Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e

Simply one of the best light novels I have ever had the pleasure to read, for those who watched the anime series is very worth going in search of reading the original material.
There are many points that differ from the anime, so I recommend you start reading from the beginning of the story, but if you do not have the patience and desire you can go straight to the end of volume 3 and the beginning of volume 4 which is where the anime ends the adaptation.
About the story: It is very well built and we feel light and willing to continue reading to know what will happen to Ayanokoji and his classmates.
About the characters: One of the few novels that can make you care about practically the whole cast, it is clear that we have established a greater connection with Ayanokoji, since he is the protagonist of the story (one of the great differences of the anime for the novel is in Ayanokoji's thoughts that differ greatly). I've never been able to relate to anyone or think that anyone could understand me but this changed when I discovered this anime/novel. Ayanokoji is someone that thinks the exact same way I do so that may influence my opinion on him but I feel that those who are curious should definitely read and not be limited just because of my bias.
About art / illustrations: Simply beautiful to see, nothing to complain about.

If you’re like me, you watched the anime and thought it was cool and decided to pick up the LN, then you have made the right choice. In my years as an otaku, I have read countless novels. And out of all of them, YouZitsu stands out as my favourite. It could even rank among the top 50 best books I’ve ever read, not just light novels. I do highly recommend reading from the beginning, because the anime mischaracterised Ayanokouji to an insane degree (although I guess at that time his character wasn’t very developed) and the Author really has a flair for narrative prose. This review will be pretty short since I’m not going to discuss the philosophy of this novel, and that’s where most of my opinions are.

Story and Prose : 9/10. Each story is crafted with a clear goal and solution, that isn’t so esoteric as to leave readers lost but still difficult enough to pose a challenge to understand. The reason I cut a point is that sometimes the pacing can be too slow, especially in the later chapters. This makes people want to skip pages. Apart from that, pretty much faultless. (Note: this is obviously in relation to other LNs, a translated work will naturally be inferior to something in its original language)

Art: 7/10. Nothing much to report. I like it, but there wasn’t really anything transcendent or stunning. It’s all just solid. 7/10.

Character: 10/10. You’ll just have to take my word for this. I’d have to go into spoilers to explain, and I don’t want to do that.

Enjoyment: 9.5/10. Apart from the aforementioned slow-paced bits, I don’t think anyone could have a bad time reading this. It’s intense, funny, light, dark, serious and terrifying, and it’s able to flip between them without the slightest bit of narrative whiplash.

Overall: 10/10. Without a doubt the best written LN I’ve read since spice and wolf. That’s no small praise. Read it, please. You’ll understand why the author was disappointed with the anime.

This series is a masterpiece of Light Novel writing. Nothing is quite like it. Sure, school life Light Novels exist. But those are usually romantic comedies, or simple comedies.

This one is not one of those. It is a story about education. And while it may sound boring at first, the way it is executed further contributes to making it so uniquely interesting.

Basically, in an alternate future, Japan pours its resources into the Adcanced Nurturing High School, in order to form the country's future elites.

This creates a unique environment for the student, who have to compete, as if they were different teams in a company.

The fact that an inner currency (points) exist simulates the effect of money and how it can be used to bend the laws. The school life reproduces at the same time the competition of a corporate environment, as well as the ambiguity of real life through points.

The characters of class 1-D evolve within this environment. We discover a good chunk of them, the facade behind who they actually are. It is fascinating to see them change for the better.

The antagonists are truly great as well. They provide much needed tension and pressure on the main protagonist.

Talking about the main protagonist, he is unique as well. He is both bottomless and changes like a character with progression. He truly is fascinating.

I can only advise you to go read it for yourselves. This was a spoilerless review. I have no qualms about giving that rating to this series at all. It totally deserves it.

Because it is such a story, the anime could not reproduce its greatness. Don't mind the anime, just jump into the books. Don't use the anime as an excuse to consider the source material bad, you would be making a grave mistake.

Welcome to the Classroom of the Elite !! I started this novel after finishing the anime, and OMG, it's the best thing I've read in my life. I am very hooked on the plot, the characters and the most beautiful girl that exists Kei Karuizawa (Best female character 2020 of all Japan). Read it, you will not regret that.


If they come from the anime, start with volume 4. Each volume has a different situation to solve by the protagonist Ayanokouji (Best 2020 male character in all of Japan), a cold and calculating being who wants to discover human emotions. It is very epic.

