The Drifting Classroom, Vol. 11

The Drifting Classroom #11

by Kazuo Umezu

As the survivors turn on one another, Sho fights for his life against his own classmates! Can the students of Yamato Elementary School actually return to their own time...and who will make the journey? The epic story of survival on a postapocalyptic earth concludes! Plus a bonus horror story!

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

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 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 5 out of 5]

When sho's mother letter arrived till the end of the story, i couldn't stop crying, it ends but on a really sad note, the heartbroken mothers and fathers who lost their children to that time shift.
The kids who had to suffer this long, and in the end they are stuck in that unforgiving future.
Its kind of a happy ending, Kazuo left them with supplies and a river but, my imagination can't really bring me to think that after all that, they will not be faced with new challenges.
These Kids are pretty much the hope of all humanity, Humans are already extinct, After the time shift, They are It, they make it humans continue being guests on Earth.
I loved this journey, it is a really fast paced manga, but with how dark the story is you find each volume weighing heavy on you, that i couldn't read them back to back.
Thank you Kazuo umezo may you live long and continue to create amazing tales.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There’s no world besides this one, you fools.”

“We are the seeds of the future.”

The big finish of the over-the-top apocalyptic horror series, which features:

1) an all-hands-joined-together reconciliation of the sixth graders (those still living, at least!);
2) a nation-wide plea by Emiko for the safe return of her son Sho;
3) vegetables growing out of the corpses, seen as some kind of grotesque hope for the future;
4) all exclamation points and screaming and running all the time;
5) Sho’s notebook is returned to his mother by Yu, who makes it back;
6) lots of people die, but
7) the ending is both (a little) happier and more optimistic for a horror manga than I expected, with some hope that the children may make a better future.

A classic horror manga with an environmental theme.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed the way this ends but I can appreciate that it took a turn I wasn't exactly suspecting. Although, since it's Japanese horror I guess I should've realized its conclusion would've been more open-ended. I don't know if I really liked the explanation for why everything happened, some of the science and time travel shenanigans didn't make the most sense.

At the very least though, I don't regret reading this series and it entertained me at times.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, I was wrong on this one. After Vol 10 I was saying the series had jumped the shark and was headed for an inevitable anti-climax. But I forgot one thing. It is Japanese.

Since this is the final volume, it would be easy to make these comments into Spoiler City. So I will just list a few stand out moments:

1) Sixth graders confess their undying love for one another.
2) The school cafeteria man who will not die is finally done in by the severed arm and half the face of a character that I do no believe has made an appearance before this episode.
3) Sho's mom goes on national television to ask all the children of Japan to pray for the safe return of her son.
4) And only in Japan would you get a plot development that finds the first signs of hope for a new society in the plants that sprout from the corpses of the dead school kids scattered over the desert and around the campus.

Umezu's manga was originally serialized in the early 1970's. It is still the wildest ride of any of the manga series I have looked at. A film version was made in 1987, but I can find only snippets on Your Tube. It appears to take place at an international school, so half the dialog is in English and all the characters are turned into older teens. There are musical numbers. Troy Donahue plays one of the teachers. Did I just write that. Yes, Troy Donahue plays one of the teachers.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending wasn't what I was hoping for, but I give Umezu credit for the big twist. He keeps the reader on one path right up until the end, only to have the path take a turn we didn't see coming. I would have hoped for a happier ending, although in a way this was a happy ending after all.

I have to recommend the Drifting Classroom to any fans of horror manga. The series reads quickly with great art and once you get started you won't be able to stop.

[Abhijeet · Rating 3 out of 5]

A post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that faltered every now and then, but succeeded in every volume to stir my curiosity of what came next.

Overall, The Drifting Classroom (Volume 1-11) is ridiculous, somewhat repetitive, and quite entertaining. It's a roller coaster ride that's good as long as it lasts.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The entire series was very medicore but because of that ending i am giving this volume a 4 star.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

An awesome series that goes off the boil somewhat towards the end. I guess one of the very few issues I have with comic books is that the narrative can alter issue to issue, written as it is in weekly instalments, so the story at its end only vaguely resembles that at its beginning and seems to overloom some of what happens in the middle. However, for an unremitting sense of peril, The Drifting Classroom is unmatched.

[Catalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t plan to read ALL 11 VOLUMES, but I fell in love after the first one so i binged them all in like 24 hours.

I don’t want this series to end. I need more, I NEED to know what happens and how it happens and how they cope with everything. I NEED MORE DETAILS

Also I’m wondering if Yu studied like he promised and built the spaceship that landed in the future.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

El final fue conmovedor :').
Está historia me resultó un poco difícil de leer por el tema de que son niños tratando de sobrevivir por su cuenta, cuando somos los adultos quienes debemos cuidar de ellos, pero supieron hacer lo posible en un mundo en donde se necesitaba del ingenio y la imaginación junto a lo que aprendieron dentro y fuera de clases.

[Ami · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entire series is amazing. I was at the edge of my seat for the entire series! There were some slow parts, and the amount of times that Sho was yelling at someone or someone was yelling at him were too numerous to count. My eyes started glazing over some sections.

