The Rise Of Nux Taku
From fans of the VTuber to those just tumbling through the rabbit hole, we may all have pondered these questions. “Why is this Indie VTuber Nux Taku massive despite not being in any agency, and what is the appeal?” Let this article give you a complete tour of the rise of Lor D. Nuxanor.
To quickly get it out of the way, Nux Taku has been an enigma with his IRL identity, and we will put aside all the publicly available information on him in this paragraph. Note that all information is suspect, and that is just according to Keikaku.
He is a Canadian-American who was born on February 9, 1996. Raised as an Orthodox Jew, he had reservations about posting selfies online. As a dual citizen, he lives in Montreal, Canada, and Brooklyn, New York, in the United States.
Notes: 1. Za Warudo is a Jojo Bizare adventure reference. 2. Just according to 計画 Keikaku – from a fansub made for Death Note’s 24th episode for the line “Just as Planned. “ 3. Nux Taku has several variations of his name, which would be used throughout the article.
Table of contents
Nuxanor & His Content Shuffle
Honest Trailers
Nux hit the ground running when he started making content in the middle of 2015. His first successful series concept was just retextured Honest Trailers done by a weeaboo.
To put things into perspective, Honest Trailers, created by Screen Junkies, were comedic takes on movies and films that summarized the experience, poking fun at the movie’s characters, plot holes, and inconsistencies. Screen Junkies’ videos follow a general format that Nux incorporates into his content.
As Screen Junkies had focused on Western content, he was able to meet a growing demand for Honest Trailers of anime series. He has always been open about the fact that this series is directly inspired by Honest Trailers and Cracked.
However, there were issues with his initial title of the series as Honest Anime Trailers due to his rebranding it twice: first as Authentic Anime Trailers in January 2016 and then as Sarcastic Anime Trailers in April of the same year.
List-Type Content
The second successful series on his list were actual lists, creating Watch Mojo-Esque videos revolving around Anime: Must Watch, Best Shounen Arcs, and Overpowered Jutsu that just Didn’t Accomplish Anything, to name a couple.
They served as anime recommendations to his fans and were delivered with his cringe-worthy hype-man energy, which generated a ton of engagement with his viewers. Nux, in early 2017, announced a reduction of this list type of content because he initially made it to grow his channel and serve as clickbait.
It was to him the perfect time to drop the content since YouTube was deleting these types of videos without notice anyway. This type of content would serve as his go-to when celebrating milestones, as he could give his following genuine recommendations to watch.
Testing The Waters
He would also continue trying different content types to test the waters. These series were abruptly dropped or received positive feedback but ended. The most popular of these failed series was Abridge, which mostly started and ended with single episodes. In Nux Fashion, he even did an abridged video of one of the most popular Abridge series on YouTube, Team Four Star’s Dragon Ball.
Nux also made Cinema Sins’ content and How It Should Have Ended. Viewers at the time would request these types of imitation content of larger western-centered YouTuber content applied to the then smaller niche hobby like anime shows.
His content would normally be chasing the trending content types, reskinning them with anime, and seeing if it was something he could incorporate into his regular content.
Ensuring The Community’s Engagement
In June 2016, he celebrated his first 10,000 subscribers to the channel and shared his plans to enter medical school. He mentions his difficulties balancing making his content, his studies, and a part-time job. That’s why he promoted his Patreon Nux Taku and mentioned that any tier membership would help. He even thanked those who expressed a desire to participate but were either too young or financially challenged.
To ensure a steady flow of engagement in his videos’ comment section as he grew, he created community-driven content like his Holy Grail War series. And that received roughly 100 votes in total. He would fill the seven servant classes from the Fate series with characters from different anime series, limited to the most recent season and only one character per series.
He would give a brief explanation as to the rationale of the choices made and then leave a comment on the video for each choice available. The subscribers could then vote for those they believed would win. Succeeding videos would have him start by discussing the results of the previous Grail War and then making a new roster.
This Anituber is known as Nux Taco
The Use Of Images To Represent Himself
At the start of 2017, he started using images to represent himself. The reason was to reduce the chance that YouTube would deem his videos as infringing on the copyright of the clips used in the video.
His choice of representation started with silhouettes of Shiroe from Log Horizon to just Robin in his Red X suit. He also started openly recruiting editors and asking for referrals or applications from his community.
Collabs
He collaborated on a Sarcastic Anime Trailer with a successful Canadian Anituber, MistyChronexia. This Anituber already had a million subscribers, dwarfing Nux’s following. Within a month of their collaboration, Nux made a video making fun of Lost Pause and asking him not to retaliate against him when they attended Otakuthon 2017, an anime convention in Canada where MistyChronexia was a special guest.
New Accounts
His involvement within the Anime community would reach a new level after the event as he joined Rant Café for the first time. But life was not all rainbows and sunshine, as Nux did incur two copyright strikes.
Nux explained that one of the strikes was related to a political post, while he did not disclose the reason for the other strike. He creates a second account called Brutally Honest Nux, which he may have forgotten about as he creates three other channels in the distant future: Nuxanor, Nuxcord, and Nuxamore. He created that account to avoid losing what he had built up due to a possible third strike that would result in the termination of his account and the removal of his content on YouTube.
The Pivot
Because of the fear of deletion, a strong pivot occurred in his content. He started phasing out the Sarcastic Anime Trailers and evolving it into his honest description series. The difference was that he retained the essence of originality that he was putting into sarcastic anime trailers while removing the format of the original inspiration.
Taking inspiration from the content of larger Anitubers such as Mother’s Basement and Gigguk, he began creating analytical content that fans could attribute to him rather than being a carbon copy of another’s.
