Slightly Biased Manga

I really, really hate reviews which just consist of a summary instead of what the reviewer actually thought of the manga, and the only times I’ll give summaries are when the events speak for themselves.  With Drifting Classroom, I feel a little bad that it seems like I’m giving nothing but summaries, but really, I don’t have anything to say other than things get more and more insane, and the effect of the incredibly improbable situations is best conveyed by simply explaining the situations themselves.  My opinion is simply that I cannot believe that Umezu kept thinking of this shit, and somehow kept topping himself for off-the-wall, impossible scenarios for all of the 11 volumes of the series.  It’s incredible to me, and I really mean that.

Also, I thought about putting spoiler warnings at the beginning of these, but know that what I describe only scratches the surface of whatever’s going on in the volume, and I really don’t think it’s quite possible to spoil this series to the point that reading it would be pointless.  It’s an experience.

At the beginning of this volume, Sho once again improbably communicates with his mother.  Well, this is after he saves a bunch of students from a burning building.  Anyway, he asks for a cure for the bubonic plague, and most of the volume is spent with his mom complying to his wishes.  He specifically requests that she put the cure into the mummy he found, and all he gives her to go on is the fact it has a scar on its wrist and he found it in the basement of the hospital.  With that, Sho’s mom sets off.

You’d think that this might be an impossible task, finding a mummy with a scar on its wrist in which to conceal the cure for the bubonic plague, but she tries as hard as she can.  Amazingly, she narrows the suspect down to a still-alive baseball player, who happens to be Sho’s hero.  In an act of sanity, she takes Sho’s friend to a baseball game to see him, which might be where she makes the connection.
Well, getting the cure for the bubonic plague gets her kicked out of every pharmacy she can find, and contacting the baseball player proves impossible until she injures himself to get admitted to the hospital to speak to him.  Things just… work out from there.
The students pray for rain, and in yet another unbelievable situation, the students singing makes it rain (the story tries to come up with a scientific explanation for this, like the fire from the school combined with the voices from the students affected the air, but the technical justifications sound just as likely to me as anything else that’s going on).  The rain causes a flash flood which decapitates students, rips their arms off, and suffocates them in quicksand mud.

Marry me, Kazuo Umezu.