Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

"Ningen": a bizarre Japanese cryptid

November 9th, 2007 by Mori

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Behold the “Ningen“. Meaning literally “Human“, it’s allegedly a very large unknown animal sighted by Japanese fishers, which bares an uncanny resemblance to us. Not only a face, but other reports include even arms and hands.

Continue reading for more pictures and even videos. All artistic illustrations, but being Japanese, they are extremely nice, and as imagined sea monsters, they sure are terrifying.

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One could speculate that a sea creature, even a known one, could be mistaken for a “Ningen”. Skates and rays, for instance, have nostrils and mouths that look like a face. In fact, they look so “human” that they are often mistaken or sold as devils or extraterrestrials — and Japanese fishers know that for centuries.

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But the Ningen is allegedly 20 to 30 meters in length. And we may not even have to bother considering it very seriously, because this cryptid seems to be nothing more than a modern Internet legend.

There are no verifiable names for the alleged sightings. In fact, there are no names nor actual sightings, only vague reports that the creature was seen near the Antarctic Ocean. From the artistic interpretations in this page, you can also see that its appearance is pretty much up to the artist’s imagination.

Acknowledging that, though, we can appreciate what’s surely a nice modern version of the old sea monsters legends. Here are some more illustrations:

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And the videos. Not very impressive, but interesting nevertheless:

Maybe Loren Coleman over at Cryptomundo could tell if such descriptions of sea monsters resembling humans is actually old, and this is just a repackaging. I suspect it is, afterall, mermaids are in a way related cryptids. Maybe the size detail is the only difference.

Almost all the graphics on this post were taken from this Japanese page.

All your Ningen needs may be supplied by searching on Google. In Japanese, of course: look for “????“.

UPDATE: Some more creepy pics. In case it’s not clear yet, this is little more than pure imagination (the “little more” part is that some people claim it’s real, which doesn’t make it any less unreal).

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Popularity: 60% [?]

Posted in Criptozoology | 63 comments

63 Comments so far

  1. Diana November 12th, 2007 6:18 pm

    Wonderful. Something new for the Japanese to kill besides dolphins.

  2. Am i for real November 12th, 2007 11:15 pm

    I can already tell they’re fake. The pictures are just edited.

  3. PreCognitive Dissonance » Blog Archive » PreCogDiss 071115 November 16th, 2007 9:24 pm

    [...] “Ningen”: a bizarre Japanese cryptid – Forgetomori.com [...]

  4. greg January 2nd, 2008 2:28 pm

    funny!

  5. Seth January 2nd, 2008 5:00 pm

    Every picture there looks so obviously shopped. It’s fake.

  6. stork January 2nd, 2008 5:36 pm

    guys, didn’t you read what it said? The detailed pictures are artist’s depictions and the out of focus ones may be what it’s talking about, they may be stingrays. The point is, you idiots that say “it’s so obviously shopped” are, like I said, idiots, of course it’s shopped, it’s an artist’s depiction.

  7. jediwannabe1 January 3rd, 2008 1:01 am

    Too true…

    He’s right, you know.

  8. laura January 3rd, 2008 3:03 am

    Who else is thinking of Neon Genesis Evangelion ?

  9. Therealjoe January 3rd, 2008 9:39 am

    If they were real the Japanese would breed them and use them as sex toys or something.

  10. Raul January 3rd, 2008 2:01 pm

    Yes!, the first thing that came up to my mind. The End of Evangelion!!.

  11. FodderButWiser January 22nd, 2008 4:46 am

    For some reason I’m reminded of those cool Japanese crabs, whose shells are often seen shaped like classical samurai
    faces. Sometimes, we breed our own mer-people.

  12. Ken Tachibana » Current conditions: foggy and weird. April 8th, 2008 3:48 pm

    [...] of cryptids, I wish the Internet had more to say about Ningen. Maybe next time I visit home I’ll see if anyone can point me to anyone who has a story to [...]

  13. nick cryptid explorer August 1st, 2008 2:37 pm

    well really i mean what are the odds some were just beleiving in sasquatch but this is a major possibility only god knows the truth check google to look for more cryptid facts then you might start to beilive were not the only things on this planet

  14. Clarice August 6th, 2008 11:56 am

    is this the monster – of aladygma????

  15. Katja August 12th, 2008 7:38 am

    The first picture looks like a really big guitar fish.

  16. Zevo August 13th, 2008 1:13 pm

    The last two pictures make it look something like the creature from Cloverfield…

  17. Waldron August 21st, 2008 1:34 pm

    Neon Genesis Evangelion is obviously shopped. The whole show is fake.

