The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Classroom For Heroes

Rosewood Academy is a school that trains future heroes destined to protect mankind. The school accepts only those with the most potential. Arnest Flaming, a girl who boasts the top record in the academy, is assigned to guide a mysterious but cheerful new student named Blade, who rivals her power.

Classroom For Heroes is based on Shin Araki's Eiyū Kyōshitsu (Classroom For Heroes) light novel series. It streams on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

There is one thing that this episode establishes very clearly: its camera is in love with heroine Earnest Flaming's ass. And her breasts; it is simply more noticeable when the show goes out of its way to position her butt to the camera while hero Blade is somewhere in front and to the side of her. The cleavage shots are somewhat more typical, but someone was trying really hard to make those posterior shots look artistic.

Regretfully, this fixation on the sexualized portions of Earnest's body is the most coherent thing in the episode. There were multiple times when I found myself rewinding, sure that I'd missed something, only to find that I hadn't, and this is an issue that gets more pronounced as things progress. The beginning, with a hero and a demon lord fighting to the death, is very straightforward; ditto for young Blade popping up at a hero school with a bright-eyed wish to make one hundred friends while hiding his incredible skill. But by the time Earnest starts realizing that Blade is the real deal as far as skill goes, things start to get awkward. Suddenly, Earnest's sword is evil and cursed her as a small child. The blade may be the only one who can punch her inner demon into submission, which may make Earnest fall in love with him, and also stop wearing her hair up in a practical style for a swordswoman, and now she wants to be friends with people and and and…It feels very much like someone wasn't sure how to structure the episode so that the plot was evenly distributed throughout.

Even without these issues, there isn't a whole lot that's interesting going on. The implication that Blade is somehow related to the hero who died fighting the demon lord is the most intriguing part, and even that feels like a given; the real question is whether or not he was reborn or recovered from being run through. Incredibly, this is also the second show set at a magic school this season to introduce characters by having them all stand around and say their names. Some elements have potential (I like the diversity of character designs in the advanced class), but this is mostly underwhelming or confusing. I'd go with Reign of the Seven Spellblades if you're itching for a magic school story instead.

I'm worried the sheer onslaught of low-effort isekai stories eroded my standards. Objectively speaking, this premiere is nothing amazing or even all that noteworthy. It's your standard magic school light novel setup, from the secretly badass hero to the tsundere redhead love interest, exactly the kind of thing clogging up seasonal lineups before isekai took over. Yet, it managed to charm me by virtue of being a (mostly) straightforward fantasy series with lively animation and actual character dynamics. It's not unique, but I enjoyed watching something with so many familiar elements.

So much of that comes down to the presentation. There's a ton of energy and personality to the direction here, keeping the story movie at a brisk pace while never feeling rushed in any given scene. It's bright and playful, and while the camera is a bit more fond of Earnest Flaming's butt than is necessary, the visuals pop in a way that makes it all go down easy. There are some funny gags, like the high-level Hero class being full of weirdos with their own look and style that's inconsistent with the typical fantasy aesthetic. As the resident tsundere-liker, I got a lot of fun from Blade and Earnest's dynamic, with his unguarded earnestness (oh, the irony) easily deflecting her defensive jabs and sharp tongue. It's not that he doesn't take her seriously, but instead, he's so easygoing that giving him grief has no effect, and by the end of things, I bought that they'd trust each other enough to go through the whole demon-pact gamble together.

That said, the fact that we got there in the span of a single-length episode is a problem. I haven't read the source material, so I can't say for sure, but this episode feels like it sped through a whole volume's worth of story, excising a lot of build-ups to get to a stable status quo. Earnest's demon sword conundrum is resolved about 10 minutes after it's introduced, which robs it of the impact it probably should have. For another, there's a bunch of weird, unexplained details that flash by – like Blade breaking into the Magic School's sci-fi basement(?) guarded by robots(?) or the fact that there's a modern nurse's office complete with IV packs. Those aren't earth-shattering details, but they clash with the more traditional fantasy aesthetic just enough to beg explanation, which never comes.

Hopefully, that was a one-time thing to get to Blade and Earnest being full-on pals, and the rest of the show will slow down a bit because I did have fun with the episode. It's unabashedly horny but with strong enough presentation and actual character chemistry to complement the T&A. Its story and characters are archetypal but delivered with enough energy that the familiarity is endearing. If it can keep that up, it could be a good time.

You know, maybe Zom 100 has just put me in a good mood, but I went into Classroom For Heroes with my expectations thoroughly in check, and I ended up surprised by how much I liked it. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some dark horse masterpiece or anything. Many of the elements on display here are bog-standard fantasy tropes and light novel cliches, but execution has always mattered more than a novelty, in the grand scheme of things, and Classroom For Heroes features some solid execution. It won't blow your mind, but it's a decent way to kill a half-hour.

