Sex, Robots, and Fear of Adulthood: Exploring Lychee Light Club

"Do you understand why the Hikari Club boys wear gakuran and insert German into everyday conversations? Do you understand why it isn't simply fashion, or cosplay? Do you know what it means to put on a play in the 80s, with a group of people that go out of their way to wear gakuran?" - Tsunekawa Hiroyuki, December 17, 2015.

I first heard the title Lychee Light Club thrown around about a decade ago, usually in the same breath as No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. While Dazai has gotten mainstream acclaim for his work, Furuya's manga adaptation of Lychee Light Club still remains so underground that I had to special order it online from a Canadian publisher who printed too close to the bottom margin of the page. Naturally, as I do with all obscure works of media, I've latched on to the Light Club in all its forms and done some online digging... and I've found so much to talk about! Strap in and turn your screen brightness down to avoid eye strain, because there are a LOT of words coming at you.

What Is Lychee Light Club?

In its most popular form, Lychee Light Club is a manga by Usamaru Furuya, about a group of middle school boys led by the charismatic, iron-fisted (and, in the original work, iron-codpieced) Zera. Zera and his friends/lovers/disciples meet in an abandoned warehouse after school to play chess, scheme, have illicit underage gay sex, and build a robot powered by lychee fruits that will help them kidnap girls their age and build an ideal world free from the drudgery of adult life. The manga is beautifully drawn and written, with a lot of turns of phrase that stuck with me despite their limited character count. However, the manga had an oft-forgotten predecessor: a production unlike any other.

The original Lychee Light Club was a stage play, put on in 1985 by the short-lived theater troupe Tokyo Grand Guignol. There is no video recording of the show, and there is one audio recording, which is in the possession of Tsunekawa Hiroyuki, the actor that played Zera. Denpa Archives translated a blog post from a defunct Japanese blog with a summary of the play, which is essentially the only account of it that still exists. Notably, the production described has a few key differences: in the original play, the boys did not engage in homoerotic trysts as a way to stave off adulthood, but rejected any sexuality at all and instead wore iron chastity belts. Jaibo, who you could argue is the antagonist in both works, is motivated not by love but by pure hatred, a cold detachment opposite his passionate declaration of love for Zera in the manga.

What Was Tokyo Grand Guignol?

To talk about Tokyo Grand Guignol, we need to give a brief run-down on the original Grand Guignol. The Theatre du Grand-Guignol was a French production company that operated out of a converted chapel, and sat 293 people at maximum capacity. The intimate setting and Gothic architecture gave way to a new form of theater, featuring gory and shocking stories interspersed with slapstick comedies, and audiences so close to the stage that they might be hit with the errant drop of fake blood. The Grand Guignol ran shows until shortly after World War 2, and the location is now home to the International Visual Theater.

Some of the cast of the TGG show, courtesy of Denpa Archives

Tokyo Grand Guignol, then, is an homage to the violent, bloody and irreverent Grand Guignol of Paris, carrying on the tradition of Naturalist theater by dissolving the divides between actor and audience. Despite the mark left by this troupe on Tokyo's art scene, only four documented plays were ever put on in Tokyo Grand Guignol's history, of which Litchi Hikari Club was the third. The troupe was founded by experimental artist Norimizu Ameya (who would go on to play Jaibo in Litchi Hikari Club) in collaboration with horror manga author Suehiro Maruo (who famously authored and illustrated the pioneering ero-guro manga Shojo Tsubaki, aka The Girl from the Freakshow), who both prioritized a sort of punk-adjacent DIY ethos with a focus on audience interaction and immersion. Suehiro's manga Shojo Tsubaki was adapted for the screen by Hiroshi Harada, who staged guerilla screenings of the movie with a distinctly TGG feeling; mazes leading to rooms with actual circus sideshow performances, secretive ticket distribution, and fully immersive sound effects and settings, creating a truly unique experience that cannot be replicated via DVD distribution. TGG shows were allegedly much the same, with stripped-down sets, gaudy makeup, and lines being shouted over a booming soundtrack of Devo, Public Image Ltd, and the noises of torture and industrial machinery.

What Is The Meaning of Lychee Light Club?

