Review of Classroom of the Elite III

By this point you know what you’re going to get with these You Zitsu seasons. Good to great experience for anime onlies and an awful experience for fans of the source material. YZ season 3 is more of the same. If you’ve enjoyed the series to this point and are presumably anime only, you’ll love season 3. It covers the climax and conclusion of the first school year and has some of the hypest moments in the story. If you’re like me, a LN reader you’ll find this to be another abomination from Lerche and at this point are probably just watching to seehow bad it gets.

As an anime only viewer this season will probably come off as really thrilling and engaging. There’s a lot of twists and turns and the exam stakes are upped tremendously. In particular, Suzune’s development as a leader and the external forces getting involved at the school are the big highlights. The students are placed in one perilous situation after another and as usual Ayanokouji pulls strings behind the scenes to get the result he wants.

But sadly, as a massive fan of YZ, I just can’t believe how awful a season this was. There were massive cuts to key story moments, emotional climaxes that didn’t hit because they weren’t properly built up to, exams being basically power point slides, rushing through entire volumes in an episode.. it was bad. And it’s hard to separate the anime only experience from the source reader/viewer experience because of how invested I am into this story. I really do love the characters and the exams and all the behind the scenes tactics Kiyo pulls, but the anime just doesn’t capture that. It makes Ayanokouji out to be so one dimensional and edgy. It makes the exams look like side points when they are the whole focus of entire volumes. There’s so much planning the students put into these to succeed and it just gets cut out. I do fully understand that in a dialogue heavy story you’re going to have omissions, but there’s still series like Oregairu(even though I hate it for other reasons) that do this very well. This just feels like a soulless cash grab that’s only YZ in name, but retains none of the heart and spirit that’s in the source material.

And we haven’t even touched on the production values. I think the only thing Lerche care about in this show is making sure the thighs look good, which is a plus, and making sure Suzune shots look beautiful. Other than that, the animation is pretty bad, character models can be quite off and the production in general is decent to subpar. One thing I will definitely compliment them on is the use of shadows and lighting in certain scenes. For some reason, Lerche like to change the background of certain LN scenes, maybe because it’s easier to animate, or less stress on the staff, but some of them are nice. Others not so much. The OST they use during hype moments is as usual on point. I will definitely compliment Lerche on their use of music throughout the YZ adaptation.

So, what’s the verdict on YZ season 3? Is it worth watching? Well, simple. If you’ve liked it up until this point you’ll love this. It’s the best arc so far, biggest stakes and the most interesting exams, not to mention the world opening up and exterior forces coming to challenge Ayanokouji. Up until now, he hasn’t had much competition, but that looks like it’s about to change. If you’re a LN reader, it’s probably worth just watching in the background while doing something else to just to laugh at how some of our favourite moments have been butchered. It’s definitely not going to make any new fans of the series. I’d encourage anyone at least remotely interested in this franchise to get the books.

YZ season 3, gets 6 out of 10