been on hiatus since 2009 so we don't know if we'll ever get any sort of closure. Which is just a shame.

Should you watch it then? Hell yeah. If you've watched back then you'll still appreciate it now. I believe the anime "aged" like a fine wine.

if it is your "first time", go ahead. You've got a nice story to see.

This will be a short review since I don't have many things to say.

I rarely give 10 out of 10, (even though my mean score is pretty high) but when I do, it's because either the anime made me find myself in one of the characters or if I really liked the background storyline and ending.
In this case, all my "desires" were satisfied.
If you mind, I'm a straight guy, but the "yaoi" scenes weren't "out of place" at all.

Why did I like this anime?

- Because I'm an amateur swimmer/sportsperson myself and this anime made me want to keep training, whenever I see characters ... in anime that are training hard I get really motivated (kinda weird but I think I'm not the only one).
- Because the beautiful scenery and animation were very soothing to watch
- Because the story focuses around relationships of friendship and healthy competition, something you rarely see irl nowadays
- Because it reminded me of a real life situation where a pool in my hometown had to close and me and my friends had no other place where we could swim, haha.

I wholeheartedly recommend this anime to anyone