Like Koro-sensei before him, alien Rocopon is deceptively goofy. After crash-landing in Shibuya eight years ago, he was recognized as Japan's official resident alien...and then five years ago, he was given a special assignment to the Department of Murder at the Ministry of Defense. The logic is that because Rocopon isn't human, it's not a crime for him to kill humans, and therefore, he's the perfect guy to carry out government-sanctioned assassinations. But, dammit, killing people's a lot of work, and Rocopon just wants to do his own thing!

It's hard not to see at least a little bit of Assassination Classroom's influence in this title. Ignoring later spoilers from that series, the surface similarities are stark: Rocopon, like Koro-sensei, just showed up one day, and people were fascinated and frightened by him. He's even got a similarly weird character design, although unlike Koro-sensei, his buff human body and giant round cat head (with small features) are more distinctly (and deliberately) absurdist. When Rocopon falls out of his Vegeta-style space pod, he remarks that he's naked, but he has no discernable feature, sexual or otherwise, on his body. Genetic testing reveals that he has some human(like) genes and feline, specific to white-furred cats and snow leopards. (White fur is important because specific genetic issues can cause or come with white fur in domestic cats.) He can elongate parts of his body similarly to Koro-sensei, and his eventual job at the Department of Murder also seems to draw inspiration from Yūsei Matsui's much longer series.

That's not a dealbreaker, though. Rocopon is an objectively more absurd series, as well as one with somewhat more violence, and it manages to stand on its own. The title character's laid-back personality forms a large part of his charm – he has no interest in joining the Department of Murder when he's told he must, and he'd rather spend his time giving out autographs, mugging for the camera, or playing games. He's mildly horrified when Mei Hibino, a pure young cop he saves, is irrevocably changed by her encounter with the Department of Murder. Still, he's "mildly" about just about everything in life. The "good" folks over at the Ministry of Defense don't seem to care much about anything but what Rocopon can do for them, and there's a lackadaisical quality to every character interaction in the book. Mei is the standout in this scenario because, unlike most of the others, she has a powerful sense of what she ought to do. Irrevocably changed by her initial run-in with Rocopon, she appears to have had all of her idealism crushed out of her, leaving her honed to a fine edge. She seems inclined to blame Rocopon for everything, but there are some hints that she may not be quite as cynical as she seems, although goodness knows the alien would test anyone's patience at times.

If there's a weakness here, it's that none of the stakes feel all that high, despite a few attempts to make them seem so. It's one thing to have the title character have a blasé attitude (and then turn around and be amazing at his job); it's another to relegate scenes that could be tense to a talking heads venue. Discussions at the Department are held between near-identical men in suits; bad guys are talking heads with matching tattoos or stereotypical thug looks. The action scenes are decent but largely rely on Rocopon looking like he's injured and then turning the situation around by showing that he can kick someone's head off with his knee. Awesome? Yes, but there's not a ton of variation, although I must credit the sheer absurdity of some of the villains' lines, which help a lot.

Some good science fiction gadgets are floating around, most of them under Mei's control as she has to corral villains but can't kill them due to being human. The best is when one bad guy, nicknamed The Owl (inexplicably in Chinese), reveals his impeccably engineered eyes, which seem to rely on some highly suspicious science about the speed at which the human eye can view things. It's delightfully bizarre, and that's when this book is at its best: it leans into its zanier side and goes all in on the absurd aspects of its plot.

Rocopon isn't a perfect book, but it works better than it doesn't. It feels gimmicky at times, and the obvious inspiration it takes from Assassination Classroom might turn some readers off, even though they're largely on the surface. The art is decent, and the actions are pretty fun. If you like your assassination tales with a hefty dose of insanity, this is worth a try.