Gakushu Asano

Gakushu wears his hair short and reaching his ears, blonde in the manga and strawberry blonde in the anime, above brown eyes that are tinted violet on screen. Frequently called good-looking, he bears a strong resemblance to his father, Gakuho Asano.

Like much of the main building, Gakushu looks down on those less clever than himself, which spans nearly the whole school given his top ranking, though he hides it behind a charming, benevolent front. He is fiercely driven and manipulative, hungry to pull everyone's strings and, above all, to dominate his own father. A relentless curiosity pushes him to unravel the rumors of Class 3-E's octopus, and he reaches for blackmail, bribery, and binding contracts to get his answers, tactics that now and then give even him pause.

For all his cunning he keeps a moral compass of his own, at times balking at his father's extremes, as when he objected to the plan of poisoning Class E's food. He values an honorable win more than Gakuho does, yet he is not above bending the rules, once flying in hulking foreign exchange students purely to beat Class E at pole-toppling. His rigid, formula-bound thinking is a genuine weakness, one Karma Akabane exploited to edge him out on a final exam question.

Gakushu arrived at the first-semester finals as Class A's leader and the school's best student, already digging for the truth about Class 3-E that his father kept dodging. When the other Virtuosos rashly bet against Class E, he drafted a contract whose fine print would force the losers to answer any question honestly, a lever he meant to turn against his father. Class E took three of the five subjects, so it was Gakushu who lost, drawing his father's scorn and swearing revenge.

The rivalry sharpened across the year. He and Gakuho lured Kotaro Takebayashi toward Class A only to lose him again, and at the athletic festival Gakushu imported muscular exchange students for a game of boutaoshi, yet Isogai's leadership and Class E's tactics knocked down his pole. His father's fury at that defeat spilled onto the exchange students, whom Gakushu could only watch being beaten. His cafe won the school festival, though he admitted the margin owed much to Class E closing up early. During the finals he asked several Class E students to 'assassinate' his father's teaching philosophy by seizing the top ranks, even bowing to them, while Karma held him to a promised showdown.

On the final math problem Karma cracked it through insight where Gakushu's elaborate formula ran out of time, dropping him to second as Class E swept much of the top fifty. When Class A begged to transfer to Class E, Gakushu stood up to his father and was slapped for it, later walking the man home while threatening to sue over the violence. After the graduation, once Class E's secret broke, he and his friends shielded the departing students from the press, declaring that a ruler who cannot protect his people is no ruler at all. In time he earned an MBA at MIT and became a Silicon Valley CEO, his white-hot rivalry with Karma carrying on well beyond middle school.