The popularity of Haiyore! Nyaruko-san has apparently triggered a Cthulhu Mythos boom amongst otaku, with sales of Japanese editions of Lovecrafts’ works soaring the instant the anime aired.
For those as yet unaware, Nyaruko is actually a moefied anthropomorphisation of Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos and one of the Outer Gods from legendary American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s hugely influential Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft’s cheerful introduction of the entity might just be considered at odds with her presentation in the anime (although the chaotic nature of both portrayals do at least match):
And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods — the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.
To preserve the viewer’s sanity at least until the comments begin, only images of the dread entity in its guise as Nyaruko may be shown here:
The Amazon salesrank of H.P. Lovecraft’s Complete Works Vol. 1 (in Japanese and first published in 1974) boomed massively the instant the anime aired, although how one of his works got into the “light novel” category in the first place is likely something known only to the fungi from Yuggoth:
How well Lovecraft’s stultifying prose actually translates into Japanese is probably rather less relevant to this performance than the popularity of Nyaruko in her chaos love comedy incarnation.
The total mismatch between the impassively grim darkness of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and the consumer banality of otaku culture is puzzling many, although given the (still ongoing) boom in guitar sales prompted by K-ON! it is probably not surprising them:
“I can’t but think a lot of these anime influenced buyers will not be reading their copies…”
“Volume 6 is good. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and similar are great fun.”
“I expect a lot of the people will be making sanity checks as a result of the huge disparity in content between the anime and the books…”
“Will the Cthulhu Mythos spread amongst anime otaku now? At least they might read something apart from manga and light novels.”
“I love The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, in volume 2.”
“She actually introduces herself as Nyarlathotep on the classroom blackboard, but says ‘please call me Nyaruko, nyan.'”
“How many people picked that up I wonder…”
I wonder what’ll happen when they realize Lovecraft was a virulent racist and hated asians blacks and everyone that wasn’t white…everyone that wasn’t white and male…everyone that wasn’t white and male and atheist.
I think most people can put him in the context of his time in history & realize he was about average in his racism.
He played on the white xenophobia of the times, which was a shrewd move as most of them had just enough contact with non-whites for them to remain an elusive mystery to them. It’s because of that literary tactic that his racism would would appear more virulent than it probably was.
He took real world race paranoia & used it as a jumping off point into otherworldy terrors. After all, the people of the early 20th century weren’t that far removed from the superstitions of earlier eras. Interest in the Occult was very strong in those days. Fortune tellers & mediums made a good living.
Excellent! Been reading Lovecraft for years. (the show is awesome btw i was laughing the whole time) Im glad more people are going to enjoy his writings
Another series I will be sure to avoid, thanks.
Well, the novel is great and I expect the Anime to follow.
Your loss.
>2ch understands lovecraft
Wait what?
There are millions of people that use that site. It’s really not that surprising that there are some Lovecraft fans on the site.
She god.
Wanna know why?
SHE HAS A FUCKING POKEBALL