As you may remember, I had a great time last weekend watching a thoroughly ridiculous manga adaptation. Assassination Classroom: Graduation starts off from an even sillier place, as it features a superpowered yellow smiley faced squid who teaches assassination techniques to middle schoolers so they can kill him. I was 100% ready to love this movie, but instead suffered a big letdown.
Which is not to say Assassination Classroom: Graduation is a bad movie. I mean, it’s not really a GOOD movie by any measure, but my post-screening research shows that it adheres quite closely to the source material (incidentally, this is a sequel to last year’s Assassination Classroom with each movie covering about half of the original manga’s story) and was a big box office hit in Japan. But this movie had no intention at any time of embracing the complete ridiculousness of its concept or the yellow squidlike teacher. Instead, Assassination Classroom: Graduation plays it almost completely straight, delivering life lesson after life lesson as the middle school class grows up and learns the ways of the assassin from a big yellow squid. How you can play that concept straight at all, I don’t even know.
The film’s straightforward approach seemed to satisfy the two white girls ahead of us who were eating a bagful of Japanese candy including green-wrapper Kit-Kats (green tea flavour?!?), but I wasn’t there to see an earnest coming of age story. And I certainly wasn’t there to see half an hour of the movie devoted to a love story between the squid and a lab technician. I was there to see an off-the-wall action movie and Assassination Classroom: Graduation is not that. Colour me disappointed.
So back to those green tea Kit Kats. Apparently Kit Kats are a huge deal in Japan because the name sounds like “kitto katsu”, which means “you will surely win”. That nice sentiment has given rise to a whole host of ridiculous Kit Kat varieties being eaten up by the Japanese (and also at least two white Canadians), including Shinshu Apple, Edamame Soybean, Purple Sweet Potato, Hot Japanese Chili, and Wasabi, among others. Lots and lots of others.
That Kit Kat madness is a perfect example of what I was expecting from Assassination Classroom: Graduation, but did not get. Learning about this Kit Kat craze is a decent consolation though, and it only happened because I went to see this movie. Obviously, the lesson is that Japan never fails to provide wackiness but you can’t always predict just where that wackiness will come from at any given time. And maybe that’s part of the fun!
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 
I think I’ll skip this one, but looks quite different from the norm.
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It is different but not as much as you’d expect from the teacher’s appearance!
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Eee Sean man. My mind is boggled. Who the heck would have thought that the nation that gave us Shogun would sink so low. But cherry flavour kit Kat, now we’re talking! 😊
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I’m very skeptical of all these flavours. It seems like they can’t possibly be good, and yet, there are so many that there obviously is a huge demand, so it seems they can’t be terrible either.
So can anyone weigh in on these Kit Kats? Is there anyone out there who’s tried them and is brave enough to tell me about it?
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I know that wackiness is relative and varies from culture to culture but Japan looks wonderfully inventive and fun from almost any cultural perspective. Even when the film is a letdown you get a lesson in Kit Kat varieties and I’d almost consider “a superpowered yellow smiley faced squid who teaches assassination techniques to middle schoolers so they can kill him” worth the admission price.
The letdown reminds me of one of the final scenes of Cabin In The Woods which reminded me of how even some highly inventive Japanese films I’ve seen can take a disappointing turn.
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You’re totally right about inventiveness and fun being a cultural staple in Japan. This movie has aspects of that, in the concept and the squid himself – he’s so bright and shiny!
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I knew about the green tea Kit Kats. There’s a Japanese blogger who blogs in English, and she provides an interesting insight into all things Japanese.
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The Kit Kat thing is amazing to me for so many reasons, including that Kit Kats are one of my least favourite candy bars and it seems not to just be me who feels that way. They’re always the last ones left in our bowl at Halloween if I am dumb enough to get a box that contains them!
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If you can make more than one movie about someone teaching people to assassinate him, then he’s not very good at his job.
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Excellent point! He’s a much better at being a supervillain than he is at being a teacher.
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I’m glad we saw this and I’m honestly interested in checking out the first one. I definitely agree that the weird love insert dragged the whole movie down
Actually, the beginning of the movie with the character intro cards reminded me a lot of that weird pigeon high school game we played once…
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I’d check out the first one too. The squid’s intro to the class could be what I was expecting from this one. I definitely was reminded of Hatoful Boyfriend at the start too – that was a truly nutty game!
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I’ve always been a believer that you can’t have too many Kit Kats. There’s something oddly comforting in knowing that so many are out there!
As for the movie … Mnah. Kit Kats, though.
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To be honest I am more weirded out than comforted by all these strange Kit Kat flavours, but I do find it fascinating that they are such a big deal in Japan.
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I think milk chocolate Kit Kats are all you need, but it’s definitely nice to know there’s one out there for every, er, mood.
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Orange Kit Kats are about the most adventurous alternative we’ve ever been offered in the UK. Sometimes I really envy the Japanese.
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I love Japanese stuff, this sounds like one I’ll have to add to my list!
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Just remember that this is the 2nd in the series – start with the first!
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ahh thanks 😀 Sounds like fun
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Wow, I didn’t know about the Kit Kats. I just tried the peanut butter version and I loved it. I can’t imagine the other versions. I wonder if they have pregnant women thinking the flavors 🙂
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