Gakushu Asano

Gakushū Asano is a student in Class 3-A at Kunugigaoka Junior High School and one of the Big Five. He is the Student Council President, the top student of the school, and the only son of the Board Chairman Gakuhō Asano. He serves as one of the academic antagonists to Class 3-E.

Appearance
Gakushū has short blonde hair (strawberry blonde in the anime) that reaches to his ears and brown eyes (violet in the anime). He is described as being rather handsome and has been noted to highly resemble his father.

Personality
Like many of the Main Building students, Gakushū looks down on those who are less intelligent than him, which, in this case, mostly incorporates the entire school as he is the top student. However, he breaks away from this stereotype by putting up a face of benevolence and a charismatic smile.

Befitting his genius intellect and heritage, Gakushū is a very driven individual who is very much like his father in a lot of ways, although one could argue that he is far less extreme in virtue than his father is. He is highly manipulative to the point of wanting to control everyone and puppeteer the strings. The most frightening aspect of this is his desire to completely dominate his own father. Another note is his keen desire for knowledge and sense of investigation to get to the truth. Hearing local reports and urban rumors about Class 3-E's supposed octopus (actually Korosensei), Gakushū has made it his top priority to get to the bottom of this mystery. Indeed, he has resorted to methods that even he himself has briefly questioned in order to acquire this information, from blackmail, bribery and even legal backup (making Class 3-E sign a contract). However, despite his intelligence, he tends to miscalculate certain more admirable aspects of the people he is trying to manipulate, which has led to his plots failing no more than two times in the story.

Despite sharing many of his father's personality traits, Gakushū does have his own sense of morality, which often makes him question his father's extreme educational methods. For instance, he voiced his opposition against his father's idea of poisoning Class 3-E's food during the school festival.

He appears to place more value in winning honorably than his father does, but he is not above bending the rules, either. For example, he called over his extremely muscular and athletic friends from overseas just to win against Class E in the pole-topping tournament.

First Semester: End of Term Time
Gakushū made his debut appearance during the finals of the first semester as the leader of the Big Five and Class A and the top student of Kunugigaoka. Over the course of the first semester, Gakushū had heard rumors surrounding Class E and attempted to get any information of it from his father Chairman Asano who evaded his questions. When his fellow Virtuosos rashly made a wager with Class E to see which class can get the top score in the 5 core subjects, Gakushū drew up a contract that Class E had to sign as their request. Underneath the legal jargon was a clause stating that Class E must be honest to any question Class A asked should the latter win. This clause would then be used by Gakushū to find out Class E's secret in order to blackmail and control his father.

In the aftermath of the exams, Gakushū kept his top ranking but Class E managed to beat Class A in three out of the 5 core subjects, thereby losing their wager. The Chariman later admonishes his son for losing such a petty bet to a class of misfits. Gakushū was then forced to submit to Class E's demand: a holiday resort to Okinawa. Humiliated at this loss, he vowed revenge against Class E.

Takebayashi's Time
Gakushū and his father scored an early victory at the start of the second semester, convincing Kōtarō Takebayashi to leave Class E and join Class A. However Takebayashi reneged on his deal after seeing how Class A is educated and that he had to trash-talk Class E to be fully accepted. To the Asanos' surprise, Takebayashi destroyed one of the Chairman's treasured possessions as a means to return to Class E.

Athletic Festival Time
Gakushū discovered that Yūma Isogai was working at a cafe despite a regulation forbidding such a thing, and threatened to have Isogai reported and expelled. He made a deal however that he would remain silent if Isogai and Class 3-E participated in a game of boutaoshi against Class A. In preparation, Gakushū contacted four physically imposing foreign exchange students to join his class so they could "crush" Class E as revenge for their lost during the first semester finals as well as to rebuild confidence to Class A for the upcoming midterms. During the match he made various strategies to take out the Class E students with superior numbers and the use of the exchange students' build. However he was outsmarted and outplayed by Class E's unconventional tactics and Isogai's leadership. His own pole was endangered and eventually fell despite using his martial arts in a desperate attempt to defend it. This second loss and the main campus' changing attitude to Class 3-E earned his father's ire and criticism towards his son's command skills. Kevin, Gakushū's friend from America, attempted to defend him. However this only made the chairman beat him and the other exchange students down to a pulp, with a horrified Gakushū spectating.

School Festival Time
Gakushū appeared again at the end of the midterm exams where he and the rest of Class A monopolized the top 50 rankings due to Class E helping out at a nursery. While the other Virtuosos were smug at this (especially after their crushing loss at the Athletic Festival) Gakushū remained silent. His next major appearance was during the school festival where he negotiated with the top-tier restaurants to sponsor his cafe complete with live shows. During that time he stated the nature of his friendship with the Big Five and asked them to keep supporting him.

His cafe would later win the festival; however, many speculate that had Class E not closed up shop halfway through the final day (due to unexpected high demand for their acorn noodles) the result could have been very different. Gakushū praised Class E and stated that there was no way to win an overwhelming victory. His father told him and the other Virtuosos otherwise and suggested that he should have poisoned Class E's natural products so as to irreparably damage their reputation or have stated the food was terrible. Gakushū spoke out against this and was soon sent out of the chairman's office for five minutes while his father "talked" to his friends. When they next came out, he was shocked to see them brainwashed to annihilate Class E.

