As the assassinations on Koro-sensei continue, we get to the students teaming up in a game of cops and robbers against Koro-sensei and Karasuma. It is a good illustration of how effective both of their teaching styles are. Karasuma has shown to be tough on them, but they are constantly in a position to succeed. While Koro-sensei is a bit of a wild card, his approach has always been effective. As Koro-sensei wanted to give the students a chance, the real key in winning was to ensure a scenario for the students to not be in range of both Koro-sensei and Karasuma. Which leads to Koro-sensei’s weakness to water.
To the next serious arc, we have Shiro using Karasuma’s men to bait out Koro-sensei in an interesting way. Koro-sensei, while being perverted, has never overstepped the line, and potentially overstepping it would cause his students to respect him. After all, if you can’t respect your teacher as your person, your trust for them suffers, and essentially their teaching becomes less effective.
In all, the strategy was very well done by Shiro, but the one thing he messed up on was the fact that he forgot about Koro-sensei’s students. As they can easily cover the weaknesses that Koro-sensei might have. While they can’t kill Koro-sensei yet, they are more than capable of ensuring no one else can kill Koro-sensei.
As we see Shiro leave and give up on Itona, it is very much in character for Koro-sensei not to give up on any of his students, even if it’s only technically. Well, much like the rest of his students, Itona tried to kill him. Curious if the modification that Itona received lies a clue on who Koro-sensei used to be? We know both of their tentacles have the same property; we can see that Itona is clearly still human. How do these two differ? It seems clear Itona calling Koro-sensei his brother was aligned with how now they were similar and how, in a way, he wanted a family after losing his own.
Seeing Terasaka want to be there for Itona really shows his development over the course of the series. Much like Itona, he was a pawn for Shiro to kill Koro-sensei. The big thing with Itona is that he lacked a place to belong, and essentially he was made to believe he had to kill Koro-sensei. He latched onto Shiro because he was the only one who was with him, but that proves to be quite the unhealthy adult-kid relationship.
Itona needed to understand it is ok to fail because in life you will fail at times as an adult. In class 3-E, that is the perfect environment for what he needs. It’s great to see him having a place to belong to. His skills in electronics are very intriguing and really complement Ritsu’s skill set quite well.
As Shiro is told to back off, we see he has a high opinion of Nagisa who has had some of the most impressive moments when we least expect it. Still, what is he planning? Even if he doesn’t modify Nagisa like he did with Itona, what is his play?