  18. Huegh September 11th, 2008 5:13 pm

    Now the Japenese will need to run from godzilla and this thing.

    Rotflol

  19. Helicoprion: stranger than fiction | forgetomori September 19th, 2008 7:35 am

    [...] you thought the fictional Ningen was bizarre, behold the Helicoprion. And this horrifying sea creature is, or actually, was very [...]

  20. frances September 20th, 2008 12:29 am

    omg that looks FREAKY! is it real? cuz if it is im never going in the sea again!

  21. mike November 2nd, 2008 11:00 am

    ive seen many things, but not like this…………….`

  22. Dark Angel November 6th, 2008 12:25 pm

    this is sooo creepy.. =|

  23. Ross December 30th, 2008 3:16 pm

    Anyone see Adam from Neon Genesis Evangelion? The first picture reminds me of Rei’s collapsed head.

  24. eepie January 10th, 2009 11:13 pm

    im never going to the sea again

  25. sinziu February 3rd, 2009 8:27 am

    aham sure :-@

  26. Doctor February 25th, 2009 9:34 pm

    Definitely Neon Genesis. I was thinking the same thing. But it would be Eve, not Adam. Either way, I think it looks more like the automatic Evas.

  27. Giant Stingray | forgetomori February 28th, 2009 6:47 pm

    [...] I wonder how eerie the sighting of a giant stingray may be at night. Something like a Ningen. Fortunately – at least for the faint-hearted – as far as is known, they only survive in [...]

  28. Jim March 9th, 2009 9:20 pm

    The coordinates point to africa not Japan

  29. conor March 10th, 2009 3:58 pm

    Wonderful,another thing for the japanese to kill besides killing whales and dolphins.

  30. MIKEL March 25th, 2009 3:08 pm

    I think the same Conor, they kill everything on the earth, ocean, sky.

  31. nate April 14th, 2009 2:33 pm

    it would be pretty cool if it was real and all but….anyway very interesting.

  32. Strangeman April 24th, 2009 12:30 am

    This creature shows real possibility sense we only explore 1% of the sea. If it was real it would be a great discovery. The only problem is that :what did it envole from?

  33. Sam May 20th, 2009 6:33 am

    Looks like something out of Digimon. And Eureka 7. So awesome.

  34. dxa May 29th, 2009 5:08 pm

    looks like the first angel of the evangelion series when he casues the 2nd impact

  35. hoobachan June 30th, 2009 12:49 am

    I totally agree! Evangelion was the first thing i thought when i saw it! And the second impact happened in Antarctica in 2012 xD! We are screwed!

  36. Rick June 30th, 2009 6:34 pm

    Yeah I looked up that last pic on google earth and that area is full of masses that are white, and they’re all different shapes. And that was off the coast of Namibia not Japan, plus why do they all look different? Some have arms, some don’t, some are smiling, and some look menacing….. FAKE!!

  37. big-splat July 8th, 2009 8:34 am

    creepy!

  38. Trin August 3rd, 2009 7:22 am

    to Diana (first comment)
    that is so un-consedarate i know that they are killing the dolphins and wales but thats not every single japanease person and the ningen isn’t even real you can tell that the photos are edited its really obvious.

  39. lala September 2nd, 2009 10:27 am

    it makes me think of evangelion so much it makes me laugh but thats kinda creepy. the videos were very real in my opinion. i wonder what else kind of freaky thing is out there?

  40. Dortrum October 26th, 2009 10:40 pm

    I believe this creature to be the Tektotroplasis Lucithridat It is in fact composed of human parts due to it’s replication ability. Cross reference is often made to the Salamander family in which body parts can be reproduced from new tissue growth. In this instance the newly grown limbs can mimic the objects surrounding them, this creature probably just replicated the body parts remaining from it’s human prey.

  41. becca mac November 30th, 2009 12:35 pm

    Is this for real, im doing a paper on this and it doesn’t seem for real

  42. Mori November 30th, 2009 6:48 pm

    It’s NOT real.

  43. ricardo January 8th, 2010 2:37 pm

    it’s like Adam, in neon genesis evangelion serie!!!!!

  44. elonda January 16th, 2010 7:00 pm

    this makes for a good legend although,no ones ever got a pic of them

  45. joe March 29th, 2010 10:54 pm

    The the thing in the google earth image is about 30 meters long. it is about .65 arc seconds

  46. scarylooking! August 17th, 2010 7:23 pm

    wow!!!! This looks fake, scary, and real at the same time

  47. boogeyman! September 24th, 2010 2:23 pm

    it kinda looks like it was made to be a cloverfield viral video. funny weird and creepy all at once.