SPOILER ALERT:
So i finished this series a few days ago and decided to write a review for this cos holy fuck was this amazing. ( pls bear with me this is my first review) Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e entails a story set in the Koudo Ikusei high school which is a government run high school meant to train students and convert them into leaders of the world. Now like most of the western audience i found this series via the anime on Netflix. I was always a fan of the elite high school setting and this series takes it to a new damn level. The anime did a fantastic job of hooking me onto the series and making me curious for more, so i read this and feel extremely satisfied. The story is a 10 in my books. Art is not that great but coming from a doujinshi artist it is pretty good. Character development is not given to all the characters but mainly to ayanokouji. At the start he is a cold person who just want to mind his own business and enjoy his high school life but later on he realizes that the feeling like friendship and love which he earlier considered trivial and unimportant are actually pretty good once you receive it. The others who receive it are hirata, ryueen and kei. Tsukishiro is a pretty good antagonist who is also the main focus as an antagonist in the second year arc as of volume 3. I really enjoyed this series and am hoping and rooting for a season 2 because it really deserves a second chance.

This is definitely one of the greatest, most intriguing and enjoyable light novels I have ever read. I started with watching the anime to get some kind of idea of the feel of the story. The anime itself was pretty good and made me read the light novel. Now compared to the light novel the anime is a 7/10, because the light novel is a definite 10.

FOR ANIME WATCHERS: I recommend reading from the first novel if you have already seen the anime. First you will probably notice that Ayanokouji's personality is a little different than in the anime, more normal-like. This is for most of the first three novels, but even during the first three novels you see small slips and clues of his real personality, which you anime watchers will probably appreciate. His True personality comes to light by the end of the third novel. This development literally BLEW MY MIND. It made me appreciate Ayanakouji as a character a whole lot more than in the anime and made him seem even more badass. Also a bonus, in the light novel you'll get to see some other character development from the real best girl of class D (SPOILER: Her initials_K.K. and it isn't Kushieda or Horikita).

Now on to my personal review of the light novel:

Art 8/10: okey I will start with art because that's easiest. So, the art is pretty good, it illustrates the characters well and gives you a good idea of the situation. It isn't what this light novel is popular for, but is still good.

Story 10/10: The story is about a student Ayanokouji Kiyotaka who just entered an unusual high school. It is later revealed that for the next three years of high school life they will be in an all out class war to graduate as the best class, class A. The classes are ranked from A-D, and Ayanoukouji is a student from class D, the lowest class. The school determines the rankings for Classes based on school points, which also form the basis of their allowance. School points that each class receives are determined by merit, such as exam scores, behavior, sport clubs,..
Ayanokouji hides his true abilities to not stand out and lead a peaceful high school life, but soon is forced to help the class in secret. He becomes something like the puppet master of Class D while he makes sure someone else in the class gets all the credit for his achievements so he doesn't stand out. This light novel isn't some kind of isekai action packed story. It is a story of mystery, action (in some ways), and suspense. The story of each light novel is great and keeps me longing to read the next one. That's why it is most definitely a 10.

Characters 10/10: This is a completely story-and character driven series with its main character Ayanoukoji Kiyotaka. He is my favourite light novel charater ever. His personality is mainly cold and manipulative, but strangely understandable in the later novels. He also shows rare moments of compassion to certain characters.
(NOTE: Light SPOILERS rest of paragraph)
The two most noteworthy characters other than Ayanokouji are in my opinion Ryuuen and Karuizawa Kei (AKA Best Girl). Ryuuen is the Tyrant of Class C who rules the class with an iron fist and uses backhanded, lowly methods to advance in the class rankings. He is quite interesting as a character and fun to read about. Then you have Karuizawa Kei, the leader of the girls in Class D. She doesn't do anything noteworthy for the first three novels but really starts to shine as a character after volume 4. After volume 4 she and Ayanokouji become close and develop the most interesting relationship Ayanokouji has compared to the other classmates. But I won't go too far into that because that will spoil the story a little.
Other than that you have Horikita (who I personally dislike) the somewhat "leader" of Class D who Ayanokouji helps to benefit Class D in the class wars.

Enjoyment 10/10: As I said, this is one of my all time favorite light novels with great characters and a gripping story. I couldn't resist but write a review of how great these light novels were/are to me. I highly recommend this novel for almost all light novel readers.

Classroom of the Elite peaked at the first chapter. Yep, you’ve read that right, literally the first chapter is the best this novel has to offer, and it only goes downhill afterwards.

