Classroom of the Elite Quiz

Classroom of the Elite (Yōkoso Jitsuryoku Shijōshugi no Kyōshitsu e, roughly 'Welcome to the Classroom of Real Ability Supremacism', or Yōjitsu for short in Japan) is a light novel series written by Shōgo Kinugasa and illustrated by Shunsaku Tomose for Media Factory's MF Bunko J imprint. The first-year story ran from May 2015 to September 2019, the Year 2 sequel from January 2020 to November 2024, and Year 3 began in March 2025; Seven Seas Entertainment publishes all three in English, and the series has more than 10.8 million copies in circulation. Lerche's TV anime began with a 12-episode first season in summer 2017, directed by Seiji Kishi and Hiroyuki Hashimoto. Seasons 2 and 3, 13 episodes each, followed in summer 2022 and winter 2024 under director Yoshihito Nishōji and completed the first-year story, and a 16-episode fourth season directed by Noriyuki Nomata adapted the first semester of the second year from April to June 2026. A fifth season has been announced.

The story is set at the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School, a government school that boasts that every one of its students goes on to university or a job. Its students live in dormitories on the campus and are paid in points, each worth one yen, to spend at its shops; on the first day every first-year receives 100,000 of them. What nobody says out loud is that the four classes, A to D, are ranked by merit, that each month's points depend on how a class behaves and performs, and that only the students who graduate in Class A are said to be promised any university or job they want. Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, a quiet boy who scored exactly 50 in every subject of the entrance exam, is placed in Class D, which his homeroom teacher Sae Chabashira describes as the place for the school's 'defective' students. After a month of the class sleeping through lessons and spending freely, it receives no points at all on 1 May. Ayanokoji only wants an ordinary school life, but his classmates Suzune Horikita, a brilliant loner set on reaching Class A, and the endlessly friendly Kikyo Kushida soon pull him into the fight.

The series is built around its special exams, each a new set of rules for the classes to exploit: a week of survival on a deserted island, a hunt for hidden 'VIPs' on a cruise ship, a sports festival, the Paper Shuffle, in which classes write the tests for their rivals, a vote that expels one student from every class, and a final contest of events the classes choose themselves. Ayanokoji wins many of them from the shadows and lets others take the credit, and the show slowly reveals why he can: he was raised in the White Room, a facility run by his father, and he regards the people around him as tools. Against him stand rival leaders with very different methods: Kakeru Ryuen of Class C, who rules by fear; Honami Ichinose of Class B, who wants every one of her classmates to graduate; and Arisu Sakayanagi of Class A, who has known about Ayanokoji since she was a child. Critics have praised its writing, its darker themes and the way it turns the usual high-school story upside down, with psychological warfare in place of fights.

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