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).
The main character of the manga is Lychee, a robot created by the titular Lychee Light Club, whose members have programmed Lychee to bring them attractive ladies.
The club's tactics progressively get more cruel and bizarre, which leads to an internal conflict over time.
I pretty much guessed the plot after reading the synopsis, and my guess was correct. The story's concept was straightforward, and it accomplished its goal. I occasionally found certain phrases and moments to be really funny. Given my preference for certain genres, I'm used to seeing graphic content, and Litchi Hikari Club did not disappoint.
When the victims are attacked, blood is drawn like tiger stripes across everything. Sometimes the sensation is simply like thick paint rather than blood. It might just flow that way. I wasn't swayed by the backgrounds, but they weren't terrible either. The character sketch was strong.
There is only one volume of the manga, so you can't expect too much in terms of character development. It was depressing to observe how the Hikari Club evolved, what became of it, and how all the characters were impacted. The differences between the characters in a brief manga were minimal because there were so many of them. Until the manga's climax, they all essentially said the same things.
Lychee Light Club is a scary horror manga with some graphic violence and unsettling themes. Overall, reading it is simple. Arriving at the conclusion and what had transpired was fulfilling.
There is also a movie version, but it lacks the impact of the manga and is much more subdued.
The Lychee Light Club is a sadistic cult of deranged middle school boys obsessed with beauty and discovering eternal youth through the destruction of adults, ugly people and the creation of advanced ai who understand the concept of being beautiful without ever succumbing to the ailments of age or corruption. Lychee is a humanoid ai created by Zera, the new self-appointed leader of the cult who wants to program him into disposing of the ugly and the weak while protecting the most lovely specimens of humanity to usher in a new age where beauty reigns supreme. Zera steers the once innocent group of boys into a much darker direction, driven purely out of obsession, insecurity, paranoia and a violent urge to control others lives after enduring countless suffering throughout his own childhood. His dangerous fascination with beauty becomes contagious and brings out the ugliness in all of them.
An interesting mashup of ideas, drawing from a wide array of tragic classics such as Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies, Beauty and the Beast and Clockwork Orange. Zera is a horrifying villain. He's a brilliant genius and a charismatic leader, but his superficial obsession with beauty makes him dangerously insecure, manic and unpredictable. He turns on his friends and executes them for the most minor acts of disobedience. He's delusional, power-hungry and impulsive. He attempts to create a machine that can achieve everything a mortal man can not, yet this is undone by one of the girls he kidnaps who teaches the machine that beauty comes from the inside.
It's a psychological mind game about materialism, paranoia, repressed sexuality and the dangers of a toxic ego. The story was a bit hard to follow at times and some of the themes weren't explored as deep as they could've been since the manga is only a single volume and had very limited room for in-depth storytelling, but it was certainly one of the most unique horror manga I've read in a long time. I wish it could've been longer as it had many interesting themes and characters to work with.
If Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, and 1984 all gathered in an orgy together. This would be its bastard child born from the aftermath. Lychee Light Club is a ultra-violent erotic horror manga. Perhaps one of the best emotional and thought provoking mangas I've had the pleasure to read. Each character is given their own characteristics that make you love and hate them. With two separate romantic stories unfolding, that falls together for the perfectly gory ending. This manga isn't for everybody, it contains gore, rape, homosexual intercourse, that will shock people unaware of the books content. However, if you're a fan of thought provoking stories you will be surprised this isn't just a shock book; It's a tragedy and all good things come from tragedy's.
Un grupo/secta de estudiantes hacen lo que sea para satisfacer las siniestras, sanguinarias y perturbadoras ideas de su líder, saliéndose todo de control.
Un manga que si bien es explícito y violento, no apto para todos, hay una realidad que Furuya muestra detrás de todo lo que nos expone, y como es de esperarse de este mangaka, impacta en muchos aspectos y niveles.
Una historia con referencia a un gran título de la literatura de terror y ciencia ficción, que nos transita por un escenario altamente psicológico.
