The Drifting Classroom, Vol. 10

The Drifting Classroom #10

by Kazuo Umezu

Guided by the words of a dying student, the survivors leave the school and travel across the desert in search of "paradise"...only to find something stranger than they could ever imagine. Maddened by hunger, the students turn to a horrifying, final solution...!

Genres: Manga, Horror, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Japan, Shonen

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2008

About the author

Kazuo Umezu or Kazuo Umezz was a Japanese manga artist, musician and actor. Starting his career in the 1950s, he is among the most famous artists of horror manga and has been vital for its development, considered the "god of horror manga". In 1960s shōjo manga like Reptilia, he broke the industry's conventions by combining the aesthetics of the commercial manga industry with gruesome visual imagery inspired by Japanese folktales, which created a boom of horror manga and influenced manga artists of following generations. He created successful manga series such as The Drifting Classroom, Makoto-chan and My Name Is Shingo, until he retired from drawing manga in the mid 1990s. He was a public figure in Japan, known for wearing red-and-white-striped shirts and doing his signature "Gwash" hand gesture.

Reviews

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer suddenly wanting to wrap this up only felt to me like he had no more horrible things to do to those kids i swear.
I mean he just made them travel way way far from their school, and now suddenly he wants them all to go back to return to their era, its either his publisher is cutting him which would suck honestly, or he got tired of torturing these kids xD.
Anyway its all coming to an end.
This nightmarish story where we got used that there is always something worse that is going to happen, it was inevitable.
I am writing this review late a few weeks even though i talked about it somewhere already.
trying to get back to reading these days so we will see <3
2022 Read.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second to last volume of this apocalyptic series. Two ten year old student factions, going full on Lord of the Flies war on each other, all of them starving, one (Otomo’s) group resorting to.. . cannibalism! Nice! (Jumping the shark is basically the point of this series, actually). Sho’s group heads out of blinding smog to Mt. Fuji where they hope to find Paradise, but instead it’s a Japanese animatron nightmare theme park where a movie star robot melts when they touch it, and where a computer (in 1975!) predicts a happy environmental future where everything is just fine, thank you. Back to the Garden, for sure! But this is Twilight Zone territory, and we know this is not true.

Will the mutant creatures get them, or will they starve? Only one more volume to get the answers we desperately need to know. Seriously crazy and good environmental horror manga series.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

We're almost done, and the answers are here.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things finally collapse as the two gangs go to war and one resorts to cannballism. The children find an abandoned amusement park with a functioning supercomputer and after consulting with it there just may be hope after all. Looking forward to the conclusion!

[Sue Moro · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this volume, Sho and the other students must get past the mutant creatures in order to get out of the path of poisonous toxic clouds headed their way. Otomo and his group follow Sho, even though they have been enemies for some time now. A dying student told them to head toward Mt. Fuji where they would find "paradise", but once they arrive they find something almost too strange to comprehend! Will the mutant creatures get them, will they starve to death, or will they continue to kill each other before they find a way to get back home to their own time? Only one more volume in which to find out.

[Mal Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the book but at this point I almost feel like things are just coming out of the blue now? While the whole series seems to have this sort of dilemma in this particular book it just seemed extra random to me

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the entire series!

For Sho Takamatsu, it seemed to be an ordinary day of school like any other. In the aftermath of a sudden earthquake, his entire elementary school vanishes into thin air along with all the students and teachers that were trapped inside. The earthquake seemed to be so powerful that it caused a ripple in time, projecting the school into a dark and bleak wasteland where nothing but death, mutants and mind-breaking anomalies await. Sho takes on the role of the leader, trying to keep the other children safe from harm while searching for a way back home.

The Drifting Classroom takes things at a very slow pace. The horror elements don't even begin to seep in until several volumes into the series. While it starts off slow and does drag a bit in places, I think every volume is better than the previous. It took me a while to get into it but I really started to feel invested once I saw the bigger picture of what it was trying to portray.

