One of today’s hottest manga titles, Assassination Classroom, became an interesting topic of discussion as it was announced to be released in English. This was a title that could have never come out in North America because of its association with school students being trained killers. So what gives?

As many people will tell you, America is a country with a fetish for guns. It seems like shootings happen every day there. There have been notable shootings at U.S. schools throughout the last 10+ years and people have complained about whether we’re really safe. The Sandy Hook incident that took place in 2012 shook me personally because of the children that got hurt and killed. One of my jobs involves working at a elementary school and my boss said that a lot of parents were calling to check in on their kids the day the incident happened. Any time you hear both shooting and children involved will make you sad as hell.

There was a comment made on the Shonen Jump U.S. website about why Assassination Classroom was a no-go in the past:

“Assassination Classroom was a topic that was previously discussed in a podcast, and since chances are we won’t address this again, I’ll just write it out. There are very obvious reasons as to why we can’t bring this series over. I get that a lot of fans like this series and would like to see it brought over, but the facts of the matter is that this is too sensitive a subject to touch. And the recent violent incidents over the past few years in schools here in the U.S. pretty much put the hammer emphatically to the nail.” 

Some fans discussed about a possible name change, but the title will remain the same. With regards to why Assassination Classroom is getting attention now, it probably comes down to the timing. You know how some comedians get away with jokes that sound horrible? It’s all about timing. There was a study that showed that the perfect time for a joke after a tragedy is a few weeks or a bit longer. Anything longer becomes tasteless. However, there are still some jokes that seem to generate humor even after a long period of time (i.e. 9/11 jokes). 

The humor in Assassination Classroom is great and it’s the reason why the series has ranked ahead of One Piece in the Shonen Jump rankings at times. Koro-sensei ranks up there with the best teachers in anime/manga and is one of the more absurd characters in the shonen genre. It’s just that right now, the future is unpredictable. No one can predict what others will do, yet the point of the series seems to highlight an important issue to consider when it comes to preventing mass shootings.

The series is about a teacher who looks out for a class filled with students who are considered “failures” that could cause harm to others. Instead, they get to practice killing a seemingly-invulnerable teacher and learn positive values from him. You have to get to the students before they turn sour. While a few of the students were bad to begin with, they still had some honorable traits that kept them from going overboard. That’s how you can prevent something bad from ever happening.

Backlash will be expected, but after some second thought, it’s a title that I feel now is needed because of the depth behind the humor. 

If it all else fails, there’s always jokes you can make about the characters.

(c) Manga Therapy – Where Psychology & Manga Meet – Read entire story here.