  48. Justin Santos (Modern Shanahan) October 15th, 2010 9:27 am

    Believe it or not, I have my reasons to believe why this sea animal may be real. Yes it can be fake/hoax. I’m not saying I’m fooled by these pictures. I know very well that it might be fake for a lot of reason. First off, these photos might be photoshop of course since you can post any pictures on the web. Second, just because they might be photoshop, doesn’t make the animal imaginary. Third, humans are always finding new species of animals almost every year. Fourth, Okapi the animal used to be a myth a long time ago until they found one alive.

    Now they are in zoos. Fifth, a fish that was supposed to be extinct was found alive. A fish hmmm now this creature is also a sea creature. Humans don’t know all the animals that live at sea. It’s a proven fact that know what’s more on this land than whats in the sea. We never explored every inch of the sea because it’s very deep world wide and the sea covers most of the earth. Which would make it impossible.

    The sea is extremely deep. Since the sea is so big, you can’t possibly see every animal. Especially when they can swim from deep sea to the surface. Since the Okapi was once a myth. This creature can very well be real and not yet found alive. Not saying most of the Ningen photos are fake.

    There’s always a possibility that one or a few ningen photos are real. It might be one of those creatures that don’t surface that much. It’s most likely a deep sea creature. Obviously. It’s also might be endangered somehow which might be the reason it doesn’t surface that much.

    I can pick the pic with arms. I can say it’s fake because it looks like the size of a whale. The head shape kinda resembles a whale. Meaning that line on the head looks like the mouth photoshopped into a head and added arms to it. I may be wrong.
    Another thing we should always remember when it comes to unknown animals. People are the answers to why most of these animals hasn’t been caught on tape clearly and what not.

    Some people don’t care about finding an unknown animal so if they see one they might stay quite about it because to them it’s not important to talk about and which can explain why no photos as been taken of it since they didn’t care about it. Others don’t always carry cameras when they go out. They might unexpectedly somehow run into it and not having a camera to take pics or record it. A fact that some people are to embarrassed to tell people what they saw because they might be afraid they’ll be laugh at. If they had a clear footage or image of it, they may feel embarrassed to show people because they know they would be made fun of because people might say it’s fake..etc. Some stay quiet only because they fear that who ever might come and hunt it down to kill it. So they stay quite so that won’t happen.

  49. ‘Ningen’ caught on camera? - Dateline Zero October 15th, 2010 12:35 pm

    [...] to forgetomori.com: “Ningen“. Meaning literally “Human“, it’s allegedly a very large unknown animal sighted [...]

  50. RyanSoup October 21st, 2010 10:25 pm

    The second picture after the videos is from Skies of Arcadia, I do believe. Hahaha

  51. fistkick December 5th, 2010 4:51 am

    That thing IS real its been on tv youtube and I have a friend that was almost killed by it
    ps it doest look like a giant head he said it looked like a eel with arms and a head

  52. robbie December 11th, 2010 1:10 pm

    think about this. less than 10% of the worlds oceans and seas have been explored. that leaves 90% unknown

  53. SEELE 01 text only December 13th, 2010 5:03 am

    Third impact.

  54. jonny5 September 13th, 2011 1:35 am

    looks like something from the movie from the 80s called abyss

  55. Cryptozoology « Wandering American October 8th, 2011 3:52 am

    [...] the Sasquatch (bigfoot) and it’s regional variants like the Yeti, Skunk Ape and Grassman. The Japanese Ningen. The Chupacabra. A statue of the ethereal Mothman. Giant Squid. Remains of mystery sea creature, [...]

  56. JustAGuy October 8th, 2011 9:51 pm

    I wonder if they would be predatory or docile like whales?

  57. Misteri Ningen – Makhluk raksasa humanoid dari Antartika « Tambah Info January 1st, 2012 10:17 am

    [...] itu ? Atau kalian menganggapnya sebagai hoax ?  berikut adalah videonya : (pinktentacle.com, forgetomori.com) Share this:TwitterFacebookEmailPrintLinkedInStumbleUponTumblrRedditDiggLike this:LikeBe the first [...]

  58. Abdulla February 16th, 2012 5:01 am

    very interesting but dont you think that the first picture is just a giant huge guitar fish ?

  59. shadowpure April 4th, 2012 1:14 pm

    Better get the