Classroom of the Elite and Escapism

Many people have opinions on this show and I Find it understandable. The show is very flawed in many ways but that doesn't mean the show is without any good aspects. So today let's talk about the classroom of the elite and escapism. Let's be honest with each other the escapism genre has recently gotten a pretty bad rap especially in anime. That's mostly to do with most escapism fantasies being self insert shows about a character who does nothing and becomes all-powerful granted. There are a few shows that are exceptions to this rule but this won't be my argument for today since Ayanokoji-kun is a self-insert character. I think the main flaw people often make about shows like this is that if it's self-insert, it's automatically bad but let's be honest, that's a pretty toxic way of looking at art.

Most people came into the classroom of the elite with this bias and left without giving it a proper chance to draw you in and that is what is truly amazing about this show. If I had to describe the classroom of the elite in one word it would be hypnotic. The show's entire focus is about drawing you into this mysterious world and letting you build your own story around it. The show takes advantage of the artstyle along with the music to slowly pull you into this otherworldly thinking and it's extremely successful. The gorgeous backdrops look utopian and each character has these massive multicolored eyes that draw you in evenfurther. Even the music is often repetitive to slowly lull you into this world. The author built another key thing. The author gives you almost nothing to go off of there is no backstory to be given and we only see small glimpses of the outside world before the anime begins by having this weird and mysterious world. we fill these gaps that were intentionally left all by ourselves. We slowly get lost in the world of the Academy and the weights achieved are incredible. this is definitely one that shows strongest points but nevertheless I won't pretend that this is something truly unique to this show. I can personally lift off a ton of shows that were able to accomplish this feat also and I consider most of them to be mediocre at best. 

So what separates the classroom of the elite from these other escapism fantasy commitments.  A lot of the shows that I thought of have strong premises but never commit to their ideals. When I first started watching this show Iimmediately thought, how long until the main character becomes some god-like entity? How long until this show turns into some fanservice harem? how long until they throw away this gorgeous atmosphere they've built and for the first time in a long time I can finally say never. The show commits to this world that they've built throughout the entire season and never once loses sight of. Thanks to this the show is enjoyable and never really feels like it's cutting any corners to help sell merchandise. The show is immersive in that sense and it goes out of its way to make me forget that this is just an anime which leads me to the last thing I want to talk about. the self insert character AyanoKoji kun. The author intentionally created him to be a self insert character but still heavily limits what he's capable of doing. Ayane Koji is definitely a genius but he doesn't abuse his powers well. There's one exception but let's make that a footnote because we'll be coming back to that. I think the point of Ayane Koji is that he has very similar powers to what's the audience has while watching the anime. he has further knowledge of what's going on in his surroundings but as I said earlier he rarely uses that to influence a narrative this is to help us push ourselves  because at no point in the anime do we ever mistakenly say what the hell are you doing. We understand his motives for the most part because he has more in common with the audience members than his actual classmates. Either way I think this is a good time for us to return to the footnote I made earlier for the one occasion. He does abuse his powers in the final episode.

koji basically pulls in ex machina and wins the game for seemingly no reason which is completely out of character I was caught off-guard by this until the last scene of the anime concluded which I don't exactly want to spoil but it's basically an incredible plot to us on the character revealing that he is in fact very different from what we had previously expected. thus finally giving us Ayane Koji's true motives which align all of his previous actions perfectly. thus keeping the audience in this lull for essentially the entire season only to slap us in the face with this last episode. This is something I honestly didn't expect but the ending of the show heavily improved my opinion of it by this time. The narrative I had assumed I Knew where the show was going but the writer threw in this last plot twist and really gave the show a solid and memorable ending. I think there's nothing objectively wrong with a self insert style of storytelling. if it's done right it can lead to an incredibly enjoyable show granted. I'm not worshiping classroom of the elite because the show definitely has a lot of problems mostly following characters and the narrative itself but nevertheless the show is still pretty amazing and in my opinion is one of the best escapism pieces we have in the anime medium but what separates classroom of the elite the most is that it does something that most anime are incapable of and that is being committed to their ideals. Please comment down below about what you think about this show.