Eine Gruppe pubertärer Bengel schließen sich zu einem "Club" zusammen, der diktatorisch geführt wird. Einsprengsel deutscher Wörter erfolgen nicht von ungefähr, sie sollen sicherlich als Anklänge an den deutschen Faschismus unter den Nationalsozialisten verstanden werden. Die verwirrten Bürschchen, die erstaunlich androgyn wirken, schaffen sich einen Frankenstein=Roboter mit dem einen Ziel, ein junges hübsches Mädchen zu entführen, um es in der okkupierten Fabrikhalle gefangen zu halten. Vorher wird noch schnell eine Lehrerin, die sich in der Halle blicken lässt, sexuell gequält und dann aufgeschlitzt. Zugegebenermaßen sind nicht alle Clubmitglieder begeistert von der Idee ihres Führers, immer mehr Mädchen zu entführen und gefangen zu halten, zumal eines der Opfer die Schwester eines Clubmitglieds ist. Aber an dieser Stelle angekommen, ungefähr zur Mitte des Buches, konnte ich nicht mehr weiterlesen. Zeichnerisch erfolgt keine Distanzierung von den perversen Machenschaften der Bengel, die Opfer werden entkleidet und gedemütigt dem Leser vor Augen geführt. Das gefangene Mädchen Nr. 1 ist im besten Manga=Stil bildhübsch und wird bei vielen Lesern mehr oder weniger unterschwellig den Wunsch wachrufen, nun möge auch sie endlich entkleidet werden. Als dem vielleicht 10-jährigen Mädchen, das die Schwester eines Bandenmitglieds ist, ein Eisenrohr in die Vagina geschoben wurde, war die Lektüre für mich beendet. Ganz egal, wie sich die Handlung entwickelt, für mich ist das menschenverachtender, frauenhassender Dreck, der ganz bewusst die Geilheit perverser Leser anstachelt. Besonders widerlich!
After finishing the first chapter, I wasn't expecting much. It seemed to be excessively weird for the sake of being excessively weird, attempting to both repel and pull in mortified readers with cheap, over-the-top shock value. I wasn't particularly shocked by its imagery, but I did pause a few times to go "Uh-huh."
Then I kept reading, and I started to realize that this would be much better than the opening chapter suggested. And I was right. This got better with every passing chapter. By the end of this extremely gory and surreal affair, it's transcended its surface-level schlock to the level of 'damn-near masterpiece.'
Basically, Lychee Light Club is about an underground cult consisting of students from an all-boys school. The group has three leaders/founders, but everyone seems to be controlled by the spectacles-wearing psychopath nicknamed 'Zera.' They all obey his every order with undying devotion as they strive to achieve his goal of creating a god-like robot, whom Zera names Lychee, after the flower (oh, and the flower provides Lychee with fuel, and is the only fuel source it can digest). On more than one occasion, these guys reminded me of the Nazis. Their personalities begin to flesh out a bit more as the story goes along, but none of them really step into redeemable territory--which is fine by me, since that's clearly not what Furuya was going for.
So anyway, Zera orders Lychee to kidnap a beautiful girl, and after a few tries, Lychee brings a beautiful girl named Kanon to their lair. Everyone is forbidden from touching her. Lychee is tasked with guarding her. But after Lychee gets an upgrade, giving him the capacity to 'feel,' Lychee and Kanon spark up one of those lovely 'beauty and the beast' friendships that slowly turns into something more.
I won't go into further detail about the plot, but I will say that despite the extremely deranged violence (the artwork details seem to be at their most thorough when someone's organs are literally splattering across the pages) and general sadism of its disturbed characters, Lychee Light Club has a surprising amount of heart in its concept and execution (pun intended). There isn't much logic applied here (I seriously doubt anyone could commit so many acts of murder and other crimes in such an apparently small district and not stir up rumours, at least). Given its mythological tone, I'm not too surprised by that.
The story isn't anything new, but like many good stories, it takes its formula and thematic material, and mixes them into a new broth. A really fucked-up broth with lots of guts and poetic themes.
Not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for everyone, but it is what it is, and it's surprisingly good at being just that.