It offered interesting points about ethics and morality, piquing my interest in the series. Commendably so, as it managed to have meaningful content in a scene that’s just about whether to offer your seat in public transport or not. The problem is that this chapter is set in real world, while rest of the novel isn’t. Not to be misunderstood, Classroom of the Elite isn’t some sort of isekai, what I mean is that the core setting is a controlled environment clear of outside influence with a fake “society” set up. Which in turn makes the attempted portrayal at psychology of the character and social commentary fake also, as it doesn’t relate to actual realistic society.

Now, that could still work if the story had interesting characters that could engage in some intriguing chemistry. Unfortunately that is not the case. I’d like to start with the protagonist, who is the most interesting character in this novel, but that isn’t really saying much, just that the rest is much worse off. It’s an interesting concept – a character that looks average to the observers but is in fact very capable and hiding as an average joe is part of their calculations. It’s not an original idea, sure, but sounds interesting enough. The problem with Ayanokouji is that his character seems to be crafted this way just so the readers could roleplay and imagine themselves and someone who is actually not average like the reader is in reality but super great awesome person. Yep, the plague of light novel world, the blatant self-insert is in motion once again, together with the “lone wolf” aesthetics so popularized by Oregairu.

The problem with Ayanokouji is the difference between his character setting and his actual portrayal in the story. Exhibit A: to not attract unwanted attention he poses as an average student, intentionally hiding his true abilities. To do that he answer the test literally 50% correctly and to achieve that he answers some very difficult questions correctly while also failing some easy ones. This of course brings unwanted attention to him, the opposite of desired result. One doesn’t have to be genius to think of just simulating what an average result would mean, which does not mean literally 50% correct. Another example is more of a theme carrying though the whole novel than just one instance. You see, Ayanokouji’s behaviour as not so capable regular student is supposed to be just a camouflage, while his real personality is not regular at all. This idea crashes on the novel being told from his point of the view most of the time. He should have no need to continue this act in his inner thoughts but he is actually portrayed as boring character without interesting insights in the narration with just few exceptions. Those moments where his “true” personality comes out are good, but there’s just very few of them. I’m not against the concept of unreliable narrator and the mc appearing as normal to the reader even through his own narration up to the first reveal would be good writing, but there is no need to still keep his narration uninteresting for rest of the novel. There’s also the thing of lack of description of his mental process, but more about that later.

Another illogical character is Chabashira-sensei. A person that is described by an extreme desire for her class to be succesfull, but also letting her class to get the worst start ever, effectively shooting herself in the foot for no reason other than the feeling of emergency being added to the plot. Is she clumsy? Short-sighted? Or just forced to make blunders that contradict her real goals? Who knows, her character is a mess.

Rest of the characters can be grouped together. Why have I singled out Ayanokouji and Chabashira? Because those two are the only ones whose names I remember without looking up if I’m right. And for Chabashira it’s only because I think her name sounds funny. Yes, lot of the characters just kind of… merge together. Multiple times I had to look up a name to find out who is the novel even talking about. Now, I won’t lie, I’m usually bad with remembering names, but usually I can still differ between the characters. Here, most of the characters don’t have personality interesting or individual enough to be able to be identified by different means other then their names. That is not something that’s supposed to happen. Even if the reader is bad with names (and I’m hardly the only one who is), they should still be able to tell the characters apart.

This if course ties to the ultimate problem of Classroom of the Elite which is that the characters just didn’t intrigue me enough for me to care about what is happening to them. I didn’t become invested in the story and there is no character for which I could care less as to what would happen to them. Ultimately I couldn’t find any reason to continue reading this other than my completionist compulsion.

The story itself is way too cyclic. Most the volumes are just the school making some exam with stupid rules that end with the protagonist (sometimes with help of Horitaka) causing his class to survive the ordeal. There is no sense of emergency as you know that even if everyone is fucked it’s not like the protagonist is in any actual danger at being expelled (and it’s not like I’d care even if he did, the whole cast could drop dead and I would only rejoice I don’t have to read any more of this). I’d even go as far as to say that for most volumes you could read the start and the finally, completely skipping the middle part and you wouldn’t miss out on anything important. To come back at what I hinted in the character paragraph, the problem with Ayanokouji is also that the process of creating his plans isn’t exactly… described. He just has a plan that he came up with offscreen and is revealed to the reader at the end of the volume. We don’t see him struggle with making it or even thinking about creating it, he just magically poofs it into existence because he is a genius with answer to anything. This makes me think that the author is unable to write the process and he’s pretty much reverse engineering problems to solutions he himself wrote. Such is the problem when mediocre authors attempt to write a genius character, it just isn’t believable. This novel feels pseudointellectual in a sense that it tries to appear intelligent, but it also aims at average readers as the demographics, so it only has to maintain an illusion it is something of value instead of actually having to be well written. No offense to those that enjoyed this literary work.