Because it as written in the 70s there are hundreds of exclamation points. Basically everyone is always yelling. But that's kind of how Speed Racer was. Everyone in Drifting Classroom speaks fast and loud, and everyone is always shocked.

But all in all it was amazing.

The art style is so unique and so 70s. It was a refreshing beautiful departure from recent years' styles. Things look more realistic in the era in which the manga was originally made. Softer rounder faces, more realistic lips and eyes. It was lovely to look at.

The story was gripping. Very lord of the flies, Hunger games, Battle Royals vibes. These poor babies suffered so much in the story. They could not catch a break. The final volume saw the children come to a resolution, and it's a little sad. But they had little choice.

I'm too fatigued to write more but that's that.

[Pratiksha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole series had this Lord of the Flies vibe which I liked. But events were quite repetitive, a couple of characters were pretty annoying, and I found the ending to be quite rushed and well, nonsensical. But this is manga after all. Overall it was nice to read for time pass.

[Stuck in reality · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[DJ Linick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basically, this manga is Lord of the Flies on crack.

[Aatish Shinde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-breaking end that I absolutely did not see coming. Sigh!

[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.

[Agustín Fest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kazuo Umezu escribió The Drifting Classroom en los setentas. El estilo del manga es sobrio y estático, lo cual puede molestar a los lectores acostumbrados a un estilo estridente, dinámico y/o sobreestilizado más reciente. No especifica fechas lo cual es una apuesta: los televisores, los teléfonos y ciertos gadgets se quedaron en los setentas y la historia podría perder cierta vigencia, así como la gravedad de algunos conflictos que, por ejemplo, se podrían resolver con un celular (pocos, en realidad, al fin y al cabo la historia que nos compete y la de mayor protagonismo, sucede en otro mundo).

Supongo que Kazuo Umezu esperaba que el mundo se acabara antes de ver su historia confrontada con los avances tecnológicos más recientes.

La historia: Sho, un alumno de sexto grado, un día se pelea con su madre. Él amenaza con irse de su vida y la madre le dice que ya no lo quiere en su casa. Sho llega a la escuela y piensa en su madre, el regalo que le compró con el dinero que había ahorrado y que cayó bajo las llantas de un coche, mientras está con sus compañeros y el profesor toma lista. La pelea entre Sho y su madre se convierte en un presagio cuando, durante la clase, tiembla y después del temblor, cuando los alumnos se asoman, ven que han llegado a otro mundo, un mundo de arena y de dunas, de nubes negras y sin lluvias. En el mundo real, donde la mamá de Sho todavía está ahí, la escuela ha desaparecido.

Kazuo Umezu logra juntar, en once volúmenes, las inquietudes de la época y los monstruos y los enemigos clásicos de la ficción especulativa. No sólo eso, en medio del caos, logra recrear un problema muy interesante como lo hizo William Golding en El señor de las moscas: ¿qué pasa cuando los niños se quedan solos y no hay adultos que los regulen, los eduquen o les impongan reglas? Igual que pasó con Battle Royale, si algún nefastito viera Los juegos del hambre, hubiera dicho: "Todo se lo copió a Drifting Classroom, mae". Bueno, ya pueden presumir que Battle Royale "se copió" de Drifting Classroom.

Lo definen como un clásico del horror y cómo no, después de la progresión de horrores que presenta, no podría ser de otra forma: robots asesinos, horrores que toman vida por la imaginación de otro, la evolución malograda de la humanidad, reptiles mutantes gigantes, los adultos enloquecidos porque no son capaces de ver más allá de su nariz, la traición, las diferencias políticas, la culpa y los límites absurdos a los que uno llega para evitarla, el futuro que salió mal, el hambre, el hambre, el hambre.

El manga es más que un compendio de cómo matar a chamacos de 6 a 12 años, en realidad es muy disfrutable. Lo recomiendo para aquellos a los que les gusta la ficción especulativa y las historias postapocalípticas.

[Lass_Carrotop_Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This manga is definitely that startes with a bang with some explicit contents...
Okay!! So, kids acting like adults in crisis.... But i must admit introducing a monster was bit off while the concept of being transported in future and still being in the same time line as outer world is grasping and with an essence of survival plot. Being of horror genre it gives you a glimpse of environment change that we exploit at a faster rate and not being aware about the consequences. It was hard to contemplate about bunch of elementary kids going through problems like plague, very little food and water with outside monsters and taking control of it as adults. The author might have been high while creating this piece but he did a remarkable job. It ended with a sad note about these kids not returning back to their respective parents. Definitely a must read to all the manga fans out there. It will never leave you in array or boredom in its 11 volumes.

[Alan Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This whole series was a wild ride. Hard to believe it's 50 years old! Parts of it are just brutal; I literally had to glance and flip through the pages with the appendectomy like I was watching a horror movie through my fingers in front of my eyes.

There's very little variation in tone, I guess due to changes in genre/format conventions and modern audience expectations. These days I'd expect to see a little bit more down time in between all the disasters, quiet character moments, etc., to ground the story and the characters' relationships, but this is all action all the time. It's a lot.

The ending was a little surprising, but I thought it was appropriate and well-earned. You've got to read this at some point if you're into horror manga.

