The Drifting Classroom, Vol. 8

The Drifting Classroom #8

by Kazuo Umezu

Returned to his original evil personality, Sekiya forces the students to be his slaves! Escaping into the Tokyo subway, Sho and his friends explore an underground world of horror. And there, in an ancient filmstrip, they discover the terrifying story of the end of the world?

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

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2007

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 5 out of 5]

This is the best volume to date for me.
Because i love origin stories and in this volume we kind of get the origin story of how the world will go extinct in the future, we also get a glimpse that there might have been a kid at the school who set explosives the night before the earth quake.
Also that kid otomo is becoming really dangerous he has reached the point of trying to kill his friends.
Back at the school idiot sekiya is in charge and he is going through the food supplies like there is no tomorrow because he thinks the Americans will save them.
We also have this new mutant race that has inherited the earth and seems more suitable to living in it now.
That old guy that died of shock was weird was he eating a leg of a corpse did i get that right and the kids missed it?
2021 Read.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four years ago, I had not been able to find in my library system the least four volumes of this series, but this week I found them. So I had to go back and read a couple of the previous volumes, and all of my reviews so far to get me up to speed. The series is an apocalyptic manga made by manga horror master Kazuo Umezo written in the seventies and set in the near future. An elementary school is suddenly, after a volcanic explosion, drifting somewhere out of sync with time and space, the kids cut off from the parents and left with teachers and staff members in the school who are all maniacal jerks.

In this one Sekiya, a cafeteria worker, enslaves the kids, forcing them to dig a well to find water. They find a door to the future of the Tokyo subway, where main character Sho and his friends find an ancient filmstrip to reveal what has happened: Environmental disaster, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, desertification, starvation, monster mutants created by eating Frankenfood. This was written by a horror master in the context of real environmental horror, a warning to the future. Oh, this is just a story! I’m sure the environment in 2021 will be just fine!

I read/write this as the news of a 7.2 earthquake and tsunami warning happens in Japan.
Crazy manic scary classic horror.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally we got some answers.

[Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazier and crazier and crazier.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

We finally get a clue as to what happened to the Earth, and we get some social commentary along with it. The early 70s were a hotbed for environmental activism since pollution was really becoming an issue then, and the author doesn't fail to point out humans are their own worst enemy. A new race of mutants show up as well. Good stuff.

[Sue Moro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sekiya, the deranged cafeteria worker, forces Sho and his friends to dig a well out in the desert. There he traps them in the pit where luckily they find a passage that leads them to the Tokyo subway. More horrors, however, await them down below. This volume finally reveals how the Earth of the future came to be destroyed. This series is absolutely addicting!

[quinnster · Rating 3 out of 5]

We finally get some answers as to how the future ended up the wasteland that the kids are in now. But still, it's one thing after another! And they just have the worst luck ever. When there's a moment of good it is immediately followed by some catastrophe of some sort and it's generally Sho trying to keep everyone safe and together with someone else opposing him. Poor kid.

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lol did you really think things were going to get better? The brutality just keeps coming.

[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.

[Agung Wicaksono · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sekiya akhirnya menampakkan dirinya sebagai manusia normal lagi, membuat Sho dkk. terkejut. Dari kejadian itu, Sekiya kembali mengambil alih kekuasaan di sekolah dengan kekerasan. Karena ia tahu bahwa Sho yang dianggap sebagai pemimpin, ia memerintahkan kepada seluruh siswa supaya tidak menuruti perintahnya lagi. Namun, ada beberapa siswa yang ketahuan memberi makan Sho dan mereka dihukum untuk menggali sumur.

Nah, dari menggali sumur ini, ternyata Sho dkk. malah menemukan tempat rahasia dan makhluk menyeramkan. Makhluk tersebut memiliki mata besar di punggungnya. Setelah diselidiki, ternyata bahan-bahan kimia yang dipakai manusia di masa lalu yang membuat mereka seperti itu. Selain itu, di tempat persembunyian mereka, ada juga video masa lalu yang ditayangkan, sehingga Sho dkk. yang mengintip mereka, jadi sedikit tahu tentang penyebab kenapa dunia yang mereka tinggal sekarang jadi dipenuhi padang pasir.

[Cee · Rating 4 out of 5]

In another episode of this nonsensical series, the kids have accused Sho as the cause of their predicament. Though I admired most of Sho's decisions, keeping Sekiya alive was not one of them. But alas, the author had to keep the most annoying adult alive to cause the most annoying problems. Sekiya is now back to "normal" and has taken over the kids. He forced Sho and others to dig a well, which led them to a big discovery. This volume is 4 stars because it has finally given us some explanation as to what happened to the world.

For greed, all nature is too little.

[Kikat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so intense!

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is like 8th time Takamatsu's classmates turn on him. I would have left them die five betrayals ago.

[Eric Nagurney · Rating 3 out of 5]

An alright volume of a very good series.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The social commentary part in which the mutants learned from a film just made no sense to me. Otherwise, this was another good volume.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kids: we found food/water we have some hope! *literally two seconds later a disaster happens*

[Stuck in reality · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[Lass_Carrotop_Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its really hard to contemplate that these kids are going through such problems

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate sekiya :(

[Ostrava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the 8th volume it should come as no surprise that these kids just can't get a break. The maniacal cafeteria worker is back and taking charge. He sends Sho and his friends into the desert to dig a well -- yeah, sure. He abandons them in the pit. But they find a crack in the wall that leads them into the ruins of the Tokyo subway system. There they learn, through a convenient, ritual showing of an educational film for the mutant insect creatures that populate the underground, that Japan in the the late 20th century -- Umezu wrote these stories in the 1970's -- had so despoiled the land that women began giving birth to mutant babies, hence the insect creatures, and massive earthquakes buried their civilization. This is another lesson in eco-awareness from the country that gave us Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster.

In a typical twist for Umezu, at the end of the installment the enormous spring of fresh water the kids discovers turns into an active volcano. Damn! Only two more installments to wind this thing up.

[Emkoshka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Magic mushrooms, mutant creatures evolved from humans, a volcano underneath Tokyo. Just another day in the life of Sho and his school chums. This volume again displays a certain 70s sensibility, with its depiction of environmental degradation through urbanisation and projection of a swift decline into an apocalypse.

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how the mutants keep reiterating that they are telepathic and don't need to do things like speak out loud, but they're going to do it anyway.

(I also love any volume that includes Sho's mom and her feral energy 👍)

[Orrin Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good volume, though the sequence with the film strip is a little awkward. Nothing's going to beat the last volume's batch of mutants and mushrooms, though.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Every time I think that things in this series can not possibly get any crazier, they do. But love it! So creepy and hopeless!

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

More answers, more questions and more misfortune for the kids.

[Ahmed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Manga is fucking weeeeird yooooo