Customer Reviews

Lychee Light Club

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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This one shot graphic novel from Furuya Usamaru (Palepoli, Short Cuts) is both shocking and funny. The Lychee Light Club is a group of nine junior high school boys led by Zera, a ruthless and sadistic pretty boy. The club meets after school in a run-down factory, where the boys plot to cleanse their community of ugly adults. They have constructed a humanoid robot they name Lychee (a type of fruit the robot runs on). Lychee's purpose is... to kidnap a real, live teenage girl (the kids attend an all-boys school, and appear to have had very little experience with the opposite sex). After a few hilarious misunderstandings, Lychee does manage to capture a real girl, but the Frankenstein-like android has been programmed to think it is human, and it develops feelings for her. The club gradually unravels due to paranoia, jealousy and betrayal. The ending is pure Grand Guignol.

Lychee Light Club is one of the best "underground" manga titles to be published in English to date. Furuya's artwork is very clean and detailed, and the story will have you turning pages (even when it feels a bit like watching a car accident). Although the story is about kids, this book is NOT for children. It contains graphic violence, nudity, and strong sexual content. For a more mainstream series by Furuya, check out Genkaku Picasso from Viz. However, I find his more "extreme" works like this one, when he is allowed to let his pen run wild, to be a lot more interesting.

I did find the attitude and behavior of the girl a little odd. She is kidnapped, chained up and imprisoned by a group of murderous boys and a hulking robot, but she doesn't seem too concerned! It was more like a minor inconvenience. She reminded me of one of the bubble-brained "kogal" characters from Furuya's scathing look at the Japanese schoolgirl, Short Cuts. However, she was cute (Furuya does know how to draw cute girls), and she was probably the only truly "good" character in the book.

I hope everyone who is interested buys this book to support Vertical, because I would really like to see more alternative manga licensed and released in English.

This is Usamaru Furuya's manga respect to the play of same name, and also to Suehiro Maruo (who also starred in the original play, says the epilogue), if it wasn't desperately familiar with the Kato-like masques that fascist headgear can give, and the exploitation of childhood fantasy.

The story is a one-shot, so I won't spoil much. The sweetness Furuya can be known for is at play in the role of Lychee, a giant robot with a naive, almost "Iron Giant" sensibility and a body fueled by lychee fruit. The horror of Maruo is on display in the more or less cardboard cut-out characters of the underground club; they exist to drive home the thoughts and insecurities of the author(s) (societal critique alert?), not to push the story forward. Like filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, Furuya seems to love the outsider and the grotesqueness of the unknown; the sympathetic monster is a reflection of the misunderstood side of budding adolescence and group think. Those familiar with Hideshi Hino or Hanakuma know the themes of basic exploitation enough to know what you're getting yourself into.

The story revolves around middle school drama and themes of alienation, fantasization, and of course the fetishization that is included in going to an all boys' school. The ideas presented vary from completely ridiculous to outright shadowing of Hollywood tropes. None of it really detracts from the chaos you came for, though none of it is original either.

Still, it's a classic among ero-guro fans, and I'm glad to have it in English, finally. Furuya's building up his American repertoire nicely with the folks at Vertical, and a (Japanese language) prequel is in the works! Buy this and show Vertical they need to translate that ASAP.

"Among you there is one who will betray me." Thus speaks Zera, the head of the Light Club, a sinister society of high school boys bent upon a perverse pursuit of eternal youth and beauty. Although they seek youth and beauty for themselves, raging adolescent hormones mean they pursue it in the bodies of others. To this end, they are kidnapping girls and women off the street, vivisecting those who do not live up to their high aesthetic ideals to confirm their unworthiness. Once they at last find the perfect girl, they will place her on the pedestal. Literally.

Unfortunately, actually finding the perfect girl is a tall order, and it is not something that these boys can accomplish by themselves. Therefore, they build a humanoid robot powered entirely by the lychee fruit to serve as their proxy out in the world. Programmed to believe that he is human, this robot, named Lychee, is tasked with finding their perfect girl. He succeeds. But as the Light Club descends into recrimination and violence, and the specter of betrayal lurks ever nearer, it may just be that this robot turns out to be the most human of them all...

