The Drifting Classroom, Volume 6 Book

This volume shifts gears to spend a lot of time with mom, who is still and endlessly and frantically trying to reach and take care of her son Sho . . though, and this is how batshit crazy this series is. . . she is doing this from the (near) past. The school, where all the kids and an apparently crazy lunchroom employee are now living and surviving against all odds, through some crazy explosion, blew into the future, where Japan is now some kind of wasteland, most people dead. The survivors are dwindling as Sho attempts to create some semblance of a "government" but they face a few challenges: A quickly dwindling food supply, bug monsters, one large motha bug monster, the Bubonic frickin' Plague, as this volume opens! And this is a bunch of elementary kids who also naturally turn on each other from time to time.

So theire biggest current challenge is the Plague, of course, though he finds a MUMMY (you heard that right) who conveniently has an identifying scar. In a fit of desperation Sho cries out to his mother--who lives in the past--and who apparently is the only person who can hear his cries. ... somehow.... and tells her to get penicillin and stash it inside said Mummy so in the future they will be able to find it and save whats left of their dwindling kid population.

You are imagining several narrative challenges to this scenario. Let them pass like the wind. But mother goes out with a neighborhood kid to look through her town for a guy with a scar (not YET dead, right!) and they do find him.... and he is one of Japan's most famous baseball players, who in a game, gets injured, dies, is embalmed (this is where the mum part comes in) as a national hero, is stuffed with the package of penicillin, which will be found by son Sho who will save the survivors.

I know: When I say it like that, it makes perfect sense, right?

But plague thwarted, it looks like good news happens, when it rains, so young plants they have planted can grow, but as is consistent with this series, the rain turns to a flood, yes, more bad things happen. Mushrooms seem to be popping up--are they edible? Are they the psychedelic ones author Umezu was obviously consuming as he wrote this crazy thing??!

This story is nuts, but it goes VERY fast, obviously, and is now, I think, kind of a COMIC horror comic series, and a fun ride.