Classroom of the Elite – 12 [Genius Lives Only One Story Above Madness]

Youkoso pulls off a neat trick to close this shaky Islands arc in a high note, although I still can’t overlook its sillier details. At first, I was pleasantly surprised that despite making a lot of guessing games in last few weeks, Youkoso still manages to catch me off guard. This finale details the initial plans from Class-A, Class-C perspectives, respectively, each of them believes their plan going to be perfect but as it turns out, Ayanokouji has an upper hand. There are three main big reveals that has previously been kept from the viewers: 1) Class-A’s Katsuragi forms a contract with Ryuuen from Class-C 2) Ryuuen uses Ibuki as a mole to figure out class-D’s leader and 3) Ayanokouji swaps himself for Horikita as Class-D’s leader. Although those developments make up for some nice twists at the end, some of the rules aren’t properly explained or only hint to us during an internal eyecatch, make the end result somewhat cheated and unsatisfied.

The biggest reveal of this last episode is the contract formed between class-A and class-C, Katsuragi transfers his class’s points to Sparkling Nerriot and class-C will drop out and give the top class the leader names of the remaining two classes. I didn’t see that coming and this development runs really well with the underlying theme of Youkoso. With that, Class-A has a huge advantage of being at the top by negating all the bonus points from Class-B and Class-D due to identifying correctly the leaders, in addition that Class-C is already out of the picture. One thing bald man did not expect is that Sparkling Nerriot double-cross him by partnering with the guy in Kayanasagi’s circle and thus, he knows about class-A proxy leader. But then, Youkoso goes stupid again by revealing us that there is an addition clause that each of student from class-A will have to transfer the points to Sparkling Nerriot every month until he graduates. What the hell? Are you sure that bald guy sits in the right class? Who would be stupid enough to sign a deal that has that lasting negative effect like this. My god, my head bursts.

Ibuki, as expected, turns out to be Sparkling Nerriot’s mole and her mission is to identify the leader of class-D. Ayanokouji notices something she buried before – a digital camera – so he’s basically figures out the plan, speeds it up. He destroys the camera and uses Horikita as a pawn in order to get Ibuki into action – stealing the card. Sparking Nerriot actually sold me a bit of his character as he appears more determined than we previously assumed, but like I said above the last bit (the contract) rings so lousy that it took away all my goodwill for him. With this twist, Ibuki, on the opposite end, appears more shallow than previous episode. Ayanokouji then plays his triumph card: uses Horikita’s sickness as an excuse to change class-D’s leader. While it’s a nice surprise to come up with that idea, I feel that the rules are bending too much in favors for this plot twist. When you really think about that, the rules established favors too much on figuring out the class leaders. Other missions like securing spots and using the points sufficiently are never the top priority thus, making a whole thing very unbalanced. Class-B, who favors latter methods never raise to the top, for example. It doesn’t help that they never properly explained that rules, instead they dropped details little by little, which is very frustrating for us viewers because the little details they drop through bulletin board can change the game greatly.

Another issue I have with the ending is how class-D won despite all they did was pointing fingers at each other, and I guess I gave too much credits for Tarzan as it turns out, he truly gave up to admiring the moon. Ayanokouji seems to use this as an opportunity to teach Horikita a lesson that she will need to rely on others in order to succeed. It’s a pretty deep thought, except… coming from the mouth of Ayanokouji it sounds so false and alarming. So no, despite this arc ends on high note I don’t think this is a good arc at all. This has been a very bumpy ride, and from what I gather Lerche adapted the story with some questionable changes that it pisses off even fans from the LN. Full review will come soon but I believe you all know how I am going to rate this.