ぼくらの☆ひかりクラブ 上

ぼくらの☆ひかりクラブ #1

by Usamaru Furuya, 古屋兎丸

傑作『ライチ光クラブ』前日譚！ 少年たちの秘められた過去が、いま明かされる――。☆工場の煙に覆われた螢光町の片隅にある、「光クラブ」と名づけられた少年たちの秘密基地。無邪気な遊び場が、残虐な物語の舞台へと変貌したのは何故なのか――。☆特別ふろく『ライチ☆４コマ劇場』付き！

Genres: Manga, Horror, Seinen

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2013

About the author

Usamaru Furuya (古屋兎丸) is a Japanese manga creator from Tokyo. His production covers a variety of art styles and genres, such as horror, humour, slice-of-life, erotica, sci-fi, always with a personal surrealistic touch. Society oppression and the human condition are common themes in his body of work.
Furuya showed an interest in comics making since elementary school. He graduated from Tama Art University, where he had studied sculpture and oil painting.
His manga career started in the alternative magazine 'Garo', in which he published a series of one-page comics called Palepoli (1994-1995). He then worked on Short Cuts (1996-1999), a gag manga serialised in the mainstream magazine 'Weekly Young Sunday'. Other short stories from the same period were collected in the books Garden (2000) and Plastic Girl (2000).
Over the years Furuya has created work for a number of manga magazines, underground and mainstream. Among his series available in one or more Western languages are: the dystopian The Music of Marie (2000-2001); the surreal horror Lychee Light Club (2005-2006), loosely based on a play by Norimizu Ameya; the post-apocalyptic 51 Ways to Save Her (2006-2007); Genkaku Picasso (2008-2010); No Longer Human (2009-2011), adaptation of a novel by Osamu Dazai; Amane Gymnasium (2017-2020).

Reviews

[George Filippakis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This two-volume manga is a prequel to the excellent Litchi Hikari Club (2005). The first volume follows the 9 boys' lives before the nightmare begins. The second volume offers insight for the events that take place in the first one third of the original.

If someone wants a pithy edict, it is this: Not only this manga offers nothing, but it can conceivably inflict harm upon the original, therefore it should remain in obscurity. For the doubters' sake I will elaborate.

Litchi Hikari Club demands its reader to suspend disbelief, it demands amounts of disbelief I usually abstain from mustering. But, in order to convince us, it provides a hellish atmosphere, filled with Grand Guignol delights, and quickly succeeds to drag us inside its maliciousness. Instead, Bokura no Hikari Club -while not shying from showing gore, or boy flesh- tries to shed light in the boys' characters, motives, and actions. A noble purpose most of the time, but this is a most dark of stories; it does not need the light, its rays will only manage to dispel the bleak illusion and call attention to the improbabilities of the story. I have to say the second volume of the manga is at greater fault than the first, since it runs in parallel with the main story.

Based on the above, under no circumstances you should read this manga first. It will spoil the original's greatness. If you like dark, graphic stories, then please read the original. And that's about it. I don't see any reason to continue with this one. OK, maybe if you absolutely loved the original and you want some more time with the boys, you can read this one, but still, in my opinion, you are better off re-reading the original. To be fair, before I end this review I also have to say that the art work is very good and it has a couple of powerful scenes. 3.5/10.

[Daniel Valderrama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precuela del manga Hikari Litchi Club. Con este volumen se entienden a más profundidad varias de las ocurrencias de la secuela. Como, poco a poco, se va formando un imperio bajo la tutela de un narcisista e idolatrado personaje.