The friendly cafeteria delivery man everyone!
| “ | Sekiya: Hmph! Cry all you want, you brats!! Classroom: It hurts...! I want my mom! Sekiya: Cry, cry, CRY! You always made fun of me because I was a deliveryman! Every day I made my deliveries I had to take shit from you and your teachers! Now the school is mine! You can call me Mr. Sekiya, Sir! |
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| ~ Sekiya after threatening a classroom full of kids to give him their food. |
Hey guys, it's your quirky bloo gorl Heghodge with her fourth PE proposal. I've already done two proposals on Junji Ito villains, so I figured, why not go for one of his inspirations, Kazuo Umezu? Today's proposal will be on a villain from a rather gloomy work known as The Drifting Classroom, a manga filled with lots and lots of violence, murder, cannibalism, children transforming into monsters, the usual.
The manga has a ton of disturbing antagonists in it, but of all of them, two (technically three, but I don't think the third quite stacks up to the other two) of them stood out to me as villains that did what they did just because for the evulz, and nothing else. To start with this, I will be covering the manga's most prevalent villain, Kyusaku Sekiya. Without further ado, let the trial commence.
What Is The Work?[]
The Drifting Classroom is perhaps one of Kazuo Umezu's most famous mangas, alongside Fourteen and Cat-Eyed Boy. The manga series itself is a Lord of the Flies-esque horror series which tells of the story of Yamato Elementary School, which got transported into the future following a dynamite explosion (just roll with it), leading to 863 children and adults being stranded in Tokyo, now a deserted wasteland that is resideded by numerous monsters, and where humans have been replaced with spider-like mutants. The story itself primarily focuses on Sho Takamatsu, a rebellious, but corageous sixth grader on his endevors to keep those who remained alive, many of whom were killed by a staff member, safe while also keeping track of the school's resources, and their sanity on top of all of that.
Who Is He and What Did He Do?[]
Throughout the manga, Sho and the rest of the school face a number of adversaries, many of which are those desperate for survival, or the aforementioned monsters. Of all of the villains found in the series, Kyusaku Sekiya is the most prevalent, as well as one of the most dangerous, of the bunch.
Sekiya was once the mild-mannered cafeteria delivery man of Yamato Elementary School. During his time working there, he was described to have acted polite and helpful, and was viewed in a positive light. Unbeknownest to them, however, Sekiya held consistent grudges about being looked down upon by the other staff members and bossing him around.
When the school got transferred into the future, Sekiya seemingly saw his chance to get back at everyone, both the students and the staff, and started by hoarding all of the school's food in the cafeteria, threatening to kill anyone who tries to retrieve any of "his food". To give you a good idea of what kind of threat the characters must deal with for about half of the story, when Sekiya is first properly introduced in the manga, the first thing we see Sekiya do is break a little boy's hand when he tried to grab and eat a piece of bread.
When one of the staff members try to reason with Sekiya, and try to tell him how working together would put everything at ease, he simply scoffs at the idea, stating he has every right to hoard the food, and then takes both a student and a staff member hostage, while lighting the floor on fire with gasoline, which goes through the entrance. This results in multiple staff members being burnt, and he threatens the whole school that he will kill his hostages if anyone tries to enter the cafeteria to gather food.
When one of the kids finds a real gun, and tries to save the girl that Sekiya took hostage, Sekiya sneaks behind him, stabs him in the back, and the kid inadvertently shoots another in the head, killing the both of them. After killing the kid, and Sho manages to steal some food, Sekiya goes around classroom to classroom to find the kid that stole his bread, beating many kids and stealing their lunches in the process. Sekiya then enters another classroom, questions the entire class if they're hiding any food, and proceeds to stomp on another child's hands when they drop a candy bar.
By that point, he slashes his knife around, and demands all of the children to cry harder when they begin crying in fear, reveling in all of their pain as he laughs at the chaos he ensued. He also reveals that he is perfectly fine with letting all of the children starve to death. When anoter group of children led by Sho manage to capture Sekiya, they decided to lock him up in one of the lockers, as Sho believed that killing him would make everyone just as bad as he is.