He started focusing on making a brand by using a unique avatar created by Violett and then adding a distinct outro made by Nick Nitro. He also created a persona of “flexing” and “memeing,” as he did not fit the pressures of making more child-friendly videos.
Covering Meme Trends & Clickbaiting
Becoming a meme lord took a bit of time and flexibility. He started by mentioning other creators’ methodologies for garnering new subscribers. These methods included clickbait, using their thumbnails and video titles to entice viewers to watch the video.
Nux continued incorporating this technique into his future videos. The best example of this would be his video on Tokyosaurus. He mentions it being deceptive to place the words “Trending in Japan” to add a sense of importance to the video.
The oscillation between making credible videos and clickbait created a kind of shield around his actual positions. Fans would find it hypocritical that Nux himself criticizes the tactic as cheap and serving only to gain new viewers while employing it himself.
However, new viewers drawn by the clickbait would face a litmus test; either becoming outraged and inadvertently growing the channel by making him viral for leveraging this tactic or realizing clickbait is a valid method of drawing interest and judging the video accordingly.
He also employed the following tactics to drive views to his videos:
- Copying Game Theories Thumbnail format.
- Writing “ft. Popular person” on the title but not having them collaborate on the video
- Lewd thumbnails
Nux Taku’s Face Reveal, Highlights, Drama, & Cringe
Origin Of Nux Taku’s Name
Here’s a taste of the silliness one could expect from his content. Nux’s initial PNG image had the words “Nux” and “Vomita.” We were able to gather that the words “Nux” and “Vomita” have Latin origins; translated, they would be “Nut” and “Vomit.”
We can safely assume that before each recording, he would nut and vomit vehemently to get that perfect level of coarseness in his voice. Plus, his channel’s name is Nux Taku. Taku in Maori is a possessive pronoun that translates to “my.” Since he is an Anituber, it would mean that he would write his last name first. That means we’ve been watching “My Nuts” talk about anime.
The Typo
In 2016, when he created his Twitter handle, he made a typo and just stuck to that Twitter handle for a good chunk of time. Although this is no longer the case, we’ll link to his Twitter using his original handle for laughs: Nut_Taku.
2017, The Year Of Strikes & Rap Battles
In 2017, he received two strikes, the reason for one of which was not disclosed. It could have been similar to what fans warned him about when Defy Media threatened a channel called Anime Parades with legal action on behalf of Screen Junkies.
In the same year, Anime Uproar challenged him for Anime Rap Cypher 2017, which resulted in this little nugget.
Nux Taku’s Face Revealed
In 2018, he revealed his face in celebration of reaching 100,000 subscribers, launching Rant Café as a separate channel.
Reaching The Million Mark & Transitioning From Reactions To Raids
In 2019, he finally stopped saying “Subscribble” and reached one million subscribers towards the end of the year.
In 2020, his content started transitioning to reactionary content and raiding streamers with Billy. His reactionary content would include scathing criticisms of the hypocrisy of ideologies, individuals, companies, or fandoms.
On the flip side, his raids rebranded his followers from “Fambase” to “Billy” due to an incident when a streamer being raided started shouting out “Billy” in excitement over the growing viewership. He also started to collaborate with other creators more often.
Nux Taku’s Cringe Parody Song
In 2021, during the height of Hot Tub Streams on Twitch, Nux made a parody song of Billie Eilish’s bad guy called Twitch is Hentai. That parody song, however, was poorly received and was taken down.
VShojo Cancels Nux Taku
In the same year, Nux posted a video that served the following purposes:
- Addressing a VShojo impersonator that had tried to dox him
- Bring to Light a new MO that has worked on indie VTubers such as himself
- The video was a cautionary tale for those who already engage in doxing and swatting creators
YouTube took down that video due to requests from talent in VShojo. That video resulted in a small feud, which is why VShojo’s talents no longer collaborate with him.
No One Understands Nux Taku
A surreal moment occurred when a larger channel, Satty from PenseGeek, translated Anituber’s videos and posted them without citing the source. He said he would have had no qualms if she had cited the original creator, allowing foreign viewers to support the original creator.
He also warns his followers not to harass the creator, as it wouldn’t be cool. In this instance, you see that he shares the ideals of his predecessors in the Anitube community to avoid gatekeeping or discouraging imitations made by other creators.
Nux Taku’s Editors
Nux’s growing community can be seen in the sheer number of editors he has employed. This list may have missed a few, as I had only perused about an arm’s length of available public information. Gome ne ごめんね
- The Sword Art Online Dickriding Association
- ItsTheSlime
- Dakota Broskie
- Evanit0
- Gr4veDiggers
- MeadowEdits
- Anime Zone
- Kore Wa Eden
- Burger Beats
- Metahulk
- Jackisboy
- TMFilly
- MudanTV
- Kaiser Trigger
- OverpoweredGoron
- Kor
Wrapping Up: Nux Taku
His synthesized content concerning everything he has done and posted is as straightforward as his initial banal description for his channel. He is making content he likes, following trends as a consumer, then trying them out as a creator.
His initial outlook toward content creation as a hobby kept him from being too personally attached to his content. He makes admonishing statements but then deals out the same distasteful tactics due to never being too critical to the point of calling anything abhorrent.
50 Facts about something trending—the mad lad makes 50 Facts videos. Tier lists started trending; the man makes tier lists. Mr. Beasts throws money at streamers—he holds off until YouTube finally pays him, then the man throws money at streamers.
He continues in this manner up until Virtual Youtubers begin trending, and with the help of Ironvertex and SukiEnma, the VTuber Nux Taco debuted on January 18, 2021.