The story I've outlined so far is surrealist, uncomfortable, and distinctly odd - and believe me, it is all of that and more. But at its core, Lychee Light Club is a story about the enduring nature of fascism, the radicalization of young men in our modern age, the growing gender divide between young men and women, and the microcosm of cruelty and paranoia that groups of teenagers can breed. There are a few key points I'd like to outline that I think give way to a deeper understanding of both iterations of the work:

1. Ero-guro in Japan

"Ero guro nansensu" (erotic gore nonsense) was popularized in Japan's Showa era, which was approximately around The Great Depression in America. This term referred to stories by authors like Edogawa Ranpo (a Romanized pen name meant to sound like Edgar Allan Poe) and art by Ukiyo-e painters that drew erotic scenes of crucifixions and beheadings. This genre was akin to the British penny dreadful, and was highly censored and suppressed during WW2, but emerged as simply "eroguro" and was popularized again after the war. The genre now takes on highly erotic or pornographic elements, and an air of decadence and excess, contrasting beauty and sexuality with disgust and decay, rotting flesh, bodily fluids and dismemberment. A few bands under the visual kei genre umbrella, such as gulugulu and THE GALLO, have taken on the term "eroguro" to describe their lyrics and aesthetics.

In Lychee Light Club, the erotic elements are inherently grotesque, horrific, and uncomfortable, much like the use of body horror from directors like David Cronenberg. 13 and 14-year old boys committing sexual assault with metal pipes, stripping and murdering a teacher, and engaging in manipulation via sex is not meant to be sexually arousing to the reader, but to link sex to violence. This is further driven home by the boy's fear of adulthood and use of chastity belts in the play; sex is a gateway to adulthood, and is therefore something shameful and evil, a tool to inflict violence as (in their minds) adults have inflicted violence upon them, their town, and their futures.

2. The gakuran uniform

I mean, even a surface level glance at the gakuran could tell you a lot about why this was chosen for the members of our Light Club. To be perfectly frank... it looks like a Nazi SS uniform, and that's because they share the same source material: Prussian military uniforms.


The gakuran in its earliest form, circa 1870, consists of a flat military cap, a standing-collar shirt and jacket, and matching pants. It was designed during a time when Japan was becoming increasingly militarized, and was meant to encourage strong militaristic values in the young men of the era. But, as Japan became Westernized, the gakuran in its fullest form (namely, with the hat) fell out of fashion, often being replaced with a blazer and tie for high schoolers.

So then, as Tsunekawa asked in his quote at the beginning of this post: do you understand why the boys of the Light Club wear gakuran?

The gakuran with the cap was worn by the performers of Lychee Light Club in the 1980's, a time when this iteration of the uniform would have been seen as an outdated relic of a more militaristic time. The cap and white gloves worn by Zera, who in the manga is told that he has "a black star over him that not even Adolf Hitler had," paints a clear parallel to an unstable dictator. Furthermore, boys about to go into high school, yet clinging to their gakuran in its most old-fashioned form, signifies the boys' refusal to enter the world of adulthood and the decrepit, outdated nature of the manufacturing town they live in. When combined with the garish makeup worn on stage, the effect is one of a ghoulish arrested development, a lost child and an undead fascist all at once.

3. The robot and Kanon

The character Kanon, the young girl kidnapped by the robot Litchi, went by the name Marin in the stage play. I'll be referring to her as "Kanon" when talking about both iterations for the sake of clarity, but I wanted to call out her original name here!


First off, we'll talk about the nominal Lychee/Litchi, the robot built out of scraps and human body parts that serves as the great purpose of the Hikari Club boys. Litchi is controlled via a calculator, and is given consciousness via the command "I am human." Zera states that there is fundamentally no difference between a robot and a human, because all human beings are is logical collections of moves, like a chess set.

I know, what a pretentious little dickhead.

Litchi, the robot, defies this, proving himself to be more human than the actual people who built him. With Kanon, the kidnapped girl, he learns to love, remember, and eventually defy the cruelty of his makers.

