The Coke Zero of anime spinoffs
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
I love Assassination Classroom. Despite only watching it all the way
through last December, I quickly fell in love with the world, the characters,
the humour, and how it somehow managed to take itself seriously while at the
same time not taking itself seriously in the slightest, if that makes any
sense.
So when I heard there was going to be
a short-form spinoff about the characters in a Dragon Quest-style setting, I was excited! The humour was always
the best part of the original series, especially from the goofy octopus teacher
Koro-Sensei, whom this series is named after.
I was disappointed to find that Koro-Sensei Quest turned out to be
little more than a one-trick pony of a series, giving episode after episode of
jokes that felt like they came out of the rejects bin in the writer’s room for
the main series.
The premise is identical to that of
the series it’s based on: Koro-Sensei, the previously mentioned goofy yellow
octopus monster, has decided he wants to teach a group of underachievers how to
succeed in life, all the while the government is trying their hardest to take
him down. Only here, everything is given a fantasy makeover, and Koro-Sensei is
recast as the “Big Bad” of this world that the classroom has to defeat to claim
his treasure.
It’s a fun premise…that unfortunately is
basically thrown out the window partway through, only picked up again when the
show feels like it. Entire episodes go by without referencing the fantasy twist
whatsoever, just making it feel like a really bad episode of Assassination Classroom with a chibi art
style. Once all the characters have been introduced, the show just kind of
coasts its way to the finish line, not certain what it really wants to do. It
wants to be a jokey fantasy spinoff of the main series that relies more on
humour, but it also seems to want to copy the main series in creating an actual
story around it.
Which brings me to my next point: the
episodes are too short for the story they’re trying to create, but they’re way too long for a short form parody
anime. Each episode of Koro-Q clocks in
at ten minutes, which is at least five more than they deserve. Think of other
comedy spinoffs of major anime: stuff like Fullmetal
4-Koma Theatre and Re:Zero Break Time.
Those two have episodes around two minutes long each, and they’re funnier for
it. The shorter run time allows them to build up and crack their jokes quickly
and easily, without the waiting around Koro-Q
is stuck doing while it waits for the next funny bit to come along.
So the episodes are too long and the
premise is a mess. Are the jokes any good? Well, I’d be lying if I said they
were all terrible. There are a few good running gags throughout with a decent
payoff at the end and a couple of the episodes that directly lampooned ones
from the main series did get a chuckle or two out of me. But seriously, these
examples are few and far between. Most viewings of Koro-Q by me were silent screenings, as literally every single one
of the jokes fell flat.
This is thanks to, as I said earlier,
the fact that all the jokes felt like rejects of the main series. By that I
mean that the writers seemed to only want to go for low-hanging fruit over and
over again, literally until the very end. There’s only so many times you can
hear “har har the girls are upset that the boys are creeps” or “lol lol lol
Nagisa looks like a girl” before you get extremely sick of it. And that’s
literally all Koro-Q has up its
sleeves! The same jokes repeated ad-nauseam until they stop.
While Koro-Sensei Quest has its moments here and there, the foundations
of this series might as well be made with bendy straws. The premise gets lost
halfway through, the episodes are far longer than they need to be, and worst of
all the jokes just aren’t funny. I’d only recommend this anime to a huge Assassination Classroom fan that really
truly wants to see everything the franchise has to offer. For anyone else, I’d
just watch the actual show again instead.
FINAL SCORE
5/10
Average
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