ライチ☆光クラブ

LITCHI☆HIKARI CLUB

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
May 3, 2006
CHAPTERS
9

DESCRIPTION

For the sooty industrial town's lads there's only one point of light: the Light Club, a secret brotherhood they've organized in an abandoned factory. They're on the verge of booting up their crowning achievement, a "thinking machine" fueled by lychee fruits. At the same time, the middle schoolers' cooties-fearing solidarity is devolving into a downright National Socialist muck of murderous paranoia, perverse aestheticism, and (not always) suppressed homosexuality.

(Source: Kodansha USA)

CAST

Norimizu Ameya
Hiroyuki Tsunekawa
Raizou Ichihashi
Hiroshi Tamiya
Kanon
Litchi
Naritoshi Ishikawa
Riku Kaneda
Katsuya Tabuse
Takuzou Suda
Kobuhei Yamada

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO LITCHI☆HIKARI CLUB

TV SHORT ComedyLychee DE Hikari Club

MANGA DramaBokura no☆Hikari Club

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
50/100
Just boys being boys... and disemboweling teachers.
Usamaru Furuya is probably one of my favorite mangakas.

LYCHEE LIGHT CLUB IS NOT FOR THE LIGHT HEARTED. IF YOU ARE NOT LOOKING FOR SOMETHING FULL OF HORRIFIC VIOLENCE AND DISGUSTING SHIT AND... well... on top of everything else, this is also technically a yaoi so... though, probably a fucking very strange one.

Yeah. Let's just hop into this one...

Introduction

I've reviewed a Usamaru Furuya manga before (the one about the Children's Crusade), but Lychee Light Club was the first of his manga I ever read and is probably the one he's most commonly known for. And probably for good reason, if you take a look at this fucking thing's description:

For the sooty industrial town's lads there's only one point of light: the Light Club, a secret brotherhood they've organized in an abandoned factory. They're on the verge of booting up their crowning achievement, a "thinking machine" fueled by lychee fruits. At the same time, the middle schoolers' cooties-fearing solidarity is devolving into a downright National Socialist muck of murderous paranoia, perverse aestheticism, and (not always) suppressed homosexuality.

I had to read it after that. Okay so it's like... a club of youths that have formed a national socialist club and are constructing a robot that runs on fruit... and... what is the purpose of that robot you may ask?

Well. To kidnap girls, of course.

Probably One of the More Fucked Up Manga I've Ever Read

Oh yeah, a super important note before we get too much farther into it, but if you decide to read this, definitely read the prequel manga Furuya did following this one after you're done with the original. It genuinely not only answers a lot of questions but also improved my opinion of the original.

For this review, I'm going to restrain myself a bit more from posting any spoilers but... like from the very first chapter it is just complete and utter insanity. The Light Club has already been established at this point and the way we're introduced to the members of the club is that the leader asks what they should do with a guy who has seen their hideout.

And several of their answers are... disturbing, to say the least. It immediately clues you in onto the sort of manga that you've begun reading.

Then later, the first chapter of course ends with them literally collectively ripping the clothes off of their female world history teacher who also happened to see their little hideout and then you know, one of them just disembowels her with a knife.

These are middle schoolers. These are middle schoolers. These are middle schoolers.

...I mean this is just the first chapter. And at the time of these events, they haven't even finished the girl kidnapping robot that one of the members of the club voluntarily donated one of his eyes for.

"Yeah fuck it. Supreme leader Zera, you can totally take out one of my eyes and hook it to this robot we have absolutely no fucking idea if it'll even work or not."

...Honestly, I just fully reread the original after beginning this review and there's actually a hell of a lot I ended up forgetting. I already kind of thought of it as this, but now I just want to underline it. This is definitely one of the most graphic and fucked up manga I've ever read. Like I honestly kind of can't believe I forgot any of this. Chapter one actually is like just a fucking appetizer.

"Disembowelment??? An appetizer!"
~TGG 2018

One of the biggest reasons probably why I've held off so long reviewing this is... I have no fucking clue who in this world I would actually recommend this to. Like jesus christ. Even if you're like me and you actively search for fucking horribly disgusting and gory things to read/watch, this is pretty... yeah.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I would probably call this manga deeply fascinating. Especially when you add the prequel into the mix because that was just straight up Usamaru Furuya returning to this manga and... refining it, I suppose.

Like there's the fucking sick gore which gets so extreme that it could maybe be enough on its own, you have the yaoi angle which is a whole thing, but then you have the Lychee Light Club itself which is this one kid who essentially views himself to be superior to all that is absolutely paranoid that someone is going to betray him, and then all of his underlings who were just fellow teenagers who he lead or pushed into basically becoming psychopaths.

Then pushed on top of all of that, you have the robot who has this like Frankenstein's monster thing going on where it wants to be human but it keeps getting commanded to do these horrible fucking things...

...Again, it's a deeply fascinating series.

It's sick, it's gross, it's violent, it's weird, it's... it's 100% Usamaru Furuya actually. I ended up basically deciding I would read every single thing of his that he's made and every single one of them I've read so far after Lychee has been... if not a gory and soul crushing nightmare like the Children's Crusade manga , then just completely weird as shit.

Because of some of the content which pushes the envelope maybe a bit too far even for me, I give the original Lychee Light Club manga a 50 out of 100. For the record, I give the prequel a 60 out of 100, but they genuinely should be read together with the prequel after the original.

Despite the lowish score, I definitely don't regret reading Lychee Light Club and would recommend others to read it if... if you can stomach it, that is. This is definitely a "feel bad" manga.

And by "feel bad", I of course mean feel fucking DISGUSTED.

Also it genuinely does work really well as "okay here's a group, now let's watch as paranoia and betrayal just fucking tears it the FUCK apart" thing. But the over the top violence and sexual stuff is... way more fucking pronounced to say the VERY LEAST.

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