The Drifting Classroom

The Drifting Classroom

By Kazuo Umezu

Kazuo Umezu! My second horror mangaka! Of course he is known for his other talents as well but for the sake of this entry let's stick to his mangas. His first book of manga was published while still in high school. He moved to Tokyo and that is where he discovered his detailed horror manga style. Of course it was as of recently that I heard of his work. See, I got really into Junji Ito but then I felt like I had to add variety to what I read. Someone mentioned that before Junji Ito there was Kazuo Umezu. Of course, there are a few other mangakas that I would like to check out, for now however I want to talk about The Drifting Classroom.

Did I mentioned it’s volume one; I went into this series knowing there -- was more. Seeing how many pages each book has (this one was about 744) and by the end of it I thought the story was too short.

I understand why.

It’s the detail in how a very realistic situation is handled that causes idolic fear. I am going to be honest I was expecting a lot more gore than what I got. Every review I read on this volume was on the top scariest and recommended horror mangas. Which I am not disagreeing with, I was just expecting more physical disturbance. It is volume 1.

The story opens up with Sho Takamatsu shaken up about a dispute he had with his mother before his entire school goes missing.

This story is told from Sho’s perspective which is how we know that the whole school got teleported for some unknown reason into another dimension ( or what they believe to be the future).

I think what gave everyone the heebee jibbies was the fact that all the adults were the ones who lost reasoning first. Starting with the lunchman who decides to dictate all the food supply, to the teacher who massacres all the rest of the faculty before ending his own life as well. This is still unexplained. I believe this shows humanity's true fear of unknowing or having no sense of control. Although, since this is only the first volume I have a hypothesis that something in this dimension, maybe the air is affecting something in their mind.

Okay, because we also see that there is living life form outside the school. However, the situation is very strange and there was nothing to show that this is actually possible. Everything they touched turned into sand. Even when they did come across something that was supposed to be edible, it turned to sand. Yet, here was this giant bug eating plants and hunting for human flesh.

The creature itself brings a lot of questions. How is it alive in a place like this? If it was eating the forest plants why is it still attacking them?

We learn that the creature will only attack if he sees your mind working. Which just brings MORE questions. Their solution then is to think only of an object and in a way become that object. They clear their mind of everything but that object.

No doubt there are quite a few events that just leave you wanting to read more because you want to know what causes things to happen. Is it the air in this dimension that causes the human mind to insanity? Maybe a government experiment? World War? Definitely, a weird place to transition from but an excellent cliff hanger.