Kanon is the character that brings down the house of cards built by Zera, and is the Madonna to the whore of... basically every other woman in the play and manga. Kanon, originally just a representation of the ideal girl, sits upon a rusted-out throne for most of the story. She pretends to sleep all day, but interacts with the robot Litchi at night, singing with him and telling him stories. Kanon and Litchi fall in some semblance of love, and her love undoes his programming and makes him a human being. We don't get much background on Kanon, but she seems cooly detached for the entirety of her stay in the Light Club hideout, with Litchi being the only person or thing to arouse emotion in her. She, in turn, is the only female character to arouse anything other than hatred in the boys; they sexually assaulted one of the group's younger sisters with a metal pole in the manga, and abuse and murder their teacher in both versions. Where other girls and women are treated with disgust, the boys treat Kanon with a mixture of arousal, awe, and disbelief, making Litchi a target for their ire and hatred when Kanon falls for him.

The manga, though, gives Litchi and Kanon a happier ending than the stage play. In the manga, Kanon and Litchi get to speak one last time, and Kanon escapes as the warehouse becomes a watery grave for the members of the Light Club.

The play, however, allegedly ended as follows:

When the lights return, Litchi sits in the center of the stage, lifeless. Marin (Kanon) is lying in his lap with a strange hat on her head. Zera stands behind them, seeming to live on forever.

Zera: "I will stand here and watch. I will stand here and watch as our machine named Litchi slowly rusts away. I will watch this so-called Marin rot away until she is nothing but bones. Gentlemen... Bohren! Beginen!"

Zera takes out his whistles and tweets. The sheets strung up behind him fall. A number of stepladders are revealed, with the Hikari Club members sitting on them and shining lights on each other's bloody faces. The stage slowly goes dark amidst the strong sound of caning.

4. The lychee fruits

Zera is obsessed with a few things: Emperor Elagabalus of Rome, chess, and Yang Guifei, a princess and imperial concubine who favored lychee fruit. Yang Guifei is one of two women mentioned favorably throughout the story, three if you count the queen chess piece. The robot Litchi, despite being referred to as male, is also referred to as the Queen piece of the Light Club (with Zera being the Black King), and runs solely on lychee fruit. The monster as a cultural body being a reflection of taboo cultural desires, showcases the boys' hopes and dreams; their desire for women and hatred of them in tandem, their sexual desire and hatred for each other, and their search for meaning. The lychee fruit represents femininity, but also eternity; it represents that the thing that destroys them is simultaneously the thing that saved them, that granted their wish for a life free from adulthood.

The lychee, grown in a local dump in the manga, also represents the loss of their shared dream, and the loss of hope in their bleak industrial town. Niko and Tamiya, manipulated by Jaibo, are framed for burning down the lychee field that Zera carefully cultivated. This is a turning point in the story, where Zera feels his control begin to slip, and realizes his shoddily constructed ideal is slipping through his fingers. In this way, Jaibo cements his place as Zera's trusted advisor, alienating him further within their already alienated circle, and sets the stage for the final stand of the Light Club.

5. The use of German

The Hikari Club speaks in broken German phrases, both in the play and the manga. This is intentionally alienating for the reader and viewer of the play, so much so that the translator of my copy of the manga did not translate these phrases to retain their effect. Aside from the obvious reference to Nazism, speaking German serves to both alienate the boys from their other classmates, and create a shared language within their group. The speaking of German designates an "in" crowd and an "out" crowd, creating a shared dialect within their microcosm that further serves to isolate them.

Whose Light Club Is It, Anyway?

The following is a statement made by Tsunekawa Hiroyuki on December 17, 2015.

"Usamaru-kun reached out to me. Apparently, Ameya Norimizu strongly pushed for Hikari Club to be published as an original work, rather than a derivitive one. That sounds like something he'd do. Neither the publisher nor Usamaru-kun had the intention of marketing Hikari Club as an original work."

Both in the story and in real life, there's a lot of contention surrounding the intellectual property of Lychee Light Club. Though Furuya allegedly tried to market Lychee Light Club as a derivative work, giving credit to TGG, Ameya, leader of the troupe and the actor that played Jaibo (ironically, the betrayer of the Light Club) pushed for it to be sold as an original work. The real-life Zera, as you can see, was not happy about this, nor about their work being introduced to the mainstream via a poorly received movie and anime adaptation. "The movie, Lychee ☆ Hikari Club is an adaptation of Furuya Usamaru's Our Hikari Club, right? That I understand. Bokura(Our Hikari Club) is Usamaru's world. Litchi Hikari Club doesn't ring a bell anymore. The original cast and our history of theater has been removed from the Hikari Club name. First it was Death Note, then it was Litchi. More and more underground works are being diluted and adapted into silly movies that are popular for a while, then forgotten when the audience gets bored. I hate that kind of mass media."

