The Drifting Classroom (漂流教室) is a sci-fi horror manga by Umezu Kazuo. The manga was originally published between 1972 and 1974.
Takamatsu Sho's really bad day turns horribly worse when his entire school is transported suddenly to a distant future. Everyone in the school appears to be the only remaining humans on the planet and the terror of their situation and impending doom causes many of them to become unhinged. The teachers panic worse than the kids, leading to all of them dying. Sho, with an uncanny sense of responsibility, works as hard as he can to maintain order with the surviving kids in their frightening new land.
The struggle to survive is more difficult than they could ever imagine as tension causes problems between the students, who revert to primal savagery at the drop of a pin. With food supplies low and no chance of being rescued what ope is there. But something isn't right about their situation, incidents point to them running parallel with the world they knew and objects and creatures begin to appear as if by magic or stress induced manifestation.
Full disclosure, I could only make it through 4 tankoubon before giving the story up. There are many things about this manga that bother me and made it difficult to read. I understand that some of these issues are do to when it was created but they also highlight issues that plagues manga in the past, issues that have been over come to varying degrees in the years since. The panels many times are too detailed to bring a clear picture of what the world looks like. Some of the characters movements in action sequences are unnatural and strange.
However the biggest hole in the story would have to be the psychological make up of pretty much most of the characters. In a matter of hours the teachers are ready to either commit suicide or murder each other. Eight year old kids are ready to crucify and burn at the stake random students as a way of appeasing some instantly made up myth cycle. The level of types of savagery are comical in some respects and embarrassing in others. The spiral of aggression in Lord of the Flies at least took some time and made sense. Most of the weirdness that goes on in The Drifting Classroom is inexplicable and poorly executed. I understand this was created at the height of manga artists exploring story telling for adults/mature audiences but much of the exposition in this one is juvenile and exploitative.
There is a lot of groundwork that was laid out in this manga and its influence on generations to come is very evident. There are some hints of Lovecraftian influence in Umezu's story. The works of Ito Junji are with out a doubt influenced by this story and his other works. The anime Another as well took many many cues from this story. In the end though the story is poorly executed, the artwork is too cluttered at times and it's not as mature and intelligent as it tries to be.
Viz media printed the entire 11 tankoubon series and are readily available.
Takamatsu Sho's really bad day turns horribly worse when his entire school is transported suddenly to a distant future. Everyone in the school appears to be the only remaining humans on the planet and the terror of their situation and impending doom causes many of them to become unhinged. The teachers panic worse than the kids, leading to all of them dying. Sho, with an uncanny sense of responsibility, works as hard as he can to maintain order with the surviving kids in their frightening new land.
The struggle to survive is more difficult than they could ever imagine as tension causes problems between the students, who revert to primal savagery at the drop of a pin. With food supplies low and no chance of being rescued what ope is there. But something isn't right about their situation, incidents point to them running parallel with the world they knew and objects and creatures begin to appear as if by magic or stress induced manifestation.
Full disclosure, I could only make it through 4 tankoubon before giving the story up. There are many things about this manga that bother me and made it difficult to read. I understand that some of these issues are do to when it was created but they also highlight issues that plagues manga in the past, issues that have been over come to varying degrees in the years since. The panels many times are too detailed to bring a clear picture of what the world looks like. Some of the characters movements in action sequences are unnatural and strange.
However the biggest hole in the story would have to be the psychological make up of pretty much most of the characters. In a matter of hours the teachers are ready to either commit suicide or murder each other. Eight year old kids are ready to crucify and burn at the stake random students as a way of appeasing some instantly made up myth cycle. The level of types of savagery are comical in some respects and embarrassing in others. The spiral of aggression in Lord of the Flies at least took some time and made sense. Most of the weirdness that goes on in The Drifting Classroom is inexplicable and poorly executed. I understand this was created at the height of manga artists exploring story telling for adults/mature audiences but much of the exposition in this one is juvenile and exploitative.
There is a lot of groundwork that was laid out in this manga and its influence on generations to come is very evident. There are some hints of Lovecraftian influence in Umezu's story. The works of Ito Junji are with out a doubt influenced by this story and his other works. The anime Another as well took many many cues from this story. In the end though the story is poorly executed, the artwork is too cluttered at times and it's not as mature and intelligent as it tries to be.
Viz media printed the entire 11 tankoubon series and are readily available.
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