Assassination Classroom Volume 19 (Review)

By: EyeSpyeAlexWith the holiday and shopping season finally behind us, we can finally start treating the most important person in our lives: ourselves. What better way to do so than buying manga? The freshest manga on the market now is Assassination Classroom Volume 19, and is well worth your money. Need to catch up on the series? Check out my review of Volume 18 here!The wait is over and our students of E Class are finally receiving their high school acceptance letters. Elated for his students, Koro Sensei prepares their final advisor meetings and an E Class yearbook. While the students are not necessarily thrilled about taking thousands of photos, they are looking forward to their futures. Particularly Nagisa, who realizes he wants to be a teacher.Just when it seems like the series will have a happy ending, the government comes along and mucks it up. Deciding that a 1% chance of exploding is still too high, the government plans the ultimate assassination attempt against Koro Sensei. They trap him at the school using an anti-Koro Sensei barrier dubbed the Shield of Earth. Then, they use a secret weapon called The Spear of Heaven and attempt to obliterate him. The Spear is first fired at 20%, which Koro Sensei manages to dodge. With nowhere to go though, the government decides it can wait to try another assassination attempt when the Spear is fully charged.As soon as they realize something is wrong, the students of E Class regroup and head back to their classroom...only to get kidnapped along the way. Their kidnappers are thugs they ran into earlier in the week but chose not to fight. The students find they were taken to the headquarters for the government’s secret operation, and will be held there until after the assassination has been completed. After a chance meeting with Kurasama, the students read between the lines of what he tells them, and decide to act compliant with their abductors to be rewarded with an early release.With the help of Miss Vitch, the students are able to escape from their prison. They quickly head into the mountains back to their school to free their teacher. Their assassination training comes in handy, and they quickly overpower the soldiers stationed on the mountain. The class successfully makes it through the barrier, not realizing that they were followed by one of their greatest foes. With time running out, will the students be able to save their teacher in time? I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next volume to find out!One of the best things about this volume were all the costume changes the students go through. With Koro Sensei wanting to photograph the class in different locations and for different events, there’s a ton of different backdrops and costume changes. This really breaks up the monotony of seeing the characters in the same outfits. This, coupled with the amazing action scenes, break up the tense and slightly boring kidnapping scenes.Assassination Classroom Volume 19 is currently available in stores and online here from Viz Media.Note: Viz Media provided us with a digital copy of this manga in exchange for our honest review.