#The Drifting Classroom

[xenosagaepisodeone]

[animefeminist]

Social Commentary, Horror Manga and the Left: From Ero-Guro to Junji Ito

Content Warning: gore and body horror

Horror manga has always had ties with revolutionary politics. Its beginnings, in fact, start with a Marxist-oriented magazine in the 1960s. Garo, an early gekiga magazine for avant-garde art, was one of the most important magazines for the development of horror manga. Its publication lasted almost 40 years (starting in 1964 and ending in 2002) and the earliest works of horror manga can be found in its pages, as well as a career starting point for the majority of early horror manga artists. Aside from this, horror manga has ties to the ero guro nansensu movement of the 1920s (arguably earlier if certain woodblock prints are considered “ero guro”), which has a clear revolutionary bent. Horror manga today may be more detached from this history, but there are still traces of this revolutionary ethos in modern works.

Garo, The Legend of Kamui, and Burakumin

Garo was an alternative magazine published in kashi-hon stores during the 1960s which became the center of the Japanese counterculture movement. At the time, manga’s main distribution channels were weekly magazines made to correspond to TV series, such as Astro Boy or Speed Racer. Because these magazines’ main demographic was children, stories catering to mature audiences had to find somewhere else to be published. This is where the kashi-hon’ya industry comes in; kashi-hon refers to a for-profit rental service for books (similar to the old video rental stores in the U.S.). These stores allowed for the publication of more mature stories and the rise of gekiga, a form of graphic novel that dealt with more explicit themes.

Garo was the most popular magazine distributed within this network. At its peak in 1970, 80,000 copies of the magazine were published. Its main artist, Shirato Sanpei, had notoriety because one of his stories, Ninja Bugeicho, received a film adaptation in 1967. Shirato was a Marxist known for his social commentary; Ninja Bugeicho itself is a story about a left-wing uprising among the peasant class.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[strangemonochromes]

The Drifting Classroom (漂流教室) // Kazuo Umezu

[squirrelstothenuts]

[whatcha-reading-today]

Summerween Day 6: Horror and Thriller Manga

This is part of the masterpost of horror recommendations for Summerween 2024. See the masterpost here.

Manga is great at capturing expressions and showing us the scope of something strange, uncomfortable, or weird.

Berserk | Kentaro Miura: As a B&N employee stated—man is too angry to die. Come for Miura’s fantastically horrifying art, stay for Guts and Griffith.

Monster | Naoki Urasawa: This is in the thriller category, fairly grounded and for a 9 volume (in the Perfect edition) it keeps the horror and thrills GOING.

Uzumaki & Gyo | Junji Ito: Ito's art is fantastic, and is highlighted in both these stories.

Tokyo Ghoul | Sui Ishida: This series has a lot of ups and downs but there’s some fantastically nasty cannibalism throughout.

The Drifting Classroom & Orochi | Kazuo Umezz: Honestly, classics. Children transported to a hostile nightmare world, fantastic. The art isn't what we could consider horrific (comparing to folks like Miura or Ito) but that makes the horror even creepier.

Jujutsu Kaisen | Gege Akutami: There's a lot of nastiness in this shonen story. Ghosts, ghouls, weird high school.

[haveyoureadthismanga-poll]

[silvermoon424]

I know you said you love horror manga. have you ever read the drifting classroom?

OMG YESSSSSSSSSS WHAT A CLASSIC

For those who don't know, The Drifting Classroom is a horror manga by Kazou Umezu. Umezu is one of the fathers of horror manga; before there was Junji Ito, there was Kazou Umezu (Junji Ito himself credits Umezu as a huge inspiration for him, even making an entire manga oneshot dedicated to him).

Anyway, The Drifting Classroom is about an entire Japanese elementary school that somehow slips through the cracks of time and space during an earthquake. The kids and teachers suddenly find themselves stranded in a barren, hostile wasteland that seems to be devoid of all life (at least at first). After the adults succumb to the pressure, the older kids have to band together to protect the younger ones and eke out a living in this hell.

Meanwhile, the main character- a boy named Sho- manages to establish a telepathic link with his frantic mother back home. It soon becomes clear that the kids are trapped on a post-apocalyptic Earth in the distant future- an Earth that has been ravaged by nuclear war, pollution, and environmental disasters. Although it seems bleak and hopeless, Sho's connection to his mother in the past allows her to do things that will benefit the children in the future.

If that synopsis interests you at all, I highly recommend reading The Drifting Classroom! You can find it online, or Viz republished the entire manga in a set of 3 omnibus volumes not too long ago (which made me VERY happy, as I had been wanting to add the series to my manga collection for a long time!).

Just a warning, there are depictions of children being hurt/killed and the story can get pretty dark, but it ultimately ends on a hopeful note.

[bandit-o-s-usb]

they sure do call it "The Drifting Classroom" considering that the classroom really only drifted once

[onebluebookworm]

31 Days of Literary Spookiness: Graphic Novel Edition - October 20

The Drifting Classroom - Kazuo Umezu

[drop-the-curtain-123]

mimura + his 2nd year friendship with maehara

[ghostnight]

[haveyoureadthiscomic-poll]

[wakanai]

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[squirrelstothenuts]

[mainfaggot]

the last time i felt emotionally fulfilled in a friendship was when i was 15, and before that when i was 13. im turning 21 next month

[vforvalensa]

This bit from Drifting Classroom where Umezz puts on a little crash course on the Kuleshov effect is super interesting. Drawing attention to how in film sequences of images generate meaning, but this isn't film, it's still manga. And Umezz here is still using basically the same comic book sequential image techniques that he's been using the whole series and wouldn't ya know sequences of still images on a page still generate meaning.