SUMMER SPOTLIGHT: Classroom Crisis

July 24, 2015

Classroom Crisis has the makings of a good comedic sci-fi series with interesting hints of a Dallas-like power struggle. Don’t get left behind because before we know it summer will be over and this Deadly Diva will be on to the winter anime season.

Picture this: Mars in the distant future. Interplanetary travel is commonplace and Mars has been carved out in a manner similar to Antarctica. On Mars, in the Japanese installation named “Fourth Tokyo” is the Kirishina Academy, a feeder school for the Kirishina Corporation. Within the Kirishina Academy is a group of elite students that work for the Kirishina Corporation in the A-TEC department. Led by prodigy and A-TEC alum, Sera Kaito, the student-workers are at the heart of Kirishina’s innovation processes–this is by design. The company’s founders, two young men, treated the company as a never-ending science fair. As a result, A-TEC is the type of built in positive PR companies spend years trying to build.

However (and this a big whopping however), there are some haters in Kirishina Corporation. The current CEO of the company, Kiryu Kazuhisa, who based on the family name is a descendent of one of the founders, wants to shut down A-TEC. The reasoning isn’t clear, but it appears that the current CEO wants to wipe the founders’ “problematic” ideals from the company. And those poor idealistic kids in A-TEC have given the CEO the ammo to take them down. A-TEC is grossly, ridiculously, and mind-bogglingly over-budget.

Power players…but why the booty shot of the woman?

The plot of the first episode had A-TEC rescuing a kidnapped transfer student being held on an abandoned mining satellite. You’d think that rescuing a hostage would get them a few cool points – nah. The hostage, Kiryu Nagisa, is the transfer student they had been waiting on. And he is the brother of the CEO. And he is the new head of A-TEC. And he is not impressed with the cost of the rescue. In his defense, the total cost came to well over 15 billion dollars in equipment and human resources. That’s right 15 BILLION dollars. Nagisa read them for financial filth and revealed he was sent to dismantle A-TEC because they can’t work within their budget. (In A-TEC’s defense, who gives teenagers a blank check and is surprised that they spend all the money?) He was gracious enough to offer to assist with transfers to other departments, but how is that supposed to make it cool that A-TEC is being shuttered?

This is what happens when downsize your classmates.

The next episode starts where the first left off, with Nagisa telling the A-TEC team that he will be shutting them down. As one would expect, none of the students are really interested in getting to know him. Sera Mizuki, class president and younger sister of A-TEC teacher Sera Kaito tried to no avail. Nagisa is determined to maintain a business-like distance from his classmate/subordinates. But this Deadly Diva can already see that is not liked going to work based on the way he spoke to Shirasaki Iris. Speaking of the tenacious Sera siblings, Kaito has decided that he is not giving up on A-TECwithout a fight.

This episode is all soap opera, all the time. Name any soap with a struggle over a family business and you pretty much get the gist of what is going on in Kirishina Corporation with the Kiryu family. Nagisa’s older brothers have the wickedest axe to grind. It is obvious that there are some issues of succession and the older brothers are shook. (Did I just date myself?) How shook? Shook enough to send Nagisa on the crappiest assignments, almost as if they want him to fail. But the gods seems to favor Nagisa because he has been hailed as a super-businessman. This Deadly Diva guesses that when your barely 18-year-old brother is a business phenom, you have a good reason to be shook.