The groups Citizens Defending Freedom and Moms For Liberty have challenged Assassination Classroom in public schools due to the nature of its content. This has led at least one school to allegedly pull the books from shelves.

The series is no stranger to controversy in the US after it had been banned in a New York school district back in 2019. These new challenges target public schools in Indian River County, Florida but represent a larger movement across the country to censor perceived objectionable content from public school libraries.

Jennifer Pippin, the chairperson for the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty has been outspoken about the series. “We don’t want students to think it’s OK to kill their teachers,” Pippins reportedly said of the manga series. That seems to apply even if that teacher is an amorphous alien creature threatening all of humanity.

Assassination Classroom began as a manga series by Yusei Matsui in 2012, and was published by Weekly Shonen Jump. The series was picked up for an anime adaptation in 2016 by Studio Lerche. In the west, the manga has been licensed by Viz Media, while the anime has been licensed and dubbed by Funimation.

The series follows a tentacled alien who destroys most of the moon, and promises to destroy the Earth in a year. Rather than let the destruction unfold, the alien takes residence as a teacher, and encourages the students of Kunugigaoka Junior High School’s Class 3-E to find a way to kill him.

Assassination Classroom has been a popular series among middle and high school aged students ever since it came to Cartoon Network’s Toonami block a few years ago. The series is also readily available in stores like Barnes & Noble. The manga is licensed in English by Viz.