Back when I was in college, my dorm was not too far from the local downtown. Naturally, this, of course, included a library. I can remember spending at least a few hours down there, mostly reading manga and graphic novels that my own hometown did not possess. One of said manga series I read there was Kazuo Umezu’s haunting series “Drifting Classroom”.
Now, it’s been around 10 years since I was in college, and, being younger then, I hadn’t quite seen enough of the world of horror to realize just how gripping and terrifying this series was.
But I know now.
Grade-school student Sho Takamatsu has not had a good day, and it’s about to get worse than he, or anyone save Umezu, could possibly imagine.
After a dramatic falling-out with his mother, in which both declared they never wanted to see each other again, Sho arrives at school like any other day…and then all Hell breaks loose. A massive boom shakes the building. No one can contact the outside world. And what lies beyond the school’s gates has been transformed into a lifeless wasteland.
Left to survive with limited water, limited food and (soon enough) no adult supervision, save for the monstrous and cruel lunch delivery man, Sho and his fellow students are forced to band together as a community. Dangers await them from both without and within. Every chapter brings about a new challenge or mystery, up until the reveal that the school itself has been blasted forward in time, hence the “Drifting” in the title.
Most adults would find it hard to maintain their sanity in the grips of such a situation (and they indeed do find it so), so one can imagine how hard Sho and his fellows will have it. And, from what I hear, things will often get worse before they get better.
Told in stark ultra-white paper and ultra-black ink, the real-life terrors of scarcity, the risk of death by starvation and dehydration, the terror of the unknown and the darkness that humans can be reduced to are all on stark display in this manga.
Now, I must admit, the library only had a small handful of the first few volumes on its shelves when I was there, so I only know so much firsthand. But the series has recently been re-released in large, omnibus formats, one of which had just appeared on my own local library’s shelves when I just happened to go there yesterday.
My point is, I have apparently been exposed to only a fraction of what will soon lie in store for me if I continue to read “Drifting Classroom”. (SPOILER) I have more-or-less read up to the end of the third volume or so, where, having encountered and failed to defeat the giant mutant insect monster (shown above), the children agree to posse up and hunt it down in order to avenge those it ate when it attacked the school.
So my horror is apparently just beginning.
And that’s saying something, with how bizarre and disturbing even the first major alien threat is on its own, with its realistically shiny, chitinous shell, its too-many legs and its mouthful of mammalian sharp teeth, all of which combine to make it thoroughly alien, yet just familiar enough to show us just how badly it was warped.
All I can say is, do not come into this series expecting the happiest of endings. Many people, especially children, die in the first three volumes alone and, with a total of 824 people in the school to feed and contend with, you just know no all of them are going to survive.
I know it’s going to be horrible, but I just can’t look away. It’s like listening to right-wing radio, in that way.
One final word of note: this being an older series, there may occasionally be some outdated ways of thinking on display, most notably in the form of a statement from resident genius Gamo, who claims that “females allow their emotions to impede their logic, and are better off giving birth and raising children”.
Needless to say, as horrifying as this is, it is by far one of the least horrifying things you will find if you pick up this series.
No comments:
Post a Comment