Following protests from several organizations, Gifford Middle School in eastern Florida last month pulled the manga Assassination Classroom from its collection. Similar action was taken by the Elmbrook School District in southeast Wisconsin last month in response to a parent's complaint. Other states are also presenting difficulties for the series.
The goal of the middle school pupils in the Assassination Classroom manga and its adaptations is to kill their homeroom teacher, a superpowered extraterrestrial before the alien species destroys Earth at the end of the academic year.
Three books from a series that depicted students with guns in a classroom were removed from Gifford Middle School's library, citing the recent school shootings in the US. Moms for Liberty, a group from Indian River County, expressed concerns about the books' content, stating that it may give students the wrong idea about killing teachers. Citizens Defending Freedom, another Florida-based organization, is challenging the violent and sexually explicit content found in manga that can be found in Florida middle schools. HB 1467 bill requires Florida school libraries to only include books that have been pre-approved or vetted by a Florida Department of Education educational media specialist certificate holder.
Elmbrook School District added five books from the series to its e-library, but it was removed after a parent raised concerns about promoting gun violence against teachers. The depiction of violence and sexualization of minors in the series were also raised as concerns. The series is also challenged in Pender County in North Carolina, where it was described as a work that educates students on how to kill their teachers.
A bill in Richmond, Virginia, requires school principals to keep a catalog of all audiovisual content, track books containing sexually explicit content, and make that information available to parents. It passed the House of Delegates, and Delegate Tim Anderson cited Assassination Classroom manga as a concern. Death Note, another Weekly Shonen Jump manga, faced similar complaints in the past, and the American Library Association cited it in its Banned Books Week 2010 campaign.
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