In the manga, there are similar contentions surrounding who the "leader" of the Light Club really is. The Club worships Zera like a dictator, taking his word as law and often chanting his name like a psalm. At least two of the boys are in love with Zera, and he clearly relishes in the power. However, as we read, we learn the Light Club originally belonged to Tamiya, Kaneda, and Dafu, and was simply a place for these friends to spend time together. Zera was brought in early on, and with the help of Niko and Jaibo (who kind of just came out of nowhere), he succeeded in overtaking the club through sheer force of charisma, making the others obey through peer pressure and torture.

The question remains: who was the real leader? Who owns art once it becomes mainstream? Is your art still yours, when the meaning becomes diluted? Can anything shared ever be owned?

I loved Lychee Light Club, loved it enough to type out a short essay on it using an iPhone keyboard (please excuse the formatting issues). Part of me hopes it gets more widespread popularity... but part of me really hopes it doesn't.

Sources

I'm not going to type an actual bibliography, because this is my blog and not an essay. However, I do want to call out and specially thank the websites I used as sources outside of my copy of the manga and Mel Gordon's Theater of Fear and Horror.

For information on the production Lychee Light Club, including photos and a soundtrack, visit: https://denpaarchive.neocities.org/litchi

For information on Tokyo Grand Guignol, including a script, visit: https://mutantfishproductions.com/misc.htm

For information on gakuran uniforms and their tie to Japanese militarism, visit: https://www.journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1041

Review: Shiki and the Horror of Small Towns

It ended, as all good stories and kept secrets do, with a fire.

  The 2010's anime Shiki proves that, no matter where you are in the world, small towns are (mostly) the same; despite being set in rural Japan, the village of Sotoba could be exchanged for any number of rural towns across America. There's a hospital, a local farming industry, gossiping old people, and not much else. 

Except for the vampires. Those are there, too. 

I just finished a rewatch of the series after trawling the internet for it (I originally watched it on Hulu, but it's been taken down from all streaming services), and I wanted to take another look at the morality and horror of Shiki. In a way, I would consider this series a better take on 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King; I think it does the "isolated village infested with vampires" thing in a more interesting way, by playing up the horror of humanity more so than the supernatural. I also think Shiki does a good job of not spoon feeding morality, and gives you reasons to sympathize with every character (human or otherwise).

Sotoba is a small farming village, and its main industry is growing the trees that become grave markers. When a new family moves in to the English-style manor above the town, villagers start dropping like flies from an epidemic nobody can identify (spoiler: it's vampires). But the most terrifying aspect of Shiki is not the fanged creatures that lurk in the darkness; the true horror comes from the maelstrom of tradition, insularity, superstition and guilt that haunts every small community.

In Shiki, the vampires very clearly represent a cultural Other to the citizens of Sotoba. The Kirishiki family wears flashy clothes, live in an ostentatious house, and ignore the traditions of the village. This introduces us to the fragile ideal of normality in Sotoba. Once their way of life is even slightly disrupted by something culturally abnormal, the villagers see a slippery slope and grab a sled. This story is very similar to my other favorite novel-turned-anime, Another by Yukito Ayatsuji. Both series operate on subverting the Japanese cultural ideal of the group being more powerful than the individual, showing how quickly following the will of the group can turn nasty, exclusionary, and even violent. 

Toshio, the village doctor, calls to mind a slightly more purposeful Light Yagami. Given the task of carrying on his family name and becoming a doctor, and constantly watched over by his domineering mother (even as a grown man), Toshio is under so much pressure that the discovery of the nominal shiki (literally "corpse demon") in Sotoba is all it takes to send him fully over the edge. Early in the series we see him in furious denial as his childhood friend, the junior monk/author Seishin who has befriended the vampire Sunako Kirishiki, warns him that death records are being tampered with. However, as soon as Toshio's estranged wife rises as a shiki, he wastes no time experimenting on (and eventually killing) her. Now fully convinced, Toshio fans the flames of hysteria in the village, killing Chizuru Kirishiki in front of the villagers to prove the existence of shiki and encouraging a mass slaughter that (surprise) gets completely out of hand. 

