Drifting Classroom 5
April 13, 2008
I’ve read most of this series now, but I’ve fallen behind on writing about it.
I’m still very impressed with how extreme this series is. Within the first few pages of this volume, a little kid kills himself by smashing himself in the face with a rock, then a few pages later, all the kids fall to their knees and cry when they announce “I’m home” after walking through the school’s gates.
Most of this volume concerns the plague. One of the kids gets sick, and the kid who wants to be a doctor when he grows up diagnoses him with a liver problem without much time to live. Further analysis reveals that the kid has the bubonic plague, and Sho and others who have touched the kid willingly exile themselves from the others. Unfortunately, some younger kids kindly changed the sick victim out of his underwear when he messed them up, so the plague spreads anyway. Those left in the school don’t know this, and they round up anyone having to do with Sho, even if they hadn’t recently had contact with them, and lock them in a room together.
Elsewhere, Sho and company find a mummy in the basement of the hospital. When the mummy sits up, we are treated to one of the best panels in the series of all the children screaming. The mummy isn’t alive though (apparently he sat up due to “gas escaping,” which is a really weird detail to add). Sho and company use it to gain access to the school by scaring the shit out of the guards, then the rest of the volume is them trying to help the other kids out of the classroom where they were locked while everyone else who’s left alive succumbs to the Bubonic Plague.
I love you, Kazuo Umezu.
April 14, 2008 at 11:43 am
[...] Love. It’s a Drifting Classroom marathon at Slightly Biased Manga, where Connie reviews vols. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Mangamaniac Julie checks out The First Stage of Love at Mangacast, and back [...]
April 15, 2008 at 10:01 am
[...] Umezu’s gobsmackingly insane horror series, The Drifting Classroom: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven. Spoilers all over the place, of course. (Above: Very [...]