This Will Destroy You – The Lovecraftian Hell-Beasts Lurking Behind Every Corner in Haruhi, Bakemonogatari, and Index

Liable to end life as you know it at any given time.

…all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.
-H.P. Lovecraft

Upon completing To Aru Majutsu no Index (post forthcoming) I noticed that this series contained one of my favorite plot elements, seen also in Bakemonogatari, Boogiepop, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – a trait no doubt attributed the certain style of light novel which all of these series are based on. In each of these stories, there lurks a power far beyond human comprehension – a force that can and will destroy you.

If you’ve never heard of “Lovecraftian horror” (named after H.P. Lovecraft, one of the last century’s most influential horror and fantasy authors) it basically centers on the idea that humans are insignificant, and there are things out there so far beyond our comprehension that we might completely destroy our brain if we ever even found out about them. you might say the stories show you the ‘bigness’ of existence. One of the most famous examples is a certain creature whom, were you to utter their real name, would destroy the entire universe. The cosmos is just brimming with these things that might end life as you know it before you even realize what’s going on. However, there’s something special about the way that these world-destroying powers are represented in the aforementioned light novels.

That is, they aren’t represented much at all. What’s special about these light novels is that the actual stories, the monsters, the mythos – none of that is important. To these light novels, the characters in the story are what really matter. All of the plot and background details exist only for the sake of exploring the characters or bringing out information from them. If the stories were stripped of their mythos and plots and had them totally replaced with some other set of explanations, you’d still essentially get the same story (with perhaps the exception of Boogiepop). So why do they bother creating those Lovecraftian setups? It’s to give the series a sense of extremity.

Let’s start with the most popular example, Haruhi. Effectively, it is the tale of five eccentric schoolmates who form a strange club and go on adventures. However, more than just being high schoolers, each character is connected to an otherworldly force so massive that the fate of the world rests on their every action. Haruhi might be able to reshape existence on her whim. Kyon might be the only one who can keep her from doing so. The others will warp time, space, and the fabric of reality to their needs to keep Haruhi’s power in-check. What’s great about all of it, though, is that we don’t really know how it all works. We’ve been told about the data integrated thought entity, the future government, the society where the espers belong, and we even hear about these massive behind-the-scenes moves by each faction where some incredible event has taken place, like a faction war or a spacial anomaly that is consuming galaxies somewhere, but we only ever see tiny bits and pieces of these forces – so little, in fact, that there are times we question how much of it is really happening, how much of it all is controlled, and what is even real. Fans are still debating the true meaning behind just about every event to have transpired in Haruhi.

A supernatural force laying waste to the world, but, more importantly, an analogy for Haruhi's anxiety.

Next, take Bakemonogatari. In this series, it is less that the monsters and forces are ready and willing to crush human existence, but it is nonetheless true that there are always forces of mysterious and insane power lurking behind the scenes. And normal people just so happen to stumble upon them – what seemed like your average walk through the park turns out to have been an event that triggered a god of misfortune to make you lose your weight or something. However, Bakemonogatari is the best example of how these forces are talked about but hardly shown. What matters is not so much that Araragi is a vampire, but that his experiences with vampires are what gave him knowledge of the supernatural to help out other people. Kanbaru’s attachment to the monkey claw is less meant to tell us a story about supernatural events as it is meant to let us explore Kanbaru’s mind as we learn about her jealousy, her past, and what drives her.

An impressive display of weaponry, but, more importantly, an analogy for just how guarded Senjougahara is. "The hedgehog's dilemma" comes to mind when I see this image.

What’s really cool about these stories for me is that they make sure that none of the characters are normal people, and yet are human. In To Aru Majutsu no Index, this is a major theme of the show. In the Accelerator arc, we learn that Mikoto Misaka has 20,000 clones of herself involved in a deadly game wherein they are being slaughtered by the city’s most powerful esper, Accelerator, in an effort to raise his power even higher. But the point of Misaka’s situation, as crazy as it is, is to teach us about her. We never see all 20,000 clones lined up or anything. We don’t see the organization pulling the strings behind the experiment (although we do learn about some of the scientists later on). What mattered was only that Misaka’s psychology was tied to these events, and Touma wanted to save her. Not just her, but her clones, as Touma considers their lives precious and fights to make it so that the remaining 10,000 of them can live on as characters.

Touma, too, is a person with an abnormal background, not only from all the crazy shit he gets involved with, but also because of his one-of-a-kind power that quickly has all sorts of factions trying to use him in different ways. Even Accelerator, the villain of the arc, is explored beyond merely being a fixture of the story. This is also why I think that all of the characters in Index show up in all kinds of situations – their significance in the story’s universe allows us to understand the significance of the story arc. For instance, if the characters we know are members of the church as well as the characters we know are high-level espers all converge on one place, then we know something huge is up (just like how in Haruhi, we know big trouble is brewing when both Itsuki and Yuki are worried). However, ultimately, we see only Touma and a few other characters interacting in very limited locations. A back-alley, a building, a house, a bridge, the streets – but in these little locations with these small groups of people, they decide the fate of mankind and have whole organizations choreographing their moves. Just like the esper society in Haruhi, we never really see the so-called ‘higher-ups’ that run Academy City.

It was when even the supposed 'random friend' character turned out to be a massively powerful double-agent that I really understood how much was going on behind-the-scenes in Index.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that Boogiepop had a big influence on all of those stories, especially because it is pretty much considered influential to light novels in general. Boogiepop takes the most Lovecraftian stance with it’s portrayal of the big, killer world. A lot of the characters are those inhuman and important forces that decide the fate of the world in the shadows (hell, that’s one of the first things that Boogiepop himself clarifies as his responsibility) but there are also ‘normal’ people in Boogiepop who just happen to stumble into these affairs. A lot of them are crushed or lose their sanity in true Lovecraftian fashion, but then you even have the characters who steep themselves into that world and end up becoming one of the big forces and names themselves. In the very first Boogiepop novel, we are given the story from the perspectives of five normal people who brush up either lightly or heavily against these forces, and we learn about things like an organization that literally controls the world and supernatural horrors beyond comprehension – but we are never made to understand just what the hell they are. We only see how they effect those five normal people and the others they encounter.

I love these kinds of stories, because I love to see a story go ‘all out’. Why just make normal great characters when you could make great characters who also have insane powers? It makes it so that possibility is increased. In these stories, there is always the sense that anything can happen, anything can get you, anything could snatch you up, or worse, blow you away. In a way, it is the ultimate kind of fantasy – a fantasy that out there in this cosmos that seems so maddeningly large, you never know just what could happen. And if you know of more stories like this, anime or otherwise, please recommend them!

(Title taken from a post-rock band of the same name)

Related Posts: I’ve written before about my love for abnormal characters with strong presence here.