In my mind, if there really is a villain in this series, it's Toshio. A key aspect of the story is choice and intent; Seishin feels trapped in his role as a monk, Toshio feels trapped in his role as a doctor, the shiki are forced to drink blood, everyone is stuck in a small town with no economic hopes of getting out. One point emphasized over and over is that killing is only murder if there is intent behind it, something that Sunako Kirishiki agonizes over when reflecting on the human lives she has taken in order to live. 

This is all to say that, despite these obligations, everyone in the series has the ability to make their own choices. Almost every single choice Toshio makes is needlessly violent, cruel, and destructive, from experimenting on his undead wife, to her eventual murder, to masterminding the slaughter of innocent villagers. His intent was behind every single one is these actions, but he acts morally justified even as he and some survivors drive off into the night at the end of the series. 

On the topic of choice, we see vampires who abstain from drinking blood even as it slowly kills them, humans siding with the vampires, and both being called traitors to their respective causes. It's essentially an exaggerated version of the "us vs. them" politics we see in real-life small towns, where you're expected to keep to your own kind and shamed for breaking the mold. Toshio says the quiet part out loud and incites violence against the shiki, urging the townsfolk to drive them out. This culminates in one of the first shiki to be turned, a girl named Megumi, begging the townspeople to remember who she was and let her go so she can see the big city... as they bludgeon her and eventually crush her skull with a tractor. It's a harrowing moment that, if you were still siding with the townspeople, really makes you question your allegiance to the human race. 

The shiki's ultimate goal is to turn Sotoba into a town full of the undead, but not for nefarious purposes. Over and over, the original vampires of the Kirishiki family state that they just want a place where they can be normal. Chizuru talks about wanting to go out shopping and talk with friends, and the newly-turned shiki enjoy things like mundane office culture or idle chats in the street. Two undead teenagers congratulate an older woman on her husband "rising" to join her, saying how happy they are for the couple as they move to sink their teeth into a human's neck. Sunako Kirishiki recounts her life as a vampire, and cries over her desire to live and be a normal young girl as the townspeople ransack her home. 

Shiki turns monsters into humans, and makes its human characters into monsters. It turns a small town that is figuratively cut off from the world into one that is literally cut off and cannot be escaped. It explores the horror of boundaries, guilt, and isolation by using vampires as kindling to fan the simmering flames of resentment and doubt. It's a truly fantastic anime that has basically been scrubbed from the annals of 2010's anime history, remembered only by those who watched it and those who can dredge it up from the bowels of the internet.

 I'm not advocating for piracy, but I am saying that it's available on YouTube as of now, and you can get through the whole series in about three days. The manga can also be read online, wherever you read your manga scan-lations, and the art is that much creepier when rendered in black and white. Whichever medium you choose, I really hope you enjoy it. 

Review: Kiki Rockwell's "Eldest Daughter of an Eldest Daughter"

Kiki Rockwell makes the music I'd want to make if I had a naturally musical bone in my body. I discovered her shortly before the release of her first album, Rituals on the Bank of a Familiar River, and I was instantly smitten. Her songwriting is a blend of folk music, techno, and ritual chanting that often borders on spoken word poetry, with her lyrics similarly mixing folktales, spells, and fables with feminist rhetoric that gives way to seething rage. The result is something that holds tangible power when played; Rockwell layers track over track when mixing, stacking multiple vocal tracks over each other and occasionally calling in friends and family to chant in choruses over pounding bass drums and violin.

Her music videos are essentially short films; Kiki and the team she works with have a knack for creating stunning narratives in short time spans, and the love she has for fantasy media, movies, and folktales shines in the stories she creates. This album features two music videos, "Syrena" (Track 9) and "Strange Premonition" (Track 2). "Syrena" made me cry, because I'm a sucker for tragic love stories (and especially stories about selkies), but "Strange Premonition" brought me an intense amount of joy. I don't think there's any way to convey how fun this video is without watching it, so I'm going to leave it here for you to enjoy. Watch at your leisure, but I very much encourage you to watch it.

