The Drifting Classroom | |
Volume 1, English edition.
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漂流教室 (Hyōryū Kyōshitsu) |
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Genre | Horror |
Manga | |
Written by | Kazuo Umezu |
Published by | Shogakukan |
English publisher | |
Demographic | Shōnen |
Magazine | Weekly Shōnen Sunday |
Original run | 1972 – 1974 |
Volumes | 11 |
Live-action film | |
Directed by | Nobuhiko Obayashi |
Studio | Bandai Entertainment |
Released | July 11, 1987 |
Runtime | 104 minutes |
The Drifting Classroom (漂流教室 Hyōryū Kyōshitsu?) is a horror manga series by Kazuo Umezu. It was awarded the 20th Shogakukan Manga Award in general category in 1974.
The story was adapted into a Japanese live action movie in 1987, and given a modern setting at an international school in Kobe. The movie starred Hayashi Yasufumi and Aiko Asano. It is unusual among Japanese movies in that most of the dialogue is in English.
A more modern remake came in the form of a fully Japanese language dorama (The Long Love Letter) which changed it into a love-story of sorts.
Sho Takamatsu, a sixth grader, proceeds to school following a bitter argument with his mother about her throwing out his things. But as Sho attends his class, a tremor suddenly shakes the facility, and the students and faculty find that the school has somehow been transported into a wasteland. In time, they find others wandering through the strange landscape, lost. One of them, a three-year-old boy named Yu, shows Sho a memorial buried in the dust which commemorates the disappearance of their school - indicating that they somehow have landed in the future. As it later turns out, the world succumbed to a variety of environmental disasters some time after the school was time-warped, leaving the Earth nearly depopulated at the end of the 20th century.
In the face of this unexpected and frightening development, many of the adults and students at school lose their wits. One of the teachers, Wakahara, goes completely insane and murders his colleagues and some of the students before he is killed by Sho in self-defense, while the previously mild-mannered food delivery man for the school, Sekiya, puts his own survival before the children's lives, which leaves the children with no adult guidance. In this desperate situation, Sho attempts to take charge in order to ensure the survival of all. He meets Nishi, a fifth-grader from Nagao, who has the mysterious psychic power to reach into the past. When Sho's mother, who is remorseful over her son's disappearance, is contacted by Sho through Nishi's power in times of great need, she goes great lengths to assist her son by preparing things in her own time so that they might help Sho in this bleak future.