by Kazuo Umezz
English translation by Sheldon Drzka
Adaptation by Molly Tanzer
Lettering by Evan Waldinger
Book Design by Adam Grano
Edited by Joel Enos
English language publication by Viz Media in ten paperback volumes from 2006 to 2008, and republished in three hardback volumes in 2020.
Original Japanese language serialization in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1972 to 1974.
. . .
"I believe the children are our future"
-lyric from "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston
"Oh, that's right . . . we're in the future, and the earth is a wasteland devoid of food and anything else . . ."
-dialogue from the children's adventure manga The Drifting Classroom
"Is it future or is it past?"
-dialogue from the TV show Twin Peaks
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
You could call The Drifting Classroom a manga riff on Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies with a strong Fortean timeslip vibe. It's the kinda story that starts wild and gets wilder, ultimately giving you the feeling that it might go in any and all directions at once.
An entire school full of teachers, support staff, and children grades k thru six vanishes from 1970s Tokyo and reappears in the middle of a forbidding wasteland that stretches endlessly to the horizon in all directions. These vanished people must figure out a way to survive on their own once it becomes clear that no other human beings live in this bizarre new world. Along the way, those that survive uncover the location of the wasteland and how and why it came to be such a devastated place. Drinkable water and edible food must be found and rationed. The adults start cracking up under the psychological trauma of being wrenched out of one's home reality only to be abandoned in a terrifying desolate hellscape. Some of the children break down, too, but they are surprisingly resilient when measured against the adults. Conflicts over authority and management of resources ignite. Factions form. Lines are drawn. And that's when the mutant monsters come calling. Not everyone survives.
I said that The Drifting Classroom feels like it could go in any and all directions, and that's true; but there are also recurrent themes: the socially-even arbitrarily-constructed nature of authority; going hungry and thirsty; creating purpose for oneself when cut off from your usual sources of existential affirmation; children crying; children missing their mothers; learning to improvise and manufacture deadly weapons; determining the conscionable amount of violence to use in order to stop dangerous enemies; the power of belief; how to assess whether a mushroom or plant is safe to eat; ecology as a survival necessity; radical transformation; the confusion of brutality and self-sufficiency; the emotional absence of fathers; the bond between mother and child.
The Drifting Classroom could also be read as a part of the "mysterious disappearance" genre of stories particular to Japanese film, novels, and manga. You could compare it with Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man, which are two novels that narrate how and why middle aged men would wander off the map. From a different angle you have Shohei Imamura's film A Man Vanishes. The Drifting Classroom is mostly about people disappeared against their will, whereas The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, and A Man Vanishes are explorations of situations where people seemingly choose to disappear . . . or are they choosing to vanish because they felt they had no other choice? And what the hell kinda choice is that . . .?!
The Drifting Classroom is also a wildass survivalist ride full of action and grotesque atrocities. A yarn, in other words, to be spun just for the fascination of spinning it. Once the kids are left to fend for themselves there's no stopping the narrative momentum as they alternately fight amongst themselves and endeavor to solve the mystery of their appearance in a world of desolation. If you start reading it at a chain bookstore you may as well get comfy because you're going to want to read it to the end. I know I did.
