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Last edited by Tony K. on Thu Apr 11, 2024 12:15 pm; edited 8 times in total

Season 01: Spy Classroom (TV)
Season 02: Spy Classroom (TV 2)

Source: Light Novel (ongoing @ 9 Volumes + 4 Short Stories, written by Takemachi, illustrated by Tomari)

Demographic: Seinen

Animation Studio: Feel

Genres: action, comedy, romance

Themes: harem, school, spies

Plot Summary: Following a great war which engulfed numerous countries and came at a huge human cost, nations have forsworn overt warfare. Now battles are waged between spies, and the small Din Republic boasts an especially capable young man known as Klaus.

When Klaus loses his mentor (and de facto father), he is given the man's failed mission and told to assemble his own elite spy team to infiltrate the neighboring country. Klaus agrees…but his idea of “elite” seems more like “incompetent” and the girls he picks for his mission don't look like they could spy on someone ten feet away from them, much less infiltrate an enemy nation.

Air Date & Platform:
Season 01: January 5, 2023 (Thursday)
Available on: HIDIVE

Season 02: July 13, 2023 (Thursday)
Available on: HIDIVE

Episode Count / Runtime:
Season 01: 12 episodes
Season 02: 12 episodes

Total: 24 episodes

Episode 1

Hard not to be reminded of Princess Principal given the fact that the technological/time period visuals are very similar and it's about girl spies. I wasn't blown away by the first episode but it was entertaining enough to keep my coming back to so if this is a keeper.

And here I was thinking of Assassin Classroom seeing how it's a classroom where the students pass by beating the teacher. There's something about Lily that makes it work for me, such as going from bubbly ditz to master assassin using her skills to live to Classroom Leader in just a few minutes.

Considering the other character designs, they all look super competent so the bulk of the series should explore how each of the others are dropouts and with how varied this Great War setting could be, there is a lot of potential here, including possible counterespionage and sleeper agents.

I like it.

Episode 3

I was thinking that the whole suicide mission came on a little quick, with them all just thrown into it without us really getting to know the girls yet. And then the episode started to throw reveals like that they knew the whole time that their base was bugged, that they were being listened in on, and so were actually keeping their cards close to their chest. Even so much so that there was a secret 8th girl that trained with them, but they purposefully never mentioned so that they could use her as a surprise. Really played into the disinformation side of things, where it wasn't enough for the first episode to have its twist of it, they needed to get the audience with it after making us think that we already kind of had things figured out.

Kind of hope then that going forward we will actually get to know these characters as individuals, seeing as they mentioned that they actually all kept their specialties a secret. Now that their big mission of being watched by the enemy is over, we can see more. Although, with all the backstabbing reveals of playing the long con, can we really rule out that someone isn't doing it even further?

With episode 3, the series truly moves into the territory of espionage and counterespionage. Trust no one and nothing, including what the show tells you, until everything's over. And I am OK with that.

One small caveat: If we fully learn about the characters then we can't have one of them eventually turn on the rest. And if the show hints to the Seven Deadly Sins, having 8 girls is a bit of a problem. It could be just misdirection for Guido but the eighth girl, introduced after the ruse is over with, is so obviously Sloth that I can't help but look at their lineup and figure out if the rest fit.

Lily as Greed though? I think she thinks too highly of herself.

Animegomaniac wrote:

With episode 3, the series truly moves into the territory of espionage and counterespionage.

And this is the best thing I like it for.

Well, that was the last episode and it was an okay show. Nothing great and having the main case wrap up in the first three episodes did not do it any favors. The latter episodes were a mixed bag and it is a bit ironic that the only real moment of excitement for me is the cliffhanger.

Episode 12 (Finale)

Based on that ending, this is a show that clearly expects to get a sequel and I hope it does. I'm rating it Decent. I agree with smurky turkey that its structure was odd. Having the Impossible Mission arc finish in three episodes and then have several episodes that take place before that Impossible Mission was kind of a weird choice. Oh well, cute spy girls doing cute spy things basically worked for me, but I agree it was nothing special.

Yeah, that was certainly a sort of weird ending, like an overconfident cliff hanger of an ending to expect a follow up. I was just wondering if maybe they were finally going to get him by surprise.

