When I first knew about this manga, it has only started. I told myself that I would start reading next week, but the day only come today and the series has ended with 180 chapters. It even has a live action in 2015 and 2016. So I would probably be watching the anime and shows as well.
As I was reading the series, I was also sparing some time on a book. It was a mystery story. In the book, the suspected murderer was being "accused" by the public as being the real murderer through the media (internet, TV, newspapers, magazines). As the suspected murderer was reading/watching those accusation against her, she decided to write down her side of the story.
In her brief biography, she mentioned about her school life experiences where the homeroom teacher was a big bully to the students. The teacher would give students very sarcastic nicknames and openly made fun of their names and their looks. For example during first class of the day, she would need to mark attendance. She would call out something like "the one who is drawn by a <H> pencil so-and-so Student" (H in Japanese is referring to ******). Or "Student so-and-so, the princess who lives in the castle, how does she look like", then she would pretend to search for the student and when her eyes met that student, she would show a look as if she had seen a ghost. After that she would laugh. Because of that, the other students also started to laugh at that poor girl. Other students also need not escape and suffered the same fate like having a nickname called "octopus" as her name was misspelled when the family registered her name when she was born. The teacher changed a letter in her name and it became octopus. Due to those unkindly mockery, those nicknames and humiliation did not stop and the students became bully targets to the rest of the school.
Why am I telling this story? One thing which is obvious is the nickname "octopus" which is what the series' Koro-sensei looks like. Secondly when I read about the students of E-class were the targets of mistreatment, particularly the teachers, it makes me wonder that many bullying in school can actually be initiated by the teachers themselves. Though in a story, it can be exaggerated and created for comical relief, but in real life, there may be some form of bullying in school by the teachers. For example, some teachers may deliberately ignore certain students who are not so bright or do poorly academically which in turn bring the teachers' reputation down. If the students can't perform well, in schools of some countries (eg. Japan), it may affect the homeroom teachers. They may even get reprimanded or worse, get demoted or no pay increment. This kind of scenario is quite similar to Akabane who was bullied (betrayed and lied due to discrimination) by his teacher. He was then suspended from school for a period of time and when he resumed back to school, he was sent to the E-class. It was no wonder that he hated the teachers so much.
In the first place the "End" Class is clearly the biggest discrimination. How unfortunate for those students who were enrolled into this school. Though the story was funny, it has other implications behind it which may exist in real life, like the bullying, discrimination, humiliation, hatred, sadness and violent in school.
Before I go off reading the rest of the story, I must say that the series is pretty good and unique, in the sense that the students are assassins/hitmen and the funny part is that the students are assigned and expected to kill their teacher though it's true that Koro-sensei is trying to destroy the earth. But it is still quite hilarious.
I'm imagining it happening in our schools.