Lychee Light Club is based upon a 1985 play of the same name performed by the Tokyo Grand Guignol, which manga artist Usamaru Furuya saw live as a teenager. The show's promotional materials were produced by Suehiro Maruo (Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show; Ultra Gash Inferno), who is famed in Japan for his pioneering eroguro manga. Eroguro stands for "erotic-grotesque"--the visceral images of sexually explicit situations combined with maximally explicit images of human viscera. Tentacle porn, as epitomized by Toshio Maeda's infamous Legend of the Overfiend anime and manga, is the apotheosis of the eroguro genre.

However, the eroguro drawn by Furuya here is not of the tentacle porn variety. Although as a manga artist he has become renowned for the three-dimensional, sculptural aspect of his illustrations, in this book he is true to the master--Lychee Light Club's art is stiff, stylized, and, in spite of the base physicality of much of the subject matter, strangely, paradoxically alienating. Indeed, the (homo)eroticism manages not to be alluring, and the spilled blood and guts do not seem quite human. This is intentional, and the degree to which Furuya is able to pull this delicate balance off speaks to his sublime creative mastery.

In fact, one of the very few things in this manga that seems particularly (and peculiarly) human is the robot Lychee, and his story of humanity is actually every bit as compelling as the parallel story of betrayal within the Light Club. This, again, is intentional. The ultimate message seems to be that simply being human does not necessarily guarantee one's humanity. Yet, on the other hand, the cruelest things we do emanate from our most human of desires and frailties. It's a good lesson, and it makes Lychee Light Club farmore than just another eroguro sequential art spectacle. Highly recommended.

-- Casey Brienza

WOW! Lychee Light Club was a complete mind blowing treat of read. It was different in every way, the story felt very dark and tragic it reminded of silent french black and white films. The violence had meaning, it did not feel as if it was there for "awesome factor", or to make itself seem like it was a classic like other titles, Such as Elfin Lied. This is my first Ero-guro manga and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The artwork was beautiful, very original, fit perfectly with the ominous atmosphere of the story.

*******Minor Spoilers********

The Lychee Light Club is a high concept one-shot manga that's a mix of Frankenstein (Norton Critical Editions), Phantom of the Opera and Battle Royale: The Novel (unsurprising since the author adopted that manga) with Hentai undertones. It's about a cult of boys who dress up like the Fascistic Kato from Doomed Megalopolis (Special Edition), attempt to build the perfect women from spare parts taken by a Frankensteinian Robot that runs on lychees (a type of fruit). Throw in one hostage with a heart of gold, a robot that may have a soul and Lord of the Flies Centenary Edition/Battle Royale internal group politics and you have a recipe for disaster.

Sounds great? The concept isn't bad, the problem is the horribly awkward execution. This author was previously relegated mostly to the realm of adaptation. That doesn't shock me, because he plots terribly. The plot's entirely predictable and induces groans, and none of the characters are likable. The ending is not very climactic. The (homosexual) sex (scene) and rape scene is excessive for a horror manga (and not enough for hentai) and the themes are too juvenile for seinen. Plus, it's just not sexy at all. The book isn't scary, it isn't dramatic, it isn't funny. It also can't seem to decide whether it wants to be realistic or fantastic or what to do with its stage referemces. The art is tolerable, I suppose. Overall, a waste.

The narrative makes pretentious allusions to the "Grand Guignol" style, but the story lacks Grand Guignol's sense of melodrama, or any drama really. Like its robotic hero, it just lurches forward.

Not recommended.

If you like grim, realistic survival horror stuff, give the Dragon Head Volume 1 series a shot, it's excellent. Or - if you want fantasy horror with the supernatural and a taut complicated plot, try Death Note Box Set (Vol. 1-13) again excellent. Gantz: The Complete Series is a great horror/seinen anime too with bizarre realistic and science fictional elements.