Classroom of the Elite – 04 [We Should Not be Upset that Others Hide the Truth from Us, When We Hide it from Ourselves.]

Haizz, Youkoso. My feeling about this show could be summed up by its very first few seconds. Youkoso opens with a thought-provoking, philosophical quote, and they follow straight up with a boob shot. Kinda defeat the purpose; unless what they want from us is to look underneath the clothes surface. Oh well, I give in. After four episodes, my impression for this show is just like that: interesting in theory but terribly plain in its execution. You can see bad sign when you start watching an episode and feel like you had skipped some episodes in between, and that exactly how I felt when watching this one. Like, since when Ayanokoji and the blonde girl from class B Ichinose become such a close friend to the point she asks the guy to be her fake boyfriend? The last time I saw them together they didn’t even introduce themselves and now this? For this bleak world, I come to suspect any character’s real motive, even the lead ones but this show makes me wary of Ichinose for all the wrong reasons. I heard the anime version cut most of the parts between those two building up to this point, and that come to my first real complain about this anime. They don’t spend enough time for the supporting cast, as a result they appear more as a plot-function device than any real character. That new red hair girl Sakura has this same problem. We hardly know her at all and then she receives a mention when the plot calls for it.

We have the updated scores this time around and by the look of it Class C has gained the most points after the exam and now rivals with class B for the second spot. Surprisingly that Class B doesn’t feel it as any threat because instead of getting furious, all of them praise how well and noble Ichinose is. We have our first glance at the homeroom teacher of Class B and boy, she rubs me the wrong way. Doesn’t fare any better is that Ryuken AKA Nerriot Sparkling Water dude; who I feel more belong to Kakegurui series than scheming his abusive plans here (Yumeko Jabami please beats the hell out of him). His current evil plan, to frame Sudou (again!) for attacking fellow Class C members, which will demerit all the points Class D has gained during the mid-exam results. Class D knows it’s all a scheme from Ryuken, but how they prove it? The way Horikita finds out about Sakura just by the way she acts bother on incredibility here, and I suppose the girl with an interest in photography “happen” to be in a right place at the right time with her camera on huh?

Ichinose seems nice enough to help the class D out, but if I learn anything about how the world in Youkoso works, it might be just a façade for some real nasty intention. If class D should learn any lesson, don’t trust other classes because they’re basically their opponents. Class B has a very well-connected network system here and Ichinose has a whooping insanely 2,5 million points, which really is suspicious. My guess for now is either Ichinose uses her “help” as a mean to make people around her to pay her back; or it’s the class’s points where class members pooling their points to one source – her source; but then for what purpose? As much as I have too many complaints about this episode, I think the conversation between Ayanokoji and Yoshida was well done. The visual cue of that conversation with the dead butterfly being picked apart by ants is really, really effective and it’s easily the highlight of this episode for me. All in all, Youkoso stumbles hard this episode, providing conflict that is rather dull and unexciting and asks us to care for a relationship that was never developed properly beforehand. I can still bear with it but I don’t deny that my interest on knowing how all this turn out have shrunk rapidly.