Finals Arc
When the chairman began teaching Class A for the upcoming finals, he allowed his son to study at home. Gakushū figured that his father would brainwash Class A the same way he did his friends to beat Class E. Reflecting on their father-son relationship and how it was one of competitiveness, he confronted some of the Class E students at the end of the day and asked them to kill his father's education philosophy by having Class E monopolize the top 50 spots, going as far as bowing to them. Karma reminded him of the promise during midterms that he would claim the top spot from Gakushū and demanded that he will not hold back, which Gakushu galdly obliges.

During the maths exam, Gakushū and Karma went head to head once more on the final question with very little time to spare. Gakushū attempted to solve the question with a complex formula and was not able to finish in time whereas Karma figured out the answer by simply analyzing the question. The result was that Gakushū came second to Karma, while the rest of Class 3-E took many of the remaining top 50 spots. Class A performed well initially but the chairman's hypnosis backfired when the students burned out halfway through the finals. Later, Gakushū stood up to his father when Class A asked if they could transfer to Class E, but he was brutally slapped in the face as a result. Later, he saw his father walking back from the Class E classroom and accompanied him back to the campus in good faith while threatening to sue him for domestic violence.

End of the Semester: Theater Time
Towards the end of the second semester, Gakushū and the Student Council were organizing for the school's drama festival. Even though Class E was still forced to perform their play while everyone was having lunch, Gakushū subtly commented to Isogai and Kataoka that they could work around it. Indeed, Class E student Kirara Hazama caught the audience's attention by writing a dark play that made everyone lose their appetite, much to Gakushū's chagrin and her amusement.

Final Semester
Gakushu has since made very few appearances in the final semester. In the aftermath of the high school entrance exams he was seen looking out of the window in the main campus watching Karma stare back at him. After the graduation ceremony in March, when Class 3-E's secret was finally out, Gakushu and his friends escorted the Class E students to their departing bus and protected them from the prying media. Before they left, he stated that he cannot be a ruler if he is not able to protect his subjects.

Aftermath
After the graduation, he along with the other Big Five and Karma Akabane continue their academic feud at Kunugigaoka High School to battle for the 1st place on the school academic battles. While there are few details about this time period, the Graduation Album assures that his rivalry with Karma was "white-hot".

Abilities
Intelligence: As one of the school's Big Five he is one of the top ranked students in Class A, and even more impressive is that his grade score is the highest in the school. Indeed Gakushū is one of the smartest characters in the series and this coupled together with his manipulative mindset makes him a dangerous enemy to Class E. The System in Class A is that an incompetent teacher teaches the class straight out of the text book at high speeds and the fact that this system is how he is learning only further proves the evidence of his actual intellect given such an inept method to teach. A Class A student once mentioned that he has the ability to make others "flock" around him.

Other Skills: Intelligence aside, Gakushū is shown to be multi-talented. He has demonstrated super-human speed and is even trained in martial arts. He's also musically talented and has been shown to be multilingual as he has been shown freely manipulating four different languages for one of his plans. This may be something he inherited from his father, who's also been noted to be multi-talented.

Karma Akabane
Gakushū's rival and also the ace of Class E. After graduation, the duel between both aces of Class A and Class E continues as Karma stayed at Kunugigaoka out of his desire to fight Gakushū for the next three years in a series of academic battles. Gakushū himself wishes to extract information about Korosensei from Karma, who is willing to, if Gakushū were to score better than him in academic battles.

Gakuho Asano
Asano's father who works as the Chairman of Kunugigaoka Academy. Since the start of the story, Gakuho shows no sign of love or even hate toward his own son, treating Gakushu in much the same way as his other students. Takebayashi later observes that he has never seen the two speak together in a friendly manner, and Gakushu himself even compares their relationship as that of teacher and student. After Gakuho's defeat by Korosensei post Final Semester Exam, they both begin to reconcile in their own way, smiling as they threaten to sue each other and deciding they'd go file their complaints together as a family.

Trivia

 * His English voice Actor is married to the English voice actor of Rio Nakamura.
 * His favorite subjects are the core subjects while his least favorite subject is Ethics.
 * His father makes a lot of money, and he later becomes a CEO, making him among the wealthiest in Assassination Classroom. Ren's, Takebayashi's, and Karma's families are also noted to have a lot of wealth as well, though, so it is hard to say who is the wealthiest.
 * His specialty is being number one.
 * His future goal is to have an executive job.
 * The position his father would have when he gets an executive job: Holding Gakushū's sandals to his chest to keep them warm before he goes out (and Gakushū won't put them on).
 * According to the Graduation Album, he succeeds in this endeavor, earning his MBA at MIT and becoming CEO of a tech corporation at Silicon Valley.
 * He is the second adversary to admit to the superiority of Class 3-E, with the first being Shindou, Sugino's friend.
 * He is the only person at Kunugigaoka Junior High School to issue an assassination request to Class 3-E, which was to assassinate his own father's current teaching methods.
 * As of Chapter 123, Gakushū is now the second ranked student of Kunugigaoka with a composite score of 497; having been beaten by Karma Akabane who scored a perfect 500.
 * According to Roll Book Time, Gakushū has been scouted numerous times.
 * He shares his birthday with Ritsu.
 * Of the foreign languages he knows, he is confirmed to speak French, Korean, English, and Portuguese.
 * His scores and rankings during the First Term Finals were:
 * English: 99, 2nd
 * Japanese: 100, 1st
 * Social Studies: 95, 2nd
 * Science: 97, 2nd
 * Math: 100, 1st