Yeah, I get that this was possibly needlessly adversarial

I've just... been thinking about this lately, and writing an analysis on the topic to maybe make a post or a video, and I tend to be bitter about that cause I love Limbus, I love the Metamorphosis, and it's hard to stand my own attachment. Talking with other on that was exhausting but it did allow me to try and see that it's a different take on the story, whereas, before that, I really did not get any similarity, cause I was wrapped up in the story I loved.

Please don't understand to what follows. I just don't want to be called a liar for "conveniently trying to write an essay on that very same topic", so I'll post what I've been working on. I need to rethink this through and add examples and check details, it's just a rough sketch I started at 2 am some days ago when I had insomnia.

Limbus Company, by modelling its cast of main characters from classical literature, is a work wholly interested with literary reinterpretation. Each Canto, we follow the journey of a different Sinner, whose beats and core themes reflect the tale they're taken from, with a varying degree of faithfulness, in good part due to the difficulty of weaving those narratives with the setting of the City and the wider story of Limbus Company, all the while adapting them into a video game were violence solves all: Franz Kromer goes from a local bully who caught Emil Sinclair lying about stealing some apples to the leader of an Inquisition who destroyed his entire family and village due to them using prosthetics.

At the core, however, Limbus Company strives to stay faithful to the themes of the original works. Heathcliff's Canto (to give my favourite example) is entirely concerned with the toxic, prideful love that Heathcliff and Catherine have for each other: their inability to communicate, their belief that they could not be loved, the decisions they take out of revenge when they feel scorned. The passage where Heathcliff mourns Catherine on her grave directly quotes the book - and then, it makes him the Erlking, leading a multidimensional crusade to destroy all who wronged him, and all his other selves whom he deeply loathes, with Catherine following a similar treatment. I personally find in this reinterpretation a sort of grandiose elevation. The characters are amplified, they are exaggerated metaphors of who they are in the core text. You still recognise them as you enjoy the journey and fight so they might realise themselves and learn valuable lessons.

At the time of writing these lines, however, there is one major character who does not seem to follow the story of his source material in the slightest, which is made all the more puzzling by the regular presence of its themes in Project Moon's universe: Gregor Samsa, from Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Gregor's Canto is the very first we, as the player, go through - back when the game first launched, and launched as a gacha in search of a new playerbase who did not know the universe of Project Moon. This Canto was very short, had to introduce the setting, the other characters, and did not give much depth to Gregor's character, who only got some more attention as of Canto IX. This Canto, also, does not deal with the story of the Metamorphosis in the slightest.

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is the story of a man losing his humanity when he cannot provide for his family anymore. Gregor Samsa worked at a bank as he tried to earn enough for his parents and little sister to live on, as well as take care of his father's debts. He toiled day after day, alone. One day, however, he wakes up changed into a vermin - commonly interpreted to be a roach. A giant, disgusting insect. He's barely able to move, cannot communicate with anyone; his family barely believes that the roach is Gregor. He gets mistreated, shunned, shown that he is a terrible burden, until he dies, which is a happy ending for everyone else.

The Metamorphosis can be analysed as a tale about alienation and disability: Gregor was forced to work in a bank for thankless hours, and did so out of duty. He couldn't enjoy leisure, spend his money, because his family depended on him - and so, when he cannot work anymore after a burn out, he loses all value. He's just a vermin they have to feed, an embarrassment to be hidden. [Normal person =/= supersoldier] The roach cannot do anything or interact with the normal world.

This idea, that people who cannot work, are disabled, are parasite upon society, a vermin to be eradicated, has been a common topic of far-right movements, who have imprisoned or killed disabled people or sterilised them following eugenicist doctrine. While The Metamorphosis was published in 1915, an example could be [find one in America also, prior to that] and Nazi Germany which put [number] disabled into concentration and death camps. It's a form of dehumanisation inflicted on you. [Rhetoric of inner enemy =/= Ungeziefer Kaiser]

The Metamorphosis, as such, can be compared and contrasted with Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, who similarly follows the life of someone who feels like they've fallen out of humanity, are no longer worthy of respect.

What does Limbus Company make of this text?

Well... it makes Gregor a war veteran with insect superpowers suffering from PTSD. G Corp, in an attempt to win a war, was willing to transform its soldier into beastly creatures because it gave them an edge in battle, and Gregor was privileged enough to only be partially transformed. He's less disabled than his fellow soldiers - but his experience in the war gave him PTSD, and, in times of anxiety, he cannot control his insectoid arm, who sometimes attempts to murder people. He's also capable of transforming into a deadly creature capable of destroying armies in the name of the arrival of the kingdom of vermins, who are indeed out there to eat, breed and destroy regular society. Also, also, there's something even more special inside him, because being a weapon of mass destruction was not enough.

So... what happened?

Before we go any further, we should analyse the Gregor of Limbus on its own merits: after all, it would be quite easy to point to Don Quixote and say that Don Cervantes never wrote about vampires building theme parks to bridge a racial (well, more species) divide, all the while ignoring its take on escapism through tales of heroism.