Teacher, We Will Destroy the World! Volume 1 Review

Panini UK’s latest manga debut is the fantasy series Teacher, We Will Destroy the World! which takes place in a magic academy, but will it prove an engaging read in a market crowded with similar settings? Let’s find out!

Our story follows the hitman known as Number Zero, who works for a guild tasked with killing wizards. For his latest mission he’s posing as a teacher called Mr. Solo Pastry (as we’ll refer to him from here out) at Orion Academy of Magic, where he’ll be teaching the bottom-tier second-year students in Class D. At first he has no idea who his target is, and he’s not thrilled by the idea of posing as a teacher when he’s anything but a people-person. Unable to refuse or face being booted out of his guild, Solo agrees to the job and now finds that his position as teacher holds more power than he could have ever imagined.

Two weeks into his stint at Orion, Solo finally meets his partner for the job: Ibuki. He’s transferred into Solo’s class undercover as a new student, but Ibuki is actually a huge fan of Solo’s and holds all the missing information about his task. It turns out the target Solo has been sent to kill is not just one person but his entire class of students. According to powerful mages who can see snippets of the future with their magic, these 12 students are all destined to become evil mages who will destroy the kingdom.

However, they haven’t currently done anything wrong, so Solo has no real interest in killing them. And luckily for him, when one does go rogue and loses control of their transformation magic, Solo’s intervention saves her and also changes her future. Now his mission has changed; instead of killing the students, he’s tasked with guiding them as their teacher and changing their fate. Should he fail, Ibuki or other assassins will follow through with killing them. So there’s a lot riding on Solo’s shoulders!

With this first volume we’ve certainly gotten off to an interesting and entertaining start. As you might expect from a low-ranking class of students, Class D is full of wayward individuals who just need a kind soul to set them on the right path. They’re suspicious of Solo who always has a smile on his face (a tip he picked up from a book on teaching), and although Ibuki should be in prime position to become friendly with them, he’s too busy being offended when they say anything negative about his beloved Solo. It’s fun to watch the chaos unfold as the pair try to get close to the targets and figure out a way to change their fate.

This is a fairly chunky volume coming in at 260 pages across 4 chapters, which gives us plenty of time to set up and get to know our cast. Which makes a big difference, as so many series recently feel like they’ve barely gotten off the ground in their first volume. This perhaps speaks to the experience of mangaka Kina Kobayashi, who readers may recognise as the creator of Nameless Asterism (available from Seven Seas).

Kobayashi has written an engaging story that, while it overall doesn’t seem terribly original, is aided by a likeable cast of characters. Solo’s working as an assassin, but given he was orphaned as a child, there’s a lot to unpack about his history. And the students, too, have detailed backstories. We only get to focus on one in this first volume (Xioa Shahar who wishes to learn forbidden magic), but that’s more than anything to keep readers intrigued and likely to return for a second volume. The artwork is great too; Kobayashi draws quite busy panels, but it’s always easy to follow what’s happening with plenty of detail to take in. There’s a wide variety of character designs, which is important given the large cast. Kobayashi does well at depicting the fantasy elements of the setting too, such as the usage of magic in its many forms.

As mentioned earlier, Teacher, We Will Destroy the World! comes to the UK in print form thanks to Panini UK under their manga imprint. As with other releases from the publisher, this is an attractive paperback with a colour page to open and cover flaps. However, translation is still credited to CCC International LLC, so there’s no clear indicator of who has been working on it (human, AI, etc.). Please note that all images apart from the one below are from the MANGA UP! version and not reflective of Panini’s translation.

My copy of this also has an issue where some of the speech bubbles were too close to the edge of the page, and so a letter or two has sometimes been cut off in the printing process. This isn’t a major issue, as it’s generally easy to work out what the word is, but it’s a shame, as there are a number of pages affected by this. Also, as with other Panini releases, there is no eBook option at all. However, this is on digital services Comikey and MANGA UP!, if you are looking for a digital reading option (the translation teams likely differ though).

The series is still ongoing in Japan, with 9 volumes currently available. Here in English we’re scheduled to get Volume 2 in October and then #3 in December, so it’s a fairly quick pace, which is always nice.

Overall Teacher, We Will Destroy the World! makes its English with a thick first volume that proves a compelling read for fantasy fans. Kina Kobayashi has taken a lot of interesting pieces and put them together in a way that’s going to be fun to watch play out over time. Definitely worth checking out for fans of the genre or magic academy stories with a teacher out of his depth and a bunch of unruly but charming students.

Our review copy from Panini Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).

©Kina Kobayashi / SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.