We open with a black screen and a melodramatic quote about humans being fooled by hope. Meanwhile, Miko (I think that’s her name?) is a twenty-year-old Vtuber who is struggling to make ends meet. She’s also worried about a streamer named Mayu, or maybe Mako, or maybe Mai, who is one of a number of popular streamers who’ve mysteriously fallen into comas. Miko is invited to a mysterious event, lured by the offer of cash monies. She runs into another streamer with a grudge against her, Kanna (or maybe it’s Kanon?). They and others are invited to test a new VR game. We run into various characters of unknown or uncertain names as they clear an obstacle course reminiscent of a 3D platformer game (e.g. Super Mario Odyssey). Seven players reach the goal and are told they can now play the main game. Whatever that is. A bunch of strange people and/or creatures show up, including one who has taken the form of Mayu//Mako/Mai. Apparently they are evil outer gods like Cthulhu who exist in VR, and now the players have to compete against them. Or something.
The title’s allusion to H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional tome the Necronomicon, plus the dialogue about Cthulhu and the outer gods, suggests this show will draw inspiration from the Lovecraft mythos. Probably. The episode is so utterly bonkers that I’m unsure how horrifying it’ll really be. The combination of wonky 2D animation and deliberately goofy CGI visuals makes it hard to take anything seriously. The episode was also undermined by multiple errors in the subtitles, like names being spelled inconsistently (hence my confusion in the above summary); the sloppy subtitling certainly didn’t help the episode make any sense. Will the show live up to its title’s promise of “cosmic horror,” or will it prove more farcical than frightening? I wish I knew just how much actual horror there was going to be, but I have absolutely no idea based on this demented premiere. I don’t like the horror genre, but this episode made me laugh a lot, so maybe I’ll try the next episode. For the moment, it comes across as a trippy comedy rather than a horror story. I can’t exactly “recommend” this show, but I can’t not recommend it either. It’s just that bizarre.
Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show is streaming on Crunchyroll, if you dare face this sheer lunacy.
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