One Great Panel: Drifting Classroom

The second coming of Sho, the only begotten son of Destiny.

In case you missed my grand revelation, I am obsessed with the way Kazuo Umezz drew child characters. I find it hilarious, but not in a demeaning way. It’s so stylized, yet simple. Like caricatures of adults, almost.

Even still, Drifting Classroom didn’t strike me as the kind of series where a One Great Panel would turn up. Again, not in a demeaning way, just in a stylistic way. It’s not a series that leans into dramatic framing.

Then I came across this panel, and all my dreams came true.

This is from chapter 12, page 598.

Context: Sho, the sixth-grade boy pictured here, along with the entirety of his elementary school, have found themselves displaced into the future along with the school building. All around them is a desolate wasteland. On an exploration mission, Sho and a few of his classmates encounter a giant bug. This bug presumably eats Sho, and in his brief absence, the school descends into anarchy. Three bullies threaten to take control and just when all hope is lost, Sho reappears from the wasteland like Christ himself, ready to lay down the law.

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Okay, so setting aside my fascination with Umezz’s child character design, there are a few things about this panel that make it truly outstanding. The first is quite simple—since Drifting Classroom is not one for dramatic blocking and framing within panels, this is a departure from the usual tone, framing Sho’s return akin to the resurrection of Christ.

I mean, this kid just escaped certain death and here he is, bruised and bloody, strutting back into school like he owns the place. Just look at the conviction on his face. Just look at it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Sho has had enough. He’s done with the tomfoolery. Forget giant bugs and bullies, this is Sho’s school. And by that token, this is a huge moment not just for Sho’s character arc, but for the story in general. Because this is the moment Sho realizes how to move this society of elementary school children forward. Where once there was a before, there will now be an after. (If you got that reference, you rock.)

Outside of the narrative impact, the artistic choices in this panel are simple, yet superb. For starters, the angelic borders on all sides of Sho are a sheer delight. Don’t be fooled, he’s actually striding in from an endless desert wasteland, but by adding these “beam of light” borders, it ups the ante on him being a messianic figure come to save what remains of society, despite the contingent of students blaming him for the trouble they’re in. Again, sounds pretty messianic, yeah? Can’t you hear the angelic choir singing?

It’s also a great way to frame Sho on his own. There are fellow survivors behind him and the rest of the elementary school ahead of him, but all of that gives way for these walls of majesty setting him up as the savior he is. Not just that, but if you want to expand the imagination a bit, these walls of ethereal light can also give the impression that Sho has been guided all this time by a higher power or destiny urging him to get back to school to save his classmates.

Had Umezz defaulted to showing this realistically, with the desert all around him, a few stragglers in the distance, maybe some over-the-shoulder kids in the foreground, Sho’s impact loses a bit of its punch. He is no longer a savior emerging from the wasteland, he’s just a straggler himself, finding his way back to his classmates. The focus has to be entirely on Sho to set up what’s coming and how Sho is the catalyst needed to make it happen.

And then just one small thing that’s not exclusive to this panel, but the spiraling sand is a gorgeous artistic choice, and one that—to keep that messianic message coming on strong—almost looks like water when isolated as it is. Like a certain unnamed fisherman walking on water in the midst of a storm.

The artistic parallels between Sho and Jesus H. Christ are too numerous to be ignored, and they work miracles to make this single panel such a statement piece.