After the moon is mysteriously turned into a permanent crescent by an unknown calamity, the students of class 3-E at Kunogigaoka Middle School are presented with a daunting task – Assassinate the creature that blew up half the moon before the year’s end or die when the world is destroyed. The creature in question, dubbed Koro-sensei by his class, is super fast, super strong, and by all respects, indestructible. However, while the students try and learn how to destroy him, they also learn that he is the best teacher that they have ever had.
Assassination Classroom, dubbed AssClass, is one of those treasured anime series that make you feel excited about school whether you are actually in school or haven’t been in school for years. It is one of those series that make you wish that you had such good teachers and classmates. If you want to keep that lust for learning rolling, give these anime recommendations a try.
Anime Like Assassination Classroom
For Fans of Inspiring Teachers
Great Teacher Onizuka
After becoming reformed from his rough and tumble past as a bike gang leader, Onizuka is looking for a new ambition in life. After witnessing a hot girl falling for her ugly teacher, he decides to become a teacher himself. However, instead of hot girls draping themselves all over him, he just has a group of problem students that the school administration had all but given up on.
If you took out Onizuka, who is sometimes more monster than man, and replaced him with an actual monster, you would have Assassination Classroom. Both series are about reformed bad guys that teach losers important life lessons, thus pushing them towards their potential. While Onizuka has dated animation, it really is the most similar series to Assassination Classroom.
Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Clumsy and talentless, Tsunayoshi Sawada, dubbed “Loser Tsuna” by his class, is the personification of failure. However, this loser’s boring life takes a new turn when he encounters Reborn, a baby and a hitman from the strongest Mafia family in Italy. Reborn has been sent to whip this middle school loser into shape because he is the heir to the Vongola Mafia Family. However, as heir, he now faces a constant onslaught of rivals that Reborn needs to help him learn to take down.
The biggest similarity between Assassination Classroom and Hitman Reborn is that they are both about assassination. Both are comedy series in which the teachers are teaching their students about something criminal, but the criminal characters are actually the best teachers they have ever had. While AssClass can be more serious and dramatic at times, Hitman Reborn is essentially all laughs.
Ultimate Otaku Teacher
Although a certified genius, Junichirou Kagami lost interest in academics and instead directed his energy towards otaku hobbies. As he only did things he wanted to do, he left society and became an otaku NEET. Unsatisfied with her older brother being a shut-in, his younger sister convinces him to get a job as a teacher, but can an otaku actually teach kids anything?
Assassination Classroom and Ultimate Otaku Teacher are based on the same premise: a teacher that is weird, being weird in a classroom, and teaching lessons to students that are already abandoned by society. Strangely enough, they also have a fair bit of otaku comedy in common as well.
For Fans of Bad Students vs Elite Students
Baka and Test
Akihisa Yoshii attends a school where the student body is divided into classes based on the results of tests. Unfortunately, after helping a fainting girl on his placement exams, Akihisa is placed on the lowest rung – F Class. While in this school he can fight with augmented avatars empowered by test results to steal the perks of higher classes, Akihisa is an idiot and his classmates are none too bright either.
Baka and Test is one of those series that, if you haven’t seen it, doesn’t really look related, but it has a lot of the same tropes. You have loser students fighting the elite class, you have a lot of good comedy, and you watch the loser students try to better themselves. However, while Assassination has a lot of serious moments, Baka and Test never really turns the comedy off.
Kill la Kill
Ryuuko Matoi is on the hunt for her father’s killer, and her only lead is the missing half of his invention, the Scissor Blade. On her quest, she arrives at the prestigious Honnouji Academy, a school that is ruled over by the super powerful Satsuki Kiryuuin and her Elite Four. Believing Satsuki knows who killed her father, Ryuuko challenges one of the elite, but gets beaten due to their special uniforms. After receiving a special uniform of her own, Ryuuko sets plans into motion to dominate the school and find out what happened to her father.
While Assassination Classroom doesn’t have the same all-out school brawls that Kill la Kill does, it does have some events where the weaker students square off against the elite class in the same way Ryuuko fights the elite student council. Kill la Kill is more parody of the action genre while AssClass is occasional abstract silliness.
Negima
Although only 10 years old, Negi Springfield is a wizard-in-training with only one more test to pass before he becomes a master. Unfortunately, his final task is to become an English teach at an all-girl school. Not only does he manage to make a powerful enemy that discovers his secret life as a wizard, but he has to make help his class of dumb-dumbs pass their finals.
The real similarity between AssClass and Negima is that they both take place in elevator schools where the smart are rewarded and the dumb are left behind. The unique teachers in both are stuck with the dumb class, but they manage to use their unique teaching style to motivate and elevate their students.
For Fans of Fight Club Classrooms
My Hero Academia
After the sudden appearance of super powers, or “quirks,” now 80 percent of humanity has some kind of power. With some Quirk users turning to crime, it gave rise to super heroes that help the police keep the peace. Since he was a child, Izuku Midoriya has idolized super heroes, especially the symbol of peace, All Might, but he is devastated to learn that he won’t manifest a Quirk himself. Still, he studies super heroes and is determined to become one. After a chance encounter with All Might, Midoriya learns that there still may be a chance for him to be a hero after all.
AssClass is about a classroom full of assassins-in-training, My Hero Academia is about a classroom of heroes-in-training. Both series feature godly powered teachers and even the main characters are similar in the respect that they both aspire to be like their teachers.
Aoharu x Machinegun
There are two things to know about Hotaru Tachibana. She is a girl that likes to dress like a boy, and she has a strong sense of justice. She just can’t help but to confront someone doing wrong deeds. After one of her friends was tricked, she heads to a local club to confront them, but upon arriving is challenged to a so-called survival game where the first person hit by a bullet from a toy gun loses. After losing the destructive fight, she is ordered to join the team in order to repay the costs of the damage.
The biggest similarity between these two series is the main character. Both Nagisa and Hotaru are primarily mild-manner, almost emotionless people, but when they snap, they can really snap. Aside from that, both series are about fighting for a goal with weapons that aren’t actually real.
Aria the Scarlet Ammo
In response to Japan’s sky-rocketing crime rate, the Tokyo Butei Academy is established where armed detectives hone their skills to later become mercenary-type agents of justice. Kinji Tooyama is an anti-social and blunt young man that used to be in the Assault Division, but now underachieves in Logistics in order to hide his embarrassing, but powerful ability.
Like in AssClass, Aria is about a school where students are taught lessons through unconventional means. However, while the overall lesson in Assassination Classroom is not really killing, that is exactly the lesson in Aria. It is also worth noting that Aria has more of an ecchi bint as well.
Have any more anime recommendations for Assassination Classroom? You know what to do, get down to the comments section below.
