Shiteyanyo

Editor’s note: Work in Progress

About

Shiteyanyo (Japanese: シテヤンヨ) is a nickname given to a Vocaloid fan character which derived from Miku Hatsune. This bizzare mutant has its own popularity separated from Miku herself in online illustrators communities.

Origin

An illustration, later called Shiteyanyo, was created by pixiv user Ryūsei (リューセイ)^[1] on Febuary 2nd 2010.^[2] Its original title of the illustration “Mikku Miku ni Shiteyanyo” comes from the lyrics of a very popular Vocaloid song “Miku Miku ni Site Ageru” (みくみくにしてあげる♪).^[3]

Precursors

This kind of idea had been already shown in several early works in vocaloid fandom. But those super-deformed Miku^[4] or KAITO^[5] didn’t spread.

Spread

The creature’s creepy body shape with weird simile gave a huge impact to viewers. Shorty after, people became to call this creature “Shiteyanyo” by getting inspiration from its title. Less than 4 hours later, the 3D artist Deino posted a gif animation of Shiteyanyo’s CGI model to piapro.^[6] Moreover, many other illustrators had joined onto online event of drawing Shiteyanyo proposed by another user in the following day.^[7]

As a result of this, Shiteyanyo had gathered more than 100 illustration responses in its first month^[8], and the amount of illustrations related to Shiteyanyo in pixiv had increased to 400 till it was officially approved by Crypton Future Media on April in that year.

Shiteyanyo also became popular in the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND). Miku Miku Dance (MMD) model for Shiteyanyo was soon posted to NND on February 21st, 2010^[9], and them it has been used in many users MMD videos.

As of May 2013, there are over 300 videos and 1700 illustrations realated to Shiteyanyo in NND^[10] and pixiv.^[11]

Besides, the style of Shiteyanyo, creatures that have only head walking by hair-legs, has derived to other anime/manga franchisie fandom. This kind of bizarre creatures is occationally called “Philogradentia” (髪行類, Hatsukōrui)^[12], a fictitious animal taxonomy with a nuance of homage to “Rhinogradentia”.^[13]

Left: K-ON! Azusa’s “Yatte Yaru Desu” (ヤッテヤルデス)^[14] | Right: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Mami Tomoe’s “Kowakunai” (コワクナイ)^[15]

Official Approval

On April 6th, 2010, the creator Ryūsei announced on his twitter that he struck a licensing deal of Shiteyanyo with Crypton Future Media for the sake of producing its official character goods in Vocaloid franchises^[16], which was the same kind of licencing deal of Tako Luka and Akita Neru.

シテヤンヨが７月のワンフェスで立体化します！それを踏まえ、クリプトンさんと既存の派生キャラ(ネルやハク、たこルカかな？)と同様の契約を結ぶことになりました。公式公認になったシテヤンヨを今後もよろしくお願いします･･･ってここで言っていいのかしらね？ｗ
— リュ－セイ (@x_RYUSEI_x) April 6, 2010

By the help of internet users enthusiasm, Shiteyanyo succeeded to join onto the official vocaloid character line in just two months. Official licensed goods for Shiteyanyo have been released on online stores, figure conventions and CFM’s official mobile card game Hatsune Miku Graphy Collection.^[17]

Notable Examples

Illustrations

Videos

Left: Vocaloid Song^[18] | Right: MMD Dance Video^[19]

Left: Horror Movie Style^[20] | Right: Cosplay^[21]

Relationships with other creature fandoms

Shiteyanyo constitutes special relationships with other user-generated creepy characters. Famous ones are “The Three Miserable Creatures” (御惨家, Gosanke)^[22] consisting of she, HOME Haruka and KimēMaru (shown below, left), and “The Three Miserable Sisters” (惨姉妹, Sanshimai)^[23] consisting of she, Tako Luka and Larval Rin (shown below, right). They sometimes appear together in users videos in NND.

Left: smooooch ・∀・^[24] | Right: Robot Anime style Comedy Sketch^[25]