While I do think that the impossible mission being done after the third episode is a little strange, I might say that twist it pulled of playing with perception leading up to that as kind of worth it. And then to me kind of wasted when it spent the next several episode set before the episode. Maybe a couple episodes, but it felt like too many when we already found out that they all had to hide their special abilities leading up to the mission. I actually thought that maybe there wouldn't be another more decent episode until we got the episode with the girl that has the animals, which I think was supposed to be the first episode set after the mission.

I additionally think that it failed to really give most of the girls a real impact. With the ones I do remember are the poison girl that made the impression in the first episode, the quiet girl that pulled off the twist of the extra member, the animal girl, and the probably the unlucky girl and the one who can do disguises, which had a lot of focus. Even if that might be most of them, it felt like too many. But some of the characters worked well, maybe Lily who did not in fact fall for Klaus, and had her kind of fake main character thing, although I wonder if the character could have been even better if say it was all a conscious act.

My rating will be the same as Blood-'s, Decent (6/10).

I'm still unsure of how serious the show was with the Seven Deadly Sins concept but it did adhere to it with Monica being the odd one out at the end... wow, the second white haired girl specializing in forgeries was the extra one, that's more obvious than I thought it was.

Lily, poison girl, was Pride. She said she was Greed but even after mentioning being greedy in a few later episodes, Lily being Lily and making sure everyone knew it loomed larger.
Grete, disguise girl, was Envy. Obvious.
Thea, sexy girl, was Lust. Too Obvious.
Erme, quiet girl, was Sloth. Ditto.
Sybilia, violent girl, was Wrath. Ditto as well.

These five are so obvious that it makes me wonder why the last two aren't. Sara and her animals would be a different definition of Gluttony... her group as a unit is a big eater but Annette is so undefined I have to look up her name every time.

Up to the final episode, I had Monica as Greed.... which makes me wonder about Annette...

Thematically, I'd list this show's use and consistency of the Seven Deadly Sins as lower than Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood but higher than Fullmetal Alchemist. The ones they took from the manga were fine, the ones they come up with on their own were not.

Actually, I don't think the show ever intended to use the Seven Deadly Sins concept with the girls. The first clue being that there is actually eight girls instead of seven.

The spies are back in action. Last season we had the weird pacing messing a lot up, but there was some solid fun to be had and some of the spies are amusing. The new season starts with the capture of Corpse and shows how the other half of the group works together, or rather, how they don't. The Lily group showed that they can work together in a strategic way last season and the Thea group is just all kinds of unhinged. Said unhinged group is now missing.

Season 2, Episode 7

Did anyone else burst out laughing when it turned out the super evil thing spoiler[being smuggled turned out to be weed?]

The thing is that I think the show was treating it entirely on face value, that anyone involved in it would be ruining their and other's lives. Is this like a Japanese thing, considering I would say the west has a had a big shift in recent decades or so?

Well, there is a difference between how drugs are viewed between parts of the world, that much is true. That said, weed being treated like it is some ultra meth mix is a tad much, I suppose it is for humor. Also nice to see someone else post here, the second season has been rather good so far, a significant improvement over the weirdly paced first one.

smurky turkey wrote:

Also nice to see someone else post here, the second season has been rather good so far, a significant improvement over the weirdly paced first one.

Without the altered timeline of revealing the mission and then going back, it has felt more consistent. Also felt like there is much more character to latch onto for the different girls.

A particularly memorable episode was with the enemy spy pretending to be one of their mothers, before revealing that that the resident cuckoo lander really was paying attention to details, and then let the enemy destroy herself. She thought that maybe she was maybe monstrous for setting it up to kill the woman that had slighted her friends, but it was pretty justified.

Also last week with the seduction plot. I liked that we had the bit about being told that anyone could have boobs and just seduce someone, like there wasn't anything meaningful to that skill set or knowledge. But then showed with just the knowledge, she could coach someone who had no confidence her femininity to totally destroy a con artist d-bag. I guess in my mind a somewhat tendency to ignore feminine sexuality as either reductive or not that impressive for female empowerment, but can push people up.

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