Classroom of the Elite Anime Unveils Key Visual for 3rd Season – Latest Update

The MF Bunko J Summer School Festival livestream event on Sunday revealed the key visual for the third season of the Classroom of the Elite anime.

The livestream also announced the franchise‘s first smartphone game titled Yōkoso Jitsuryoku Shijō Shugi no Kyōshitsu e ~Merge Puzzle Tokubetsu Shiken~ (Classroom of the Elite ~Merge Puzzle Special Test~). The game will launch in early 2024.

The anime was delayed from its slated 2023 premiere due to “various circumstances” and will now premiere in January 2024.

The second season premiered in July 2022. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired under the title Classroom of the Elite II.

The first season’s directors Seiji Kishi and Hiroyuki Hashimoto returned as chief directors, with Yoshihito Nishōji (first season’s opening sequence, Maji de Otaku na English! Ribbon-chan: Eigo de Tatakau Mahō Shōjo, Seven Senses of the Re’Union) as the credited director at Lerche. Hayato Kazano (first season’s episode scripts, Killing Bites, Rumble Garanndoll) oversaw the series scripts, and Kazuaki Morita returned to design the characters.

The first season premiered in July 2017. Crunchyroll streamed the series, and Funimation streamed an English dub. The second and third seasons will adapt the original story’s complete first-year-student arc.

Crunchyroll describes the first season:

Kiyotaka Ayanokoji has just enrolled at Tokyo Koudo Ikusei Senior High School, where it’s said that 100% of students go on to college or find employment. But he ends up in Class 1-D, which is full of all the school’s problem children. What’s more, every month, the school awards students points with a cash value of 100,000 yen, and the classes employ a laissez-faire policy in which talking, sleeping, and even sabotage are permitted during class. One month later, Ayanokoji, Horikita, and the students of Class D learn the truth of the system in place within their school…

Kadokawa published the first volume of the original light novel series in May 2015. Seven Seas is releasing the novel series and its manga adaptation in English. The Classroom of the Elite: Year 2 (Yōkoso Jitsuryoku Shijō Shugi no Kyōshitsu e 2-nen Sei Hen) light novels are a sequel to the main light novel series. The first novel volume of the new second year series debuted in Japan in January 2020 as the 15th overall book in the series (the series has three “in-between” short story anthology volumes prior to the start of the second year arc). Seven Seas is also releasing the sequel novels in English.

Source: MF Bunko J Summer School Festival livestream

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.