Assassination Classroom Manga Pulled From US School Libraries
A new report from the nonprofit organization PEN America, which tracks book removals in public schools, found that Yūsei Matsui’s manga Assassination Classroom was pulled from school libraries in the United States at least 54 times during the 2024 to 2025 school year. In the count, each individual volume removal is logged as its own instance, though some districts that pulled the entire series are listed only once.
According to the report, the districts involved span several states, including ones in Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Texas, and South Carolina.
Assassination Classroom was far from alone. The same report lists many other popular manga among public school removals, including Attack on Titan, Bleach, Dragon Ball, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto, and One Piece, among others.
For those unfamiliar, the series follows a class of middle school students who are given an unusual assignment: to assassinate their homeroom teacher, a powerful alien creature, before it destroys the Earth at the end of the school year. Matsui ran the manga in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2012 to 2016.
The franchise remains very active, having inspired two anime seasons, films, and broadcasts on Toonami, with a new anime film planned for March 20, 2026.
My take: Debates over what belongs on school shelves are complicated and people feel strongly on all sides. I will simply note the report here, since it is a notable moment for how manga is being treated in that wider conversation.
