Classroom Crisis

Episode 13

And so Classroom Crisis comes to an end. With Kaito's presentation in only a few hours and Nagisa having booked a one-way ticket to a desolate space rock, Iris takes it upon herself to rescue the man she's come to remember as her childhood protector. But Mizuki quickly intervenes, getting Iris to partially open up about her feelings before the whole team admits they were planning on having Iris make the flight anyway. With Iris and Mizuki on route to save Nagisa and Kaito's presentation already underway, all the threads of Classroom Crisis come together in one last A-TEC adventure.

This was a generally respectable conclusion to one of the season's most overlooked series. Normally, Classroom Crisis shows its best face when it puts its core characters together, and that was on display early this episode, through the heartfelt conversation between Mizuki and Iris. But this finale actually managed to impress in a variety of other ways, as well. The contrasting conflicts of Kaito's presentation and Iris' rescue smartly pulled together all the narrative and character threads of the series, managing the unlikely feat of having an (admittedly underwhelming) action setpiece form the cornerstone of Kaito's business debates. And the whole concept of having Iris rescue Nagisa one more time formed a nice symmetry with Classroom Crisis' first episode, giving the series a sense of narrative rightness in its construction in spite of the several wandering episodes we've seen along the way.

Kaito's whole presentation was also a strong notch in this episode's favor, from beginning to end. His initial presentation of A-TEC's on-paper accomplishments, from their improvements to the engine to the reductions in its cost, worked on both a character and thematic level. On the immediate level, this presentation demonstrated Kaito taking charge as a businessman while also reflecting how Nagisa's strict leadership has shifted Kaito's dreams from indulgent fantasies to world-changing technology. And on the larger level, this final production victory ended up serving as a vindication of the Kirishina founders' original beliefs in aerospace development. It's nice when all of a show's pieces work together that coherently, and letting Kaito have his cute “we refuse to acknowledge your way of doing things” victory speech was an endearing sendoff to his character.

On the negative side, the decision to play out the final relationship of Iris, Mizuki, and Nagisa as some kind of love triangle in waiting was about the least compelling choice the series could have made. Nagisa and Mizuki's slowly building relationship has easily been one of the strongest elements of this series, and challenging it with a classic “rival from Nagisa's past” variable did a disservice to all three of these characters. It was basically a reminder of the cheap anime gags this series never quite grew past, here to wave at the audience one more time before the ending.

But quibbles about the show's indulgent weaknesses aside, overall this was a fine conclusion to Classroom Crisis. All the characters got cute sendoffs, the narrative came together gracefully, and most importantly, Kaito and Angelina got drunk one more time. The show never achieved real greatness, and its ideas about the necessary marriage of idealism and pragmatism ended up being little more than a vehicle to introduce the personal conflicts of a few central characters, but I don't regret my time with the series. In a very weak season marked more by its most eccentric shows than any actual classics, Classroom Crisis demonstrated a strong grasp of character writing and a reasonably constructed narrative. Sometimes that's enough.

Rating: B+

Classroom Crisis is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Viewster.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.