During a ramen feast, Sekiya tricks a boy who gives him his ramen by pretending to apologize for his cruelty, asking him for a wire to fix his teeth, wanting to give him "something in return". Naturally, he just uses the wire to escape, tosses the ramen at the boy's face, and then kicks and mocks him for believing him.
Sekiya then proceeds to force a group of students, under his leadership, to go to a a nearby forest that he heard students talking about, picking up Yu, a three-year-old child that tagged along with Sho and got transported with the scool earlier, and threatening the children that he will stab him to death if they don't comply. When the group gets to the forest, Sekiya tries to force Sho to eat one of the fruits, only to find that all of the plants are made of sand. They then hear a rustling sound in the forest, and proceeds to toss Yu, who I must remind you again is a toddler, towards whatever was making the sound.
When Sho calls Sekiya out for this callous act, his justification is that children aren't human at all, and that he has every right to exploit them as a result. A giant centipede-like monster then emerges from the forest and chases the group down. Sekiya attempts to distract the monster by tossing Sho directly at it in the hopes it will eat him alive. Even though Sekiya escaped from the monster, and Sho still managed to survive the ordeal, Sekiya is temporarily transformed Sekiya into a toddler-like state where he can't hurt anyone. And he stays like this for the next 7 chapters or so until he falls down the stairs and regains his senses.
After regaining his senses, Sekiya continues to act insane in order to catch the children off guard. When the school discovers a strange fungus that is growing around the school following a temporary rainstorm in the area, a group of students decide to use Sekiya as a means of testing the safety of them, which he then pretends to eat. Sekiya stops the act, and then forces another child to eat the mushrooms, which are later revealed to transform them into the aforementioned spider-like mutants that replaced the humans.
Sekiya then manages to take control of the entire school when rumors that Sho had caused the dynamite explosion start to spread around, turning it into a miltary-like dictatorship, where he treats all of the students as his pawns for collecting food for himself. He forces Sho and a group of kids to dig a tunnel underground, where they find the spider-like mutants, which chase them all the way back to the school and attack them. In the meantime, Sekiya runs off with almost all of the school's food, practically putting the entire school in peril. This also inadvertently leads to the children resorting to cannibalism when they are directed to an abandoned amusement park where Mt. Fuji used to be.
Fortunately or unfortunately, about 100 students survive the whole ordeal, and they figure out a way that they can send Yu back to the past in hopes of being able to fix this whole mess and prevent this future from ever happening. The last we see of Sekiya is him trying to kill Yu in order to get sent back to the past in his place, only to then be strangled to death by the disembodied arm of a thief which got transported into the future.
Mitigating Factors?[]
The primary point of concern regarding Sekiya's potential PE status would probably be the fact that he is clearly out of his mind, and is utterly deluded, believing that the school was actually in the middle of a warzone. The latter would most certainly appear to drive him to hoard as much food as humanly possible for his own survival. Even then, this excuse is pretty easily nullified given how much unecessary sadistic torture he had to inflict on the entire school, and how he's perfectly fine with letting literally everyone else die of starvation. Not to mention, his entire goal in mind is just to be the schools "sole survivor", which very easily shows he doesn't give a crap about anyone else. Additionally, he views children as being exploitable beasts, which he uses as a justification for abusing them constantly. Not to mention how he catches onto the fact he's in the future towards the end of the manga anyway, intent on killing a toddler just so that he can get back to the past in his place.
So no, there's absolutely nothing redeeming about this guy. He waited for his chance to strike from the start.
Heinous Standard?[]
The world of Drifting Classroom is a brutal one. In several points of the manga, the children rely on killing each other for the sake of survival, espescially true towards the end of the story when they go to an abandoned amusement park. However, where Sekiya ultimately differs from most other characters is how he is killing AND torturing people out of sheer sadism.
Almost everyone else in this story that tries to kill anyone else for survival, ultimately did it because they were insane, lost their moral agency from the brutal conditions, and most importantly just left it at killing others. Even Mr. Wakahara, who killed all of the adults, very clearly couldn't tell right and wrong anymore after witnessing collegues commit suicide. Sekiya not only kills children, but he also tortures them for his enjoyment before he even gets to killing them! This guy very clearly knows full well what he's doing is wrong, and he easily sets the baseline for this story.
Conclusion[]
Self-explanatory. Your thoughts?