Heavy Metal Uncle Covers 'My Deer Friend Nokotan': When Cute Anime Meets the Most Brutal Music Genre

A long-haired, bearded, sunglass-wearing Canadian man, sporting a pair of deer antlers on his head, screamed out a Japanese anime theme song in Heavy Metal style straight into the camera.

The video racked up 54,000 reposts and 217,000 likes within five days. The original anime's voice actress Han Megumi personally reposted it, garnering 2,300 reposts and 11,000 likes.

His name is Little V Mills, and he turned the theme song of My Deer Friend Nokotan into a heavy metal cover. It has been viewed over 1.5 million times.

A song that was already absurd

To understand why this cover went viral, you first have to understand how absurd the original is. My Deer Friend Nokotan is a Japanese anime that aired in the summer of 2024, about a girl with deer antlers growing out of her head who transfers to an ordinary high school. The theme song itself was deliberately designed to be an earworm: repetitive melody, nonsensical lyrics, and a rhythm that gets more addictive the more you listen.

After airing in Japan, it quickly became an internet meme. Imitation videos, fan remixes, and covers in various languages went viral on TikTok and YouTube. The original was already absurd enough. So when Little V Mills decided to reinterpret it in the most aggressive music style possible, the clash became the biggest selling point.

Who is Little V Mills

Little V Mills is a Canadian YouTuber and musician who specializes in making videos where he converts non-metal songs into heavy metal versions. His signature look is long hair, a big beard, and sunglasses, making him look like someone who wandered off the set of a Metallica concert.

His cover style follows a fixed formula: pick a song that has absolutely nothing to do with heavy metal (anime themes, pop songs, video game music), then re-record it with a full metal arrangement (distorted guitars, double bass drums, screaming vocals). Visually, he also dresses up to match the original: deer antlers for Nokotan, a princess dress for Disney covers.

This "style mismatch" approach to content creation is the core appeal of his channel. Viewers don't just come to listen to music — they come to see "what this song sounds like after being metalified."

What you didn't know: Why style mismatch always works

Little V Mills' viral success wasn't a fluke. He hit on a content formula that has been proven over and over on social media: putting two things together that don't belong together.

A cute anime song paired with aggressive heavy metal. A gentle melody paired with screaming vocals. Deer antlers paired with a leather jacket. This kind of contrast doesn't produce rejection in the brain — it produces surprise. In cognitive science, it's called "expectation violation": when reality differs from your expectations, the brain allocates more attention to process the conflict.

That's why the most common comment is "Did Aquaman walk onto the wrong set?" rather than any serious discussion of musical quality. What the audience enjoys isn't the music itself — it's that moment of "wrongness."

From joke to Spotify

Little V Mills' Nokotan cover isn't just a YouTube video. It was uploaded to Spotify as an officially released single. This means it wasn't just "fooling around" — it's a commercially viable piece of work.

This reflects a bigger trend in the music industry: meme covers are becoming a legitimate music distribution pathway. When a song goes viral through memes, cover versions can quickly be uploaded to streaming platforms, capturing their own listeners during the original's viral wave. You don't need a record label, a marketing budget, or radio airplay. You just need to reinterpret an already-viral song in a surprising way at the right time.

When culture gets remixed

Little V Mills proved something with a pair of deer antlers and a distorted guitar: in the age of social media, culture's value lies not in "what it originally was," but in "what else it can become."

A nonsensical theme song from a Japanese anime, covered by a Canadian metalhead, reposted by the Japanese voice actress, watched by 1.5 million people worldwide. There's no "which is better" comparison between the original and the cover. They are two different lives of the same song.

When culture gets remixed, sometimes the result is crazier than the original — and more fun.