[Andrés Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this manga series. It is truly amazing! It is quite dark and scary considering it was written in the early seventies. The series has an ecological warning as a premise, this is what will happen if we continue treating the planet's natural resources as we are. But at times feels like a excuse to torture and make the characters suffer. Kazuo Umezu is a master of horror, he is obsesive, cruel and bordering sadistic. There is a bit of everything: mutants, plagues, cannibalism... Really enjoyable in a sick twisted way.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series that might benefit from being read a chapter at a time, as it was originally published. Reading it all at (more or less) one time, one loses the tension of cliffhangers, but also it becomes really obvious that no one talks without shouting, or moves without running--it's cranked up to 11 the whole time.

I do appreciate that Umezu didn't cop out with a sentimental ending. Yu gets home but the other children are stuck and while they will get help from the past, they will never return home. They have to create a better world to live in.

[fk20 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just don't think too much on the story, and then you can enjoy this manga.

Some part of the story is just so ridiculous, I have a hard time believing any of it. The whole story feels like a long nightmare that become reality.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the ending I would have preferred, but I am glad the series actually had an ending!

[Scarecrow Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fantastic read but a less than satisfactory conclusion. It feels like the author just got tired of writing.

[Ostrava · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the ending is batshit insane and carries some of the similar flaws of the rest of the manga, I remained completely enchanted by its spell. It's terrific. I fucking love it.

[BozCitac · Rating 3 out of 5]

The finale of one of the most unusual 70s mangas is quite rushed, especially considering how some of the mid-part chapters seemed to go on pointlessly for way too long. To be fair, a more complex and satisfying ending would’ve been impossible considering the surreal tone. However, there are nonetheless some points that were left unexplained and forgotten without even the slightest handwave – for example, what are the kids going to do regarding that gargantuan planet-sized worm that ate most of the other creatures a couple volumes earlier? Did the present-day-people send them some nuclear bombs on that rocket to help them with that? Considering how absurd most of the threats were throughout the story and how there’s less than a hundred children left alive, I just don’t see what on earth the present-day-humans could’ve sent via a rocket that could’ve helped the protagonist live for more than a couple days at most. Also, the added stand-alone story at the end is quite bad both visually and story-wise.

[Persona · Rating 1 out of 5]

Decepcionante final: se notan las prisas y una absurda necesidad de meter giros de guión gratuitos totalmente ridículos. Algunos son de vergüenza ajena.

En general, el manga está bien: es extremadamente entretenido y al menos hasta el tomo 7-8 las situaciones, dignas de un hipervitaminado Señor de las moscas de serie B, están bien llevadas y no da un solo respiro.
En los últimos tomos la repetición, un tono de ciencia ficción que ha envejecido indudablemente mal y unos personajes cada vez más planos al servicio de innecesarios giros de guión rebajan bastante su calidad.

Recomendable a modo de entretenimiento sin pretensiones y como culturilla general para amantes del manga de terror, ya que es evidente la influencia que tuvo sobre autores venideros (y en mi opinión, muy superiores) como Junji Ito.

[Agung Wicaksono · Rating 4 out of 5]

Segala permasalahan yang terjadi di 'The Drifting Classroom' akhirnya mendapatkan titik terang. Sho dkk. yang awalnya berkonflik, bisa bersatu kembali. Dengan kekuatan misterius Nishi, mereka berharap bisa kembali ke dunia mereka. Namun, yang berhasil kembali adalah Yu--si bocil--dan sepeda kesayangannya. Yu diperintahkan supaya mengabarkan keadaan mereka kepada orang-orang di dunia masa lalu, terutama ibunya Sho.

Pada akhirnya, Sho dkk. tidak bisa kembali ke dunia semula karena mereka berpikir bahwa mereka adalah orang-orang terpilih supaya bisa memperbaiki keadaan dunia yang sudah hampir musnah. Di sisi lain, kedua orang tua Sho mulai mengikhlaskan anak semata wayang mereka, meskipun mereka masih berharap Sho akan pulang.

[Lake · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whole series is really just depressing and angering and hard to read. Its also crazy imaginative, especially for the time it was written and some of the events that occur are crazier than almost anything in any manga or anime ive experienced. Its worth reading for sure but tough to keep momentum through the series. The coolest thing about it is the underlying principle that allows the whole thing to work: children are able to adapt in a way adults cannot because of their imaginations and capacity for believing the unbelievable. It’s a cool concept that allows for you to do a lot of crazy stuff that normally wouldnt fly in a story thats supposed to be set in the “real world”

[rotting charm · Rating 2 out of 5]

hmmmm. sabía que en algún momento se iban a sacar un romance entre sho y saki pero no pensé que iba a ser tan último momento. aún así, la gente dice que saki es weona y todo, pero niñas pequeñas actuarían así, sin embargo, aún es bien sacado de no sé dónde que la saki se preocupara de algo así en ese momento o de esa forma. culparé al autor por escribir tropas de pjs y no darles mucho caracter propio supongo. serán niñxs, pero eso no significa que sean idiotas, no tengan personalidad o sus acciones/pensamientos no sean complejos.