I accidently ran into manga artist/writer Usamaru Furuya's work via looking at the cover of his version of Osamu Dazai's great novel "No Longer Human." Mind you I haven't read it yet, but Dan at Skylight Books in Las Feliz put this little dynamite in my hands. "Lychee light Club" is a group of damaged kids who have a powerful unhinged chess loving' leader, who at the same age controls this goth gang. They kill, destroy, and build their own version of a Frankenstein, who has one human eye that belongs to a member of the gang.
The violence is very extreme and over-the-top, which .....makes this work better then others. The art here very much reminds me of another manga artist i.e. genius by the name of Suehiro Maruo, who is a major influence on Furuya. The manga is based on an actual theater piece of the same title and helped put together by Maruo - so this is very much a literal tribute to the original stage production as well as to the works of Maruo.
The narration is pretty good, but for me, its the visual aspect of the piece that grabs my attention. Its one long beauty of a penmanship by Furuya. Like everything else there is so much dregs in the field of manga, its nice to be exposed to someone who is really using the medium of comics to not only break into new ground, but also just pushing to the horror and violence that this medium is or can be great at.
I generally haven't been huge on Furuya, but this is a very notable exception - an extra-scuzzy, super weird ero-guro manga that feels truly transgressive and assured, in the vein of Maruo's Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show. High recommendation.
I first read this when I was 14 to impress someone I had a crush on. I cared a lot about them and they didn’t care about me. I read this online first but then made my mom buy me a physical copy that I found at Kinokuniya in LA. The physical copy has endured for 12 years, surviving a dozen moves. Because of all the moves the copy has survived, it looks a little used, but I have never read the physical copy until today.
This book is so sick and disturbing. I should not have been reading this when I was 14.
Lychee Light Club the best way of describing Lychee Light Club is as the manga equivalent to Clockwork Orange. This is extremely dark and follows children as they grow up in junior high, and are lead by a fanatical dictator and genius seeks to rule the world through the designing of a super human robot. As you can probably guess if you have read Clockwork Orange or Furuya's adaption of No Longer Human (or even Genaku Picasso) this a dark masterpiece that questions common attitude of the innocence of children, preferring to see the young characters as morally irresponsible, petty and cruel. This all leads to crescendo in a fittingly powerful and shocking conclusion. This is perhaps Furuya most powerful work thematically and artistically, and his artist background is clearly apparent when observing the intricate artwork. This manga's level of detail, suspense, violence and shocking imagery is never held back or nor remorseful. While this work clearly is only for a select few, this is in my opinion Furuya's best translated work.
I thought it was 'edgy' and violent simply to be 'edgy' and violent.
I picked it up because people said there was a lot of influence from Lord of the Fliesand Animal Farm and A Clockwork Orange... but it doesn't really expand on anything that made those novels truly great. It's just a rehash with pictures. I'd say if you're not overly familiar with the above novels, maybe give it a try. But otherwise, it's just 'meh'
I've been intending to read this book for several months, and the opportunity of our recent horror manga episode of the podcast was just right. When I first completed the story, I appreciated it, although I wasn't overly impressed. However, this is one of those narratives that feels better the more you think about it. Thinking through the text, and talking it over with my friend/cohost, Shea, I've begun to find more about this book worth exploring. This is a much richer text than appears at first glance.
It's not the typical manga I would read, but I really enjoyed reading Lychee Light Club! I wish it were longer, and only a couple of characters were more developed than the others. I recommend checking out the prequel as well.
El hikari club está conformado por varios chicos obsesionados con la juventud y la belleza que construyen un robot para conseguirles chicas lindas, este robot tiene un código específico: "ser humano". La verdad lo leí más que nada por la estética V-kei—ish pero me sorprendió muchísimo.
Hay muchísimas referencias bíblicas y juega con el concepto de la humanidad y la estética (además tiene un villano queer). Los personajes son bastante clichés y bidimensionales, hay alguno que otro con desarrollo de personaje y los demás quedan siendo más arquetipos pero se justifica ya que es un solo tomo y bastantes personajes.
Hay un panel particular que me incomodó demasiado pero además de eso se me hizo un manga perfecto. Quedé mega confundido, creo que será mi obsesión este julio/agosto.
