The manga is a commentary on polution, climate change, etc.
The message of it is:
If you want to save the kids, save the world!

It has some flaws near the end where shoves drama and fix relationships between characters out of nowhere.

Lmao chapter 40 friendship after the dude tries to murder you and undermine you every point of the jouney

The ending was shit imo, its depressing and shitty.

they didnt even go back in time, like bruh wtf. So they are not gonna try to go back, even though lots of their loves onesare in the past. Like couldnt they have found ither ways to go to the past?

Lots and lots and lots of flaws, but I loved it. There's too many coincidences, not denough joy between the tragedies, the author seems to give up some plot points completely, leaving the reader not really sure of what exactly is happening, the characters seem to flip flop between rational and irrational, and the message is too hamfisted.

But considering when this story originally came out, the message wouldn't have been so cliche as it seems now, so that's forgivable, although some parts still made me roll my eyes. As someone else said, the story implies that the kids are just a few decades into the future, but some of those things clearer require thousands of years to achieve. Pollution can't explain everything away. Anyway, all those flaws don't matter, because I enjoyed reading every minute of this story. High recommendations if you're able to suspend your belief.

If you don't care about the nonsense, and many unrealistic things, it's a really great manga.

Its a pretty good story, but it looses focus along the way and the drawings most of the time are just redrawings of the same character at different zooms in the same angle, just go a check it out, if you haven't noticed now you can't unsee it.

This is great in it's own way. The concept of the kids vanishing to the future and being stranded alone, having to deal with all the hardships of a deserted earth is great, and terrifying in a unique way. The only major thing that bugs me in this was

the monsters that were created through one of the school's children subconscious. This is a major let down, seeing how all of the other plot points seem to tie together to form a well thought out storyline. Other than that, this is great, and even this little defect wouldn't stop me from recommending this to anyone.

Good for it's time. I fully understand the concept of this story. However there's something to note rather than this manga being a "horror", it's more to an adventure, tragedy and psychological kind of manga.

Second thing I'm about to mention here is the ending. It doesn't matter how good the story was at it's earlier chapters, a good story MUST be paired to a good and reasonable ending. After years of reviewing the same, I'm not really surprised to know that my thoughts has always stayed the same. The mangaka, ineed, rushed the ending and it's like he wanted to finish this work quickly. I'm gonna be honest here, the ending doesn't reach the standard from a good manga that was created by a well-known horror mangaka, Kazuo Umezu.

On the other hand, I find this manga to be a rare and truly a masterpiece for it's category. It's rare to find something as solid as this at these days. It's the thrilling that really got me. Drifting Classroom never failed to caught my attention, I've stayed tune with my heart beating. I'm staying to see more of it's ridiculousness. Which later on, I got myself disappointed for having a high expectation for the ending.

A good and solid classic "horror" manga that I'd recommend for the horror manga lovers. Overall, I'd give this 7.8. Minus the rushed ending.

I think this is a very good horror manga, although it's true that you need to be open-minded to fully appreciate it. The greatest aspect of this manga is the powerful feelings conveyed through the situations the children have to face. Rationality is out of place in such a twisted setting, and we can only sympathize with the children, who are just what they are supposed to be, terrified and lost. It's a classic of survival and post-apocalyptic manga and is definitely worth a read. The ending, however, does feel a bit rushed, but it doesn't take out the pleasure of the whole story.

I have to admit I needed to give this manga several tries during the years, before I finally managed to finish it. It really requires a certain openmindedness, more than other manga you need to enter even a state of childlike "make belief" to buy some of the harder to swallow parts in the beginning. If you can manage to do this, it's a pretty addicting read that never slows down once it kicks off. Seeing how this was written in the 70s, predating the huge horror boom that was seen in the 80's, one can imagine how groundbreaking this was at the time.

Kazz Umezu, the author, had once stated (I think in the interview in the back of volume 11) that many of these elements in the story haunted him as a child- and still do to this day. This is a ludicrous story, it's absolutely insane, makes close to no sense, yet it doesn't make fun of itself, even in spite of its absurdity.

And yet, people overlook the fact that, as adults, we'd find this stuff 'kind of creepy' now, if we were Sho's age or younger when we read this (I actually was a 6th grader when I first read through this!), we'd be shocked, horrified, probably lose sleep for days. The point of Drifting Classroom is- it's a childish tale, pure and simple- it doesn't have to make sense. That's the whole point- Sho is still a child, he's telling this from his childish POV, this story is about (really) being able to connect with that guillibility of youth, the untouched innocence that we all once held- Sho and the children are able to survive because they're still young, and able to accept these things- they make no sense to us adults/older people- but to these young kids, who are able to adapt to the most hellish surroundings, they are quickly able to accept their fates.

This is a story that forces you to think about what you feared as a child- your parents disappearing forever, being thrust into a horrible scary nightmareworld, being attacked by monsters, being left alone and forgotten...That's what Drifting Classroom is REALLY about. Not blood, not gore, not "omg Y IT DOES NOT MAEK SENS TO ME!111!" this is a true horror story- the fears we all experienced in our young lives come alive here.

It's a good manga- really absurd, and practically ZERO logic, and I'm rereading the series- it's addictive and quite a fun escape from reality.