Two days ago, I decided to perform a gruesome experiment on myself. One that would wreak havoc within my mind and tear my soul viciously apart. I think I died and was plunged into the fiery pits of Hell at least twice. I think I saw Azathoth.
I watched Haiyore!
It's always been the punchline of my jokes and a scathing mockery of Nyaruko (otherwise known as Fake Nyarlathotep) has featured on my blog at least three times. But two days ago something hit me: I know it's cringe. I know it's dreadful. But it's just a waifuication anime- if you watch it can it really be that bad? You can have a good laugh at the stupid portrayals of your favourite eldritch gods and then post a harsh review on Tumblr. You can have a good complain about it on Eldritch Discord. It might be worth it for the opportunity to do what every human wants to do- roast the shit out of someone.
I picked up my laptop and found Haiyore! on a website called Crunchyroll. Skipping the pilot episode, I clicked straight onto episode one. One minute and forty seconds of adverts later, I was ready. Haiyore!- Crawling with Love had begun.
The play 'The King in Yellow' is connected to outbreaks of madness and those that read it are most often driven to insanity. Yet I think that The King In Yellow himself would be driven insane by the portrayal he was given on screen. If Randolph Carter had shown Nyarlathotep a picture of Nyaruko when he was in the Dreamlands, Nyarlathotep might have woken him up there and then. Cthulhu, upon being exposed to Kūko (Fake Cthulhu), would have risen from his house in R'lyeh and destroyed us all before we had the opportunity to become any more dangerous than the existence of Haiyore! had already made us. We better thank our lucky stars they never saw it, because mark my words, I have never seen anything so dreadful willingly shown on a screen in my life.
Other than the terrible insult to Lovecraftian deities, it's insanely creepy. That's pretty much the main issue, and I'm going to illustrate why below:
Nyaruko is constantly trying to force herself on this poor guy. She went as far in Episode One as to trap him in a locker whilst a class of girls were changing for PE, knowing if he tried to get out they would notice and raise the alarm. She constantly talks in Episode One about him getting her pregnant, often in public. It's not cute or funny and if the roles were reversed it would be a whole different picture.
Overt sexualisation of underage characters. As well as multiple lewd scenes including the changing room scene in Episode One and the shower scene in Episode Two, there's this particular scene in the library...I won't go into too much detail but it involves Kūko basically discovering the concept of straight sex and getting turned on...one thing leads to another I suppose. And the fact that most of the audience is twelve year old weebs and grown ass men makes it worse.
Other creepy sexual scenes- again, towards the end of the library episode, there's a scene involving Hatsuta (Fake Hastur) and their Fake Shantak which can only be described as best!al!ty. That's the scene that made me go 'Right, I'm done with this.'
Overall, it was much, much worse than I previously thought. God Almighty, please don't watch it. For the sake of your own sanity, please. Sorry if this made no sense, I'm running on about three hours sleep. But don't do it.