Deze manga is 300 pagina's van het meest walgelijke geweld zonder dat daar ook maar enige reden voor is, met 13-jarigen als de uitvoerders en slachtoffers. Ik heb met lichte misselijkheid de laatste pagina omgeslagen. De tekeningen zijn mooi maar ik mis een duidelijke verhaallijn. Ik denk dat ik het leuker had gevonden als het verhaal zich langzamer had ontwikkeld, nu voelde het meer alsof het verhaal steeds van scène naar scène sprong in plaats van dat er een narratief werd verteld. Je komt ook niet echt iets te weten over de beweegredenen en gevoelens van de personages, wat bijdraagt tot het ongemakkelijke gevoel waar je mee wordt achtergelaten.
I finally read it! I was a fan of the play back in 2016 and have seen the movie too. Both the play and the movie follow the story very very faithfully. It was nice finally getting another book in Japanese read.
There was an extra scene in this which I have never seen in either version and for good reason because it was absolutely fucking horrifying and related to a child (an actual child, not a middle schooler like the rest of the cast).
Definitely trigger warning in here for child mutilation, murder, sexual assault, and graphic depictions of violence.
uhm very fucked up! id love to analyze every character and the reasoning behind their actions but with it being a one shot its a bit difficult. however, the plot is pretty straightforward and the twists arent hard to guess – still v good tho! definitely very disturbing, not a book for everyone so mind the content warnings!!
+ i've seen the movie as well, its a good adaptation! honestly i might've enjoyed that a bittt more than the manga.
Horrifically gory and dark. I spent the bulk of the time going 'wtf am I reading' but the ending was satisfactory. Not something I'd ever recommend to someone.
A manga adaptation of a Tokyo Grand Guignol stage play, Litchi Hikari Club tells the story of a group of school boys - all sharply dressed in gakuran uniforms - creating a machine capable of thought so that they may use it to examine the meaning of beauty.
But may ye be warned: there is little innocence to be found in this story. Kidnappings, themes of dictatorship, hierarchy, sexuality, and gallons of gore advance the story. You wish to read this comic, you certainly need to be comfortable with stomaching all that gut-churning, exaggerated violence that the story has in abundance. If you indeed can, you are in for a superbly executed treat with a theatrically extravagant flair. If you think you can just skip the upsetting, uncomfortable parts, I would advice against reading this, for those parts are absolutely essential to the overall build-up to have its desired effect.
What was most interesting to me personally, was the whole idea of a group existing both within a society's bounds, yet hidden from its eyes. The zeal, the fanaticism the boys whip themselves up with in these conditions, away from the rules and norms of the rest of society. There's only the club and the hierarchy created within it. What all is a person capable of in such conditions? It's an interesting theme to explore, and I thought LHC does it quite beautifully. Though it does not, in itself, delve very deep into the matter, it offers the reader an opportunity to examine it for themselves.
A wondrously atmospheric manga for those who find pleasure in both dark subject matters and visual presentations. This is truly a fantastic read.
okay so first of all, i hate ero-guro. i just find it tasteless and usually pretty homophobic/sexist. but man, i LOVE litchi hikari club. first of all, the ero-guro scenes are ... definitely there, but not so nasty that i can't get through them. it's nowhere near the level of shojo tsubaki or other famous ero-guro works. second of all, litchi hikari club has a thematic complexity that only becomes more rich with each reread. a lot of people interpret it as a sort of fascist lord of the flies, and there's definitely themes relating to that, but i think the groundbreaking part of litchi hikari club is its portrayal of puberty itself as body horror. the characters pursue a beauty that they believe to be inherently linked to youth and vehemently oppose the "ugliness" they associate with adulthood. they fake confidence that adulthood will never come, but they know, and the reader knows, that the change is inevitable. all the boys' angst and lust and jealousy manifest as this fabulous body horror splatterfest that's at once painful and cathartic to read.
now is litchi hikari club perfect? hell no. the story is fast-paced and leaves a lot of character development trailing in the dust, there's a last supper parallel so obvious that any reader remotely familiar with the bible immediately knows who the mYsTeriOUs traitor is, and there's graphic sex scenes with underage boys, which to me is deeply morally reprehensible and definitely my least favorite part of the story. but i find its grotesque of puberty and teen angst incredibly compelling.