Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > The Drifting Classroom, Vol. 9

The ninth of eleven volumes of an apocalyptic environmental horror manga series from the seventies positing an elementary school drifting in the near future, where the world has gone to hell with earthquakes and mutants caused by eating Frankenfood magic mushrooms. The adults have screwed the planet up; can kids save the day? Based on volume nine, we doubt it!

So! The kids have to make it back to the school from the future nightmare Tokyo subway, where more manic insanity faces them: A kind of Lord of the Flies scenario where two halves of the student body exist, our hero Sho on the one side and bad Otomo on the other side, with evil insane cafeteria work Sekiya still in the picture.

So you say that doesn't sound out of control enough for you? Umezu says, okay, let's have Sho get appendicitis and have some of the other kids operate on him with an exacto knife! What could go wrong, with their elementary science background and no anesthesia!?!

Or how about this? In the time/space dimension we are living in, Sho's mother begins communicating to them psychically through a disabled classmate. (??!) What Sho wishes his mother will help him with, well, a couple of things actually happen! (??!!) Is this a sign of hope, as supplies of food and water are basically running out?! Cray cray.