I'm convinced that, had this song and music video come out during the height of Stranger Things popularity, it would rocket Rockwell to immediate mainstream stardom. However, the fact that she released a campy 1980's slasher-themed video years after the hype died highlights the most important thing about Kiki Rockwell's music: she's genuinely having fun, and it shows. Kiki Rockwell is creating music for herself, and if she connects with other weird women who love medieval beasts and want to dance in the woods, all the better.

Eldest Daughter of an Eldest Daughter feels like a culmination of the work Rockwell has been creating since her 2021 EP Bleeding Out in a Forest, but polished and refined. It's a very natural progression, and as always, every song is a joy to listen to. The techno influences on this album that we heard on previous songs like "Madeline" "Cup Runneth Over" and "Harbinger" are dialed up to 11 on Eldest Daughter, but in contrast to previous releases, almost every song on this album is a blend of both electronic and acoustic, instead of favoring on or the other too heavily. "Seven Angels Greet Me in the Carpark" is the most heavily electronic song on the album, but "Strange Premonition" and "Agent 44" also lean heavily in that direction. I don't dislike the more electronic songs (and I absolutely adore "Strange Premonition"), but my favorites on this album ended up being the slow-building tracks with a more ethereal atmosphere.

"Faery King" (Track 3) is a stripped-down song that builds into a frenzy, with delicate violin over a techno bass drum and Rockwell's signature haunting vocals. The lyrics reference old Fae folktales, but also speak to Dianic witchcraft and goddess worship, a common theme in Rockwell's work. It's among my favorites, along with "Malleus Maleficarum,"(Track 4) "Lilith,"(Track 6) "Holy Rage,"(Track 8) and "Dragonrider" (Track 10). "Syrena" (Track 9) is also an absolute standout, a mournful sea shanty that builds into a wave and crashes to shore. Rockwell's vocals soar, crack, and waver over every track in a way that feels refined but wholly organic, something practiced without being calculated. Her passion is palpable in every single note, leading to an album that feels like a beautifully crafted labor of love, the vocal equivalent of illuminated manuscript.

Throughout this album even more than others, Rockwell plays on the idea of sex and sexuality as something ancient and sacred, almost ritualistic. It bears similarity to the ideas present in 2010's feminist sexual liberation, but it leans in a direction that, for better or for worse, presents sex as a weapon to be mastered. Rockwell is not liberated because she is a sexual object, she is a woman attempting to break free from self-objectification by using it to her advantage. It';s the femme fatale trope redone for the modern era, a woman who has read Laura Mulvey but still can't get the omnipresent watcher in her head to quiet down.

This philosophy is present in "Strange Premonition" and "Agent 44," but (seemingly) intentionally absent from "Lilith," which subverts the common mythology that Lilith's only merit (or only sin) was seduction and casting her in a more three-dimensional light. Sexuality is only present in songs where Rockwell has agency, using it as a temptation that leads to the ruin of (mostly) men and as a power wielded over her lovers. However, in her love songs like "Syrena" and last album's "Cup Runneth Over" or "From Persephone," her lyrics are devoid of anything that would objectify her love interest. This makes the mentions of sex in her songs feel all the more ritualistic, haunting, and arcane; free from the connotations of sensuality and softness, Rockwell wields sex and attraction as something jagged and heavy, something with teeth.

I unfortunately was not a fan of her cover of "Satisfaction" (Track 7, originally by Benny and the Biz), but not for any reasons she could help. I just cannot stand that song, and typically, the source material has to be good in order to create a good cover. There are some songs not even a forest wench can save. 

I like to imagine that Kiki Rockwell and I would be fast friends, if I ever had a chance to meet her. I, too, love moss and creatures and Ren faires! I also insist upon spelling "faerie" with an -ie, regardless of the American English spelling! I, too, am the eldest daughter of an only daughter, and understand all the implications of that hallowed title. We could form a coven, make our own clothes, and spend our days in feral bliss hunting for cool rocks and toads. 

Parasocial ramblings aside, I truly do appreciate that Rockwell is willing to put so much of herself into her art; the hardest part of creating anything is putting it out into the world, but she continues to weave her own experiences into the tapestry of favorite movies, books, folklore and fables that make up her albums. I, for one, can't wait to see what she does next.