An entire school suddenly disappears someday for no reason - including the hundreds of students and faculty inside - and winds up in an eerily isolated, rocky landscape. Wha’ happen? So begins the strange mystery of The Drifting Classroom…
I can’t say as much as I want to about this book without mentioning details, and, because so much of the book’s appeal hinges on the (possibly too many) left turns the story takes and its overall mystery, I’ll just say that this first volume is worth a look if you’re into horror manga but not to expect too much as it does get quite silly at times. I can see why Kazuo Umezz’s 1972 series inspired creators like Junji Ito though and, if you enjoy Ito’s work, you’ll probably enjoy this too. It definitely doesn’t feel 50 years old so it’s aged well.
And with that - SPOILERS for the rest of the review!
Umezz sets up the premise really well so you understand exactly what’s happened: introducing us to the main character, then showing the perspective of the outsiders initially before taking us into the school and giving us that perspective - great storytelling choices. The voices of the kids and the actions of everyone once they realise what’s happened is convincing and compelling to see.
And then we get the first of Umezz’s unexpectedly melodramatic plot twists that become increasingly bizarre as the story develops: to calm the kids down, a teacher breaks his glasses, grabs a kid and stabs the kid in the arm! These are high school teachers - have they not had training in how to control upset kids prior to this? I get that they’re stressed by the situation but stabbing students as a first course of action is insane.
It gets stupider. Sekiya, the “lunchroom man” who delivers food to the school kitchen for the kids’ lunches every day, has also been transported and has decided to become a kind of tyrant of the school, torturing the kids and hoarding the food. There’s a handgun in the school for some reason - if this were an American school I wouldn’t be surprised, but in Japan? Hmm.
Then one of the teachers turns out to be a secret serial killer who decides now’s the perfect time to start offing as many people, adults and kids alike, as he can! Just as the kids deal with Sekiya, an older girl tries to take control of the school and then a giant lobster attacks!
I can forgive some of this nonsense because I’m sure the way manga was made 50 years ago is the same as it is today: that is, the creator/s don’t know if their series will be a hit so they rarely plan too far ahead. Once they get the green light that their pilot will become a regular series, it’s all systems go but often they don’t have that many detailed plotlines and only a vague idea of where they’re headed.
Assuming that’s the case here, that’s probably why Umezz was throwing in so many disparate storylines (like that attack on the principal subplot that goes nowhere): because he’s making it up as he goes along. Except that the mystery of where they are, how they’ll survive, how they got there, etc. is so much more compelling than all the absurd tangents of serial killer teachers, power-crazed lunchroom men and bossy girls - I wish Umezz had focused more on the former than the latter. In the same breath, some of the nonsense is also undeniably entertaining, so it’s bonkers but fun too.
The second half of the book though is really dumb - I get that readers are meant to suspend disbelief with fiction but I feel that Umezz asks too much here. Our main character, Sho Takamatsu, is being attacked by his serial killer teacher in an abandoned hotel and calls out to his mother (who didn’t get transported) - who, somehow, through time and space, is able to hear him, go to the hotel, secrete a knife in the very location where he’s being held down and strangled, so he can - in the future, which it turns out is where they are - reach out, get the (now heavily rusted) knife, and stab his would-be murderer! I mean…
They also happen to have a “genius” kid (Umezz very imaginatively goes for the most cartoonish character design of a nerd) who can conveniently explain information to the reader and the characters - mostly notably how to survive the giant lobster attack just before the giant lobster attacks; the kids are able to put together, conduct and complete a school-wide election in seemingly no time at all; which isn’t nearly as crazy as these kids (the oldest are 12!) putting together an elaborate stakes/drawbridge trap for the lobster monster who’s attacking the school for no reason, along with a GIANT CROSSBOW! Because that’s easy to do, guys, particularly in an arid treeless environment. And I’m sure that kinda stuff was on the curriculum back then, right???
It’s weird how the teachers disappear after a certain point too. Some of them die but you’d expect them to be more of a presence rather than not be there at all. It’s also odd how segregated the kids remain so that they all stay in their respective classes/age groups rather than mingle together.
Umezz’s art is excellent - the environment the school ends up in is genuinely creepy with the perpetual darkness and martian landscape. I was really impressed with how realistically he draws flames in black and white and the lobster monster looked cool.
Not all the storylines worked for me - I wasn’t that taken with the hungry kid, the bossy girl, the Christian sacrifice (Umezz’s Lord of the Flies-esque episodes come off as more comedic than terrifying), and he overplayed the Sekiya stuff. But there’s also a lot here that is fascinating, like seeing the kids and teachers reacting to their situation, how they deal with having limited food, water and supplies, and tentatively exploring their alien surroundings. The stream of brutal deaths also keep you guessing as to which characters make it or not and I enjoyed slowly figuring out the mystery along with the characters.
The Drifting Classroom, Volume 1 definitely has its flaws but it’s also got enough here - a strong premise, bold storytelling choices, great art - to make it understandable why it’s considered a classic manga. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly great read - there’s a lotta goofy crap here and chunks of it were plain boring - though I enjoyed some of it. It’s worth a look if you can find a copy but if you can’t, you’re not missing that much.
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