Hyouryuu Kyoushitsu
The Drifting Classroom

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I love “Lord of the Flies” style narratives.

A group of kids transported into what seems nothing like our world. The what, the when, and how the world reacts to it. Along these narratives, we slowly unravel the dangers of this new environment, the rules, and just when we actually understand it, it usually ends. It's a formula, and here we revolve around the critique on people. Rationality ends lives, and being able to make sense of your world, sometimes doesn't allow for anything new to get in. Chaos, murder, and the sad knowledge that children are in a horrible situation, and for being a 70s ... manga, it didn't relent at all.

If we go in terms of story, I enjoyed most of it. The way it's drawn childishly contrasts so horribly with the reality of the situation. These kids have to discover the root of this new world, how it works, and how to battle the concepts of a working society while being horribly murdered by it. Sickness, lack of resources, disagreements, the knowledge that every adult can go insane if put in a situation of power, as well as any kid, and something else lurking in the world. Presented with a very active protagonist that isn't the smartest, but he's the shining beacon of trying your best, even to the detriment of those around you.

Our protagonist is one that evolves from the very beginning, all the way to the bitter end. The people around him are many, and most of them blend into the background, or are horribly killed, which heightened the stakes. We experience death ALL the time. There isn't a series of chapters that doesn't depict how horrible this world is, as well as the sacrifices kids have to do to control a situation. Panic occurs at every single episode. Every moment is all about how nobody is in control, and how small villains appear from time to time as more problems come around. Villains range from okay, to pretty good, not being a single one I didn't hate appropriately, and there were characters I hated, but others that are very logical and well written. I don't have anger towards how the characters were written, more so with this world's concept.

As a concept, there wasn't any proper establishing rules that seemed perfectly logical. It went through the route of sci-fi, and horror fantasy, without committing to any of them. Could be a plus in terms of mystery, but even as was explained, we needed more consistency. Maybe a little detrimental. Lastly, even if it's very well written, the dialogue and some reactions from characters is extremely outdated. Rules are absolute bullshit sometimes, including plot armor that occurs in the most obtuse ways imaginable. It legitimately caused me to stop reading for some time.

Overall, it's a great manga that contains amazing art for its time, but feels dated in terms of character expressions. It goes to pretty disturbing levels, and sports horrible situations in a panic attack style of narrative that doesn't let go, even if the plot armor helps the protagonist way too much for my liking. The rules are unclear, and the situations feel extremely random for the sake of padding. The story could've ended way earlier than it did, and worked just as much. Some horror was slightly bad, and other times it felt pretty eerie. Very solid 7/10.

I started reading Drifting Classroom because it was recommended at the end of a book by an author I really liked. I don't remember which book but it was likely Junji Ito's.
So, Imagine Lord of the Flies but it's a whole school from 1st to 6th grade. Do you know how understaffed a normal school is to deal with this? You got around what, an adult for each 20-30 kids? It's insane! The adults are powerless. And it's even more fucked up to read when you have a good friend who is a teacher himself.

Anyway the plot in this series is really wild and doesn't ... make that much sense, but you're kept glued to the page because this feels like watching a train wreck happen. There's always more messed up stuff happening around the corner. And the insane plot actually becomes quite amusing.

Well... that was a unique experience. It really feels like a horror version of "Lord of the Fireflies".
One thing that I learned from this manga... Sakiko is too precious for this world. She's the Best Girl in this manga BY FAR. As well as the Best Character in extension.

The story is quite good and bad at the same time. The story beats, the plot, was fine. But the execution and the pacing was kinda bad. It definitely didn't aged well.
The premise was pretty unique (for the time) and the problems that was thrown at the main cast were good and kept the story interesting ... because of the mystery. But it really felt cheap because some of the plot threads were entirely dropped without really any explanations. I mean, it's a horror manga so some supernatural sh*t without explanation is something that we should expect. But my God, the amount of sh*t that happens "just because" kinda took me out of immersion. It really felt like things are happening for the shock value, and not because it's integral to the story. Like, some of the plot threads could be taken out and this would still go the same way as it ended without any problems.

The characters are not bad. They aren't great by any means. But there's one character that took me by surprised because of how much I loved her. Yes, Sakiko. She's pretty much the only reason why I continued reading despite the not-so-good story of the manga. The other main characters were very flawed but I also enjoyed them. Though Shou was on the edge of being a Gary Stu ngl. That's the only aspect where I kinda feel iffy about the characters. The other kids and adults were kinda boring and was just there to serve as shock factor for the readers, so they ain't good characters.

The art was solid. It serves its purpose of being scary and not being too overly gory. It certainly added to the experience because the art isn't gory for the sake of being gory. Well... most of the time lol.
Though I really think that the art aged poorly, I respect how the panels conveyed the situation and the severity of the events was in this manga.

Overall, it's a nice read if you turn off your brain. It's made in the 70's so this isn't suppose to be overly complicated and sh*t. It's made to question ourselves as the manga's message is pretty deep and there's a lot to dissect here that mirrors what is currently happening in our world.
Though even if the message and themes are deep, it doesn't excuse the poor execution of the story. Hence my score. I still recommend it though.
(5.75/10)