about the book
Middle school is hard enough but imagine what it would be like if you’re a misfit in the worst class at the school…and your new teacher is a yellow alien who has just destroyed part of the moon and will destroy the earth if someone in the class doesn’t assassinate him!
What’s worse, Sensei Kuro has unlimited bizarre powers, awesome technology, can move at Mach 20, and has octopus-like tentacles that regenerate!
The students in Class 3-E at Kunugigaoka Junior High are the worst of the worst…and they know it. Sugino let his grades slip and was kicked off the baseball team. Karma, though a good student, keeps getting suspended for fighting. Okuda is bad at both academics and social skills, but he is a chemistry whiz.
Class 3-E is the perfect cover to get rid of an alien that threatens the entire world. The World governments think these students are the world’s only hope and Karasuma, an official at the Military of Defense, asks the losers to take on this nearly impossible task. The kids will earn ten billion yen if they take Sensei Kuro out!
The only hope for these students is that they can hone their assassination skills well enough to take advantage of Sensei Kuro’s two weakness, sweets and large breasts. Each classroom day begins with guns blazing and knives flying!
To make matters even harder, Sensei Kuro is an excellent and dedicated teacher. He is friendly and great at fixing the students’ problems.
Killing the teacher…REALLY?
about the author/illustrator
Yusei Matsui was born on January 31, 1981 in Saitama, Japan. He is currently a manga artist for the Weekly publication Shonen Jump and is best known as being the author of Demon Detective Neuro Mougami. It is considered a cult classic and was adapted into an animated television series.
Before becoming a mangaka, Yusei Matsui worked as an assistant to Yoshio Sawai. That is where he got his inspiration for gigantic surreal monsters and honed his sense of humor—two characteristics which can be found in all of his comic creations.
The Assassination Classroom series remains extremely popular in Japan, currently spanning twelve volumes with twelve million copies in print. An animated TV series premiered in January of 2015 and a live-action film hit theaters in March.
Yusei Matsui admits that his artwork started out a bit rough and he wasn’t very good at drawing humans. He worked hard at it and as his series gained popularity, his artwork noticeably improved, developing from a sketchy realistic style into a simpler bolder look.
As far as his writing style, his followers have discovered that his main characters usually have a quirky morality code. For instance, in Assassination Classroom, the goofy teacher, Sensei Kuro is an octopus-like alien who is intent on destroying planet earth but is also an excellent classroom teacher. Though he is just fine with his students trying to kill him, he gets furious if they harm another human.
The inspiration for the series came while Yusei Matsui was lying in bed. It was an image of students standing up and bowing as their teacher came into the classroom, something he did every year he went to school. But in this case, the students followed the bow by instantly whipping out guns and shooting at the teacher! To counter the violence of this plot, he had to come up with a grinning happy-faced yellow tentacled monster—and it had to be easy to draw!
Sources:
Author biography: TV Tropes
Article on new series: The Asahi Shimbun
Author biography: Goodreads
Book page and author bio: Amazon
Also by Yusei Matsui:
Assassination Classroom (Books 2-11). Viz Media. 2014-2016.
read more!
Assassination Classroom : 2 by Yusei Matsui
Every middle schooler has screamed “I could kill that teacher!” It’s generally not worth the months of detention, right? Well, maybe it would be if the teacher was an alien who promises to destroy the earth, and the world governments would reward his assassin millions for taking him out! But what happens when two classmates are abducted and the principal wants the alien teacher to crush his students’ spirit as an example to the whole school?
Tune : 1 : Vanishing Point by Derek Kirk Kim
When Andy Go decides to drop out of his final year of art school, he finds himself unemployed and living with his parents. He discovers that his life is headed nowhere quickly, until he reconnects with his old crush, Yumi, and gets a job in another dimension.