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Sublime and Grotesque
This movie is what I'd describe with the Kantian Sublime: the greater the displeasure (fear) the subject feels from experiencing the (fearsome but non-threat) object, the more the subject will be captivated by it and that much greater will the eventual pleasure of the experience be as well.In this case, this movie is the object, and there truly is an abundance of elements to make the viewer uncomfortable, disgusted, afraid etc; but there's also allure in the gore, violence and power. What I love about Litchi Hikari Club is its ugly but absurdly fantastical world, rationally irrational violence and destruction of certain dualities like 'human, beauty, good' vs 'inhuman, uglyness, evil' etc. That's what makes it grotesque and through that chaos (as fiction) can the sublime be experienced, I think. (I'm aware my use of Kant isn't what he himself would've intended, that's intentional).
Outside of just the aesthetic, I love the deeper discomfort Zera and especially his ideology brings. Zera's actions, his cult and its ultimate failure very explicitly show the self-destroying and contradictory nature of fascism, but the movie also posits an origin point for fascism; a desperate attempt to escape the dystopian material conditions. Obsession with youth also stems directly from fear of the depressing existence that adult life of work is, so devoid of meaning that death is idealized as an escape -- this renders murder moral, while also driving Zera to desperate plans of revolution (taking over the city). In this sense, the commandments (fascism) and kidnapping of a girl could also be an attempt to create meaning (a god), while Tamiya, maybe also Daff and Kaneda, find their meaning to adulthood in love -- so does Jaibo, though his love also requires him to paradoxically reject it as meaning. When it comes to Litchi the robot, I initially wanted to read hm/it (?) as a critique of humanism but at the moment I think it's rather a reaffirmation: it's very humanist how 'becoming/being human' is required of Litchi to gain higher cognitive skills, awareness of self as a subject and be both capable of and worthy of empathy; the line between human and inhuman is drawn starkly.
I can't speak of the stage-plays but the movie makes a more coherent whole than the manga; meaning it improves on the smoothness of the storytelling but unfortunately loses some of the chaotic clutter that was charming about the manga. Though, the atmosphere and condition of the city came across way more starkly in the movie -- environmental design was well done, as were the practical effects.
Overall, I love the themes that Litchi Hikari Club explores, there's so much I'd be interested in analyzing more in-depth (Jaibo and meaning, for one). Drawn in by the fascination with the sublime, staying for the philosophical over-analyzing.
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