While the dialogue and reactions of the characters seems a bit clunky and unrealistic at times, it's important to remember that many of the characters are extremely young elementary school students. Most of them haven't even learned how to talk properly let alone think themselves out of life or death situations. Watching children so young and vulnerable get thrown into one nightmare after the other led to some very intense chapters that didn't shy away from showing little kids being brutally murdered, eaten and smashed to pieces. It might not start out scary, but each volume escalates the horror, the violence and the stakes. As hundreds of children are driven mad with fear, hunger and isolation with no adults to care for them, it's only a matter of time until they begin to turn on each other as well. These kids can give the children in Lord of the Flies a run for their money once their minds start to break.

Some smaller things such as the art quality and the sometimes stagnant way the characters and their reactions are drawn feel off-putting and even a bit silly at times, but it's important to remember that this is one of the pioneers of horror manga, written all the way back in 1971. Devilman is another great manga that has some of the same issues. They're both great series, but you can tell they were written during the experimental phase of manga when they were just beginning to find their way into mainstream entertainment. Though certain aspects of The Drifting Classroom haven't aged that well, it was surprisingly ahead of its time in other ways. As the story progresses, it begins to tackle the themes of overindulgent consumerism, industrial pollution, and the greed of one generation causing major issues for the next generation. It goes into dark detail about how every little action we take that harms the planet hurts future generations of children far more than it hurts any of us.

[Felicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un plot twist improvviso, ma il momento in cui è stato inserito potrebbe starci a causa del forte pathos del momento. I volti emaciati dalla denutrizione sono ben disegnati. Chissà se ritornerà l'unico adulto sopravvissuto a vessare nuovamente gli alunni rimasti.
An abrupt twist in the plot, but the timing may be appropriate because of the strong pathos of the moment. The faces, emaciated from malnutrition, are well drawn. Who knows if the only surviving adult will return to harass the rest of the students.

[Ostrava · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a couple of things that don't exactly make sense and the way some of the plotlines are literally erased in a single hand wave is utterly bizarre extremely wrong, but I think it succeeds at what it sets itself to do for the most part. There's nothing left to be done to these kids though, the author has dragged them through literal hell by this point.

Anyway. The children yearn for the Paleolithic cannibalism 👀...

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second to last volume so certainly we're going to slow down the punishment of the kids and wind down right? Nope, things are as bad as ever. I'm starting to doubt if we'll end up with a happy ending...

[Kikat · Rating 5 out of 5]

can't.stop.reading!

[Eric Nagurney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kids are stupid.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh the crazy things desperate people (kids!) did in the name of survival. It sent chills creeping up my spine.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well they were going to have to resort to cannibalism at some point.

[Agung Wicaksono · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yang menjadi perhatian saya di volume ini adalah ketika grup Otomo sudah semakin barbar, bahkan tak segan memakan teman mereka sendiri karena kelaparan.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am afraid this series jumped the shark some volumes back. This time round it's more clouds of toxic gas, more fights to the death between 10 year olds, more of what's becoming mundane for our long-suffering heros. There is one shocker after they reach Paradise, which turns out to be an old amusement park, but even it I had been predicting since the first volume.

I thought Volume 10 finished the story, but no, there is more. One more volume that is going to have to be pretty spectacular to not to be an anti-climax.

[quinnster · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a dark cloud of poisonous smog begins to hover on the horizon the students realize they must put aside their fighting long enough to flee out of reach of the clouds.

There are tense moments when I wasn't sure if Yu, Sakiko & Sho would make it, especially when they got to the ravine. But the story feels like it's about to reach a conclusion of some sort.

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amusement park was one of the things I remember most about the series - the rotting animatronic, the unattainable food when characters are literally dropping over dead from hunger, the turn to cannibalism in the fake city. I feel things manage to really ramp up, which is impressive given how much has happened in previous volumes.

[Emkoshka · Rating 3 out of 5]

The kids take a literal leap of faith and leave the school to discover a creepy old theme park where the animatronics (bless the Japanese) have gone feral. As if that isn't enough peril, cannibalism finally gets them.

[Orrin Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things get even weirder as the students leave the school in search of "paradise." There's some great sequences near the end of this volume.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything gets even more ridiculous and horrible - which is a good thing.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homenaje a 'The Last Question' de Asimov?

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Be careful when seeking Paradise...