Classroom Crisis

Episode 6

Vacation time is over, and it's back to the books for A-TEC. Struggling particularly hard with the class's studies is Nagisa, who can't keep up with A-TEC's genius engineer-oriented curriculum. In this week's episode, Nagisa gets trapped in retakes until he's finally helped by Mizuki, leading to revelations about his family and past for both her and Kaito.

I mentioned last week that I was hoping the “classroom” part of this show would eventually disappear, letting the show focus on its more compelling character relationships and central conflict. This week saw those hopes realized, at least for now. Even though this was ostensibly a classic high school episode structure, what with the cram-studying and everything, this episode was full of the kinds of character moments that demonstrate the show at its best. On top of that, the information we've gained about Nagisa seems like it'll open the door for a second half that sees him and Kaito playing off each other even more effectively than they have until now.

We opened this week with Nagisa laying down the law, saying that Kaito's new budgets requests were being rejected. “Don't rely on money to solve your problems,” he lectures. “Innovative improvements in technology have always been born from restrictions.” That philosophy is given weight by the fact that Nagisa's own career has been defined by success in spite of restrictions - but Kaito gets to grab the reigns in the next scene, as he chastises Nagisa for failing his absurdly high-level exams.

This leads into the episode's big central sequence, where Nagisa is assisted in his studies by Mizuki while Kaito learns about Nagisa's past from his old boss. Apparently, Nagisa isn't actually part of the main Kiryu family - he's the son of his father's lover, and even worse than that, that lover happened to be the final heir of the Shimamiya half of Kirishina. Nagisa represents both the last union of Kirishina and a massive percentage stake of the corporation, making him a target of constant abuse from the brother that would eventually become his boss.

These revelations are detailed through a series of conversations between Nagisa and Mizuki that really help solidify the strange friendship between the two of them. There's an awkward distance between them, but the dialogue never feels stiff - it's understated and natural, making the lead-in to Nagisa's history feel like something he'd been wanting to get off his chest for years. It was enjoyable as a warm character moment in its own right, a great explanation for Nagisa's bitterness and pragmatic, aloof personality, and a sequence that naturally strengthened one of the key relationships of the series. This is the stuff that makes this show worth watching.

That high-quality run continued in the episode's last act, as Nagisa's tales of a family that wasn't a family at all was contrasted against the ad-hoc family of the A-TEC class. As Nagisa and Mizuki walked outside, they ran into Iris, whose decision to wait for Mizuki represented a wordless counterpoint to the lack of trust Nagisa has known. That point was hammered in by the rest of the class in the next scene, when Nagisa learned that they had all actually taken his message of reducing costs to heart, and were working on solving their problems even in the absence of Kaito. Kaito's old boss may have framed Nagisa as specifically "needing someone like Kaito," but it's clear in these scenes that it's A-TEC overall that might provide what Nagisa has been missing all this time.

This was an understated episode, but a strong and necessary one. It doubled down on Classroom Crisis' best assets, and furthered character relationships from Nagisa and Mizuki's friendship to Nagisa and Kaito's steadily growing inability to dislike each other. We're laying down the building blocks for what will hopefully be a much more consistent second half.

Rating: A-

Classroom Crisis is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Viewster.

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