I think the best thing about this premiere is its endearing and—ahem—Earnest tone. Blade, our hero, is a loveable idiot who doesn't know anything about anything; all he wants to do is make friends at his new hero school, Rosewood Academy. The show leans into his dumb puppy energy, and it ends up being pretty infectious. Then we have Earnest Flamer, the current candidate for Most Hilariously Named Protagonist of the season, and a general stick in the mud. She has her reasons, though. All the time she's spent living friendless and aloof has taken its toll on her, and it is going to take an especially persistent and socially oblivious weirdo to drag her out of her shell. Also, she's got the whole “torturous connection to a cursed demon sword” thing to worry about, which is definitely a bummer.

Overall, this is just one of those premieres that just barely skates by on being “pretty okay, and sometimes even sort of good” at what it is trying to do, and there's no shame in that. I wish the background art didn't look so cheap, and the camera is definitely too horny for its own good when it comes to the many cheesecake shots of Earnest we get throughout the episode, but there's nothing offensive, here. It's light, breezy, popcorn entertainment that can fill the gaps in your seasonal watchlist, especially if you're stocking up on the heavier/spookier fare.

Classroom For Heroes was never going to be great. Its position as a derivative light novel mash-up of trendy clichés pretty much precludes that, and even though a few anime manage to overcome that with some real innovations, the show falls short. The writing is fine, but it leans too much on writing by character "type" instead of creating individuals with distinctive personalities. The animation is solid, if not remarkable, with some truly striking cuts. I did kind of like the general concept of the former hero rejecting the call in favor of making 100 friends; it reminded me of Yamada's First Time, a series I have a great fondness for. It could have been a solid three-star premiere.

BUT

Or, should I say...

BUTT…

Somehow, a sex comedy about a high school girl who wants to bang 100 guys before she graduates is less horny than a fantasy action series about a reincarnated hero who wants to make 100 friends. I liked Earnest, really; she has a great name and an interesting background. She was also relentlessly and shamelessly sexualized. The camera is downright obsessed with her breasts and butt, sniffing at her asscrack like an unneutered dog. In my review for TenPuru, I said that I couldn't really get mad at it because it was made purely as jack-off fodder, and I prefer that kind of male gaze-y content gets siloed off where I don't have to pay attention to it. Well, Classroom For Heroes is its direct opposite. There's nothing sexual about the story or situation, no reason for the camera to motorboat Earnest at every turn. And yet, it does. This sort of gratuitous fan service makes my skin crawl. It reminds me of how girls cannot exist without being treated as sex objects for male gratification.

This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that Blade resolves her honestly pretty cool, and her harsh exterior melts away. She's nice and gentle now! The shrew has officially been tamed. You can tell because her hair is down and she smiles more. Just more fodder for the harem, I suppose. Yeah, I've seen the key images. I've been watching anime for a long time, I know a harem series when I see one, whether or not it's disguising itself as an action series.

Is this review an excuse to rant about fan service? Perhaps, but consider that, after everything else this season, Classroom For Heroes was the one that managed to push me over the edge into that level of frustration. I've tried to take a more measured perspective toward childish titillation, but this was just over the top.

While it may not be as popular as the reincarnated in/transported to another world sub-genre, we still get two or three fantasy anime per season that fall into the magic school subgenre. Sadly, the vast majority of these are rather paint-by-numbers—having one big twist to set them apart but running through all the expected tropes for the most part.

At first glance, Classroom For Heroes is just another one of these. Even its setup—the hero joins a magic school to experience a normal life—has been done before (and even last season, if you want to be specific). But where this first episode succeeds is in the fact that it doesn't just do the expected tropes, it adds another layer of complexity to them.

Take the hero, Blade, and his decision to attend the magic school (or in this case, the "hero school"). As a boy who wants to be normal and not a hero, there's logically no way he'd attend a school for training the next generation of heroes. So this anime takes that extra step to subtly explain the situation: He was tricked into it. Blade thinks this school will be a place to make "normal" friends—and as the literal king of the kingdom has become the headmaster for a year, it's easy enough to guess who told him that and why.

Another great example of this is our heroine, Earnest. Like a thousand characters across a thousand shows, she is the tsundere trope made flesh. Yet, Classroom For Heroes builds its first episode around why this is—why she is so cold and distant on the outside while being emotional on the inside. She must control her emotions at all times, or the demon in her sword will break free, take over her body, and go on a violent rampage. Once she gains full mastery of the sword at the end of the episode, her cold exterior is gone, replaced with an outgoing one. She is a tsundere no more.

Even the trope of the hero saving the heroine is subverted in this episode. Rather than solving her problems for her, Blade simply backs her up—promising to stop the demon if she fails to subdue it. This, in turn, allows her to focus solely on the fight and not its possible consequences. In other words, in a nice change of pace for this type of story, he helps her save herself.

In the end, Classroom For Heroes looks to be the story of Blade's mission to gain 100 friends. Honestly, that's a fine setup that allows for any number of small adventures. And if everything continues like in this episode, it could be a pretty fun ride.