Just as a small side note about the setting – the system of the school doesn’t even make much sense. It’s supposed to create/recruit elite that would stimulate the country. But it keeps trying to expel people that don’t excel in every way. Why is there a need for someone who wants to the best baseball player to complete the same requirements as a talented mathematician, and vice versa? I’d expect teaching methods more focused on individual value in a so called elite school. Like, you could face being expelled if you fail a damn glorified popularity poll lmao. Sorry to break it to you fictional version of Japan, but people that excel at literally everything are quite hard to find, to the point of it being a miraculous occurrence. Good luck filling a whole class with that. Well, it works in the world of Classroom of the Elite, because the classroom isn’t actually filled with elites – most of the students are pretty much regular people that are mooching of the leaders of classes to get through the school year with the help of schemes of somebody else. Is that what the future elite of the nation is supposed to be? I don’t think so. It’s actually funny how in comparison the system Hope’s Peak Academy makes much more sense if the goal is to bring up the best of future generation and nurture their talents (however tragically that ended up). And Danganronpa even doesn’t take itself seriously all the time unlike Classroom of the Elite (and thanks for that, as it gives it its unique charm).

And as more of a footnote about the illustration, do the spreads really have to be so fanservicey? I know that illustrations sell, but reducing the characters to their racks isn’t exactly helping with portrayal of the story as something of value. No surprises here though, as other works by the artist are mostly straight out porn.

Originally I was going to give this 6/10 because, well, it’s not exactly bad, it just isn’t isn’t good either. Then I thought about how much I had to force myself through most of the volumes, how I didn’t look forward to reading more at all and how it just felt as a waste of time, so I felt it would be unfair to put it on the same level as some of the other titles I’ve rated with 6/10. So 5/10 it is. If you want to read something with intellectual battles full of scheming and outsmarting, there’s plenty of other works like that, some of them even being actually good. Death Note being the most popular one, there’s also Legend of the Galactic Heroes for which the original novel doesn’t get nearly enough attention it deservers or for example works by Fukumoto Nobuyuki in general. If you want something about a character that looks generic on the outside but is in fact highly irregular, there’s Zaregoto Circle by NisiOisiN. All those examples actually portray mind process of the protagonists, and that's how mentally gifted characters should be written. Of course, if you’re satisfied just with characters magically outsmarting everyone effortlessly because the author said that they are supposed to be smart, you can go watch Code Geass or something.

I am a guy that gets bored easily and as a result i have dropped quite a significant amount of novels, books, anime etc. However this is not the case with Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu or Classroom of the elite.
I was preety sure that the LN would be quite boring since i am kinda prejudiced against school stuff but the whole story reminds me of a mystery-crime solving book while it also has an amazing character development.
1. Story. The story is about a highschool student Ayanokouji Kiyotaka who enrolls into a meritocratic (On a crass basis) style school in which the people are placed into their class based on their overall abilities (Academic, physical, social etc). He is placed into the bottom tier class D and we are shown how the whole class interact with each other and with other classes as well, with ulterior motive to reach class A (top tier class).
2. Character. The character development of the protagonist is very interesting considering his first emotionless state. The most intersting fact though is the development of every other character in the show as a result of their interaction with Ayanokouji. The author also never stops presenting new characters when he thinks the novel lacks enjoyment.
3. Enjoyment. The enjoyment is never ending and you ll start in no time looking forwand to what happens next.

P.S. The is an anime adaptation that icludes the first 3 volumes. However due to some differences with the novel i suggest to watch it on order to learn and visualize the characters of the novel. The perfect time is to do it after you have read the volume 3 of the novel.



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You-Zitsu, otherwise known as Classroom of the Elite in english is a novel series that I had heard about for awhile (mainly because of the anime), but didn't read until recently last year. The reason that I even started reading this novel was because I noticed it at Barnes and Noble and decided might as well give it a try. I am so glad that I did because CotE has become easily my favorite light novel of all time and I will try to attempt to tell you and convince you why. (This is my first review so my bad if it is not up to par.)

