YMMV / Dissolving Classroom

• Alternative Character Interpretation: It all comes down to who you choose to believe between Yuuma and Chizumi:
  • Is Yuuma an Anti-Villain who has somehow unwittingly become an agent of the devil's power and is genuinely apologetic to everyone he meets because interacting with him at all guarantees that they'll soon meet a gruesome end? Or a twisted devil worshiper who goes out of his way to kill everyone that he can, his parents included, in order to feel closer to his one and only true love the devil?
  • Is Chizumi a young girl who went insane after witnessing the deaths of her parents and the grotesque supernatural events that her brother causes, or is she completely possessed by an otherworldly force? Does she lie about Yuuma being a devil worshiper in order to torment both him and those who he grows close to? Or is she attempting to warn others to avoid associating with her brother?
• Anvilicious: The epilogue features Yuuma's 'actor' talking about how apologies attract everyone's attention and hints at the moral that it is possible to apologize too much. Insincerity is also a big issue.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The entire second chapter. While the rest of the story focuses solely on Yuuma's status as a literal Apologetic Attacker, this one instead introduces his ability to disfigure women by complimenting their beauty, something that never comes up ever again. It also pretty conclusively shows that Yuuma is a devil worshiper, whereas the chapters that come before and after it deliberately keep things ambiguous.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Yuuma attracts a lot of this attention in-universe from people who are convinced that no one as seemingly kind as him could be a bad person. This sympathy frequently carries over to Chizumi, who they believe was simply twisted by a bad environment. Of course, this is all assuming that Yuuma actually is the person that Chizumi claims him to be and vice-versa.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Keiko, the protagonist of the first chapter, tends to be the most well-remembered character after the main two. So much so that she makes a reappearance in the final chapter.
• Inferred Holocaust: Given that Yuuma and Chizumi unleash a massacre in the climax, melting everyone who sees their apology in-person as well as those watching on television, the body count was probably high. We don't hear the specifics, however, probably because everyone who could report on it died.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Chizumi. She apparently Used to Be a Sweet Kid, but was turned into a monstrous Creepy Child as a result of either becoming fully possessed by the devil or simply going insane from watching her brother kill so many people. Her and Yuuma dying, in the end, seems to be a relief to her.
  • Yuuma is a more mild example if you interpret him as a devil worshiper. His parents were extremely strict and abusive towards him, which eventually pushed him to seek out the devil for comfort. Not exactly the strongest Freudian Excuse relative to his actions, but still quite tragic.
• Moral Event Horizon: The series is ambiguous about if Yuuma or Chizumi is telling the truth about which is truly the evil one. There is one moment, however, where they actually team up and cross the line: Chizumi falls for a local boy, and her idea of courtship is to leap on him and lick his skin. When Yuuma sees it, he lies to the kid that he can hide at the house, only to reveal that Chizumi is his sister. They proceed to tie him up and lock him in a cell so that Chizumi can continue to "play" with him, where they store the bottles containing essence of the people he previously melted. Note that Yuuma never opens his mouth and apologizes to the boy, for fear of melting his body. The implication is that he can control that power and is doing so for Chizumi's sake since she likes the kid. Much to the reader's surprise, the boy escapes thanks to the people in the bottles knocking themselves over, spilling over him, and ordering him to use the grease to wiggle out of his bonds. He runs for it and goes to the cops. Then he finds out that Yuuma and Chizumi already got rid of his parents, to avoid any unnecessary witnesses. It shows that regardless of how Yuuma and Chizumi each characterize the other, they are undoubtedly villains.
• Narm Charm: The fact that Yuuma is apparently a worshipper of Satan himself, who is the source of his ability to cause people's brains, then the rest of their body to horribly dissolve into a goo, and whom the latter of makes an appearance in the final chapter manages to be extremely scary, thanks to Junji Ito being his ever-reliable self as always and illustrating people dissolving and the devil himself in the most horrifying fashion possible.
• Nausea Fuel: Considering every chapter builds up to every character besides the main two melting into puddles of human remains, this is to be expected.
• Nightmare Retardant: The bonus chapter, which interprets the entire book as simply being a fictional movie, complete with all the characters being actors, making it quite soothing to regain your britches given that this book'll certainly scare you out of them.
• Ugly Cute: When Chizumi isn't having her Nightmare Face played up, she can almost come off looking kind of cute in the most unconventional way possible.
• The Woobie: Yuuma, if you believe him to be genuinely innocent. He has been cursed with the power to melt everyone he either apologizes to or compliments and has no control over it whatsoever. To make matters worse, his younger sister has been driven insane by the trauma that she's experienced and now goes out of her way to trick other people into thinking that he's a heartless sociopath who enjoys what he does. He has to live his life constantly moving from one place to the next, always with the knowledge that everyone he meets will die horribly.

---