1. Story (10/10)
The story of Classroom of the Elite is easily one of the best parts of this series. When I started reading it, I also watched the anime as well as soon as I finished the parts that were adapted and was surprised at how much different the cores of the story were different from each other. If you watched the anime, which adapted the first 3 volumes, you probably watched what is in my opinion the worst (although not worst as in bad, just relative to the rest of the first year) part of the first year. Although, if you watched the ending of the anime or have read the third volume, you may have noticed a major shift in the story. I'm not going to spoil anything but from volume 4 on the story completely changes from its original Oregairu vibes and becomes more and more interesting. Not only do we get to see more and more interesting exams, we have long build ups and create even better pay-offs. Additionally, in the end of the 5th volume, we get another added aspect to the story that will slowly build up and become a major factor in the future volumes and even more so in the second year. I don't want to say too much, but one thing I will say is that everything that happens in the story makes sense, I don't recall one moment that I though to myself that the thing that just happens makes no sense or is an asspull.

2. Art (10/10)
Usually, light novel artworks don't particularly impress me, especially when compared to manga artists. However, I think that Tomose Shunsaku is the first LN artist that has made me change my opinion about this. The character design of all of the characters in this series is AMAZING. I was so impressed with the artwork that I bought both of the artbooks by Tomose Shunsaku and they are currently some of my favorite books that I own. The hair color, the body designs, the way the eyes are drawn are all so well drawn, and if you enjoy that you can check out more of Shunsaku's works because needless to say they are pretty interesting.

3. Character (10/10)
I know I said the story was one of the best parts, but I would be lying if I didn't say that the characters within CotE were not incredible as well. First off, lets start with Ayanokouji. Ayanokouji is probably one of the most interesting protagonists that I have ever read in a light novel. When I read/watch that first 3 vols/12 episodes of CotE, I am blown away that I am seeing the same person at all. If you are a person that has only watched or read that first part, and were concerned about him as a protagonist early on, let me just tell you the development that he has throughout the course of this first year is well worth the read alone. Also, his backstory is one that actually suits the story and actual makes sense unlike a lot of backstories of these type of light novels. Not only Ayanokouji, but every single student that has development has their reasons and backstories to fit why they were put in this school and why they were put in their respective classes, which is a super interesting thing to find out as you read. Aside from Ayanokouji, there is so many great characters that have a crazy amount of good development as well. Characters such as Ichinose, Karuizawa, Horikita and a lot more get so much attention and character building, it makes it so hard to pick a best girl. Additionally, characters such as Ryuuen and Koenji add such a dynamic aspect to the story, and their unpredictability makes such a great cast of characters fit together. I could go on and on about the characters, but I promise that if you read this novel, you will definitely find atleast one character to like from it.

4. Enjoyment (10/10)
I have never read a novel series or been excited to start the next volume in any other light novel series. I am really glad that I started so late that I could binge all of it so fast. The build ups that occur during this novel and the developments of the characters are some of the best that I have experienced reading novels so far. Not only was this first year really good, it set up the next year to have the potential to be even greater. With a concept like CotE, I could see how recurring elements could end up making this series kind of boring, however with the set up that happens over the course of this year, the second year brings a whole lot of interesting developments that are going to be exciting to experience. If you can get past the somewhat slow of a start that the 3 volumes are, you will not be disappointed in how the story progresses and builds.

5. Overall (10/10)
You-Zitsu will likely be my favorite novel series for a long time and with the second year just getting started, we are likely in for a long and while ride. This was my first review, so if you read this far thank you for reading and I hope that I could convince you to read without giving to much away about the story.

Classroom of the Elite is the first light novel I seriously invested time into. The story and writing are outstanding detailing all the things that are happening, and the psychological mind twists that happen. The character development is amazing! you have your protagonist Ayonokoji ( class 1-D) who just wants to have a simple high school life in Japans best high school run by the government to nurture the minds of the leaders of the next generation. Ayanokoji may appear to be a chill high school boy in the outside, however, what's really going on is not what it seem he is always pulling strings and helping his class to reach class A in points but maybe he has an ulterior motive to all of this. The story is seen to have all types of exams and competitions between the D, C, B, A class. In conclusion, the Classroom of the Elite is a very well written light novel that should be checked out.

P.S They also have an anime adaptation but if you want to know what happens after the anime you're going to have to check out the novel. You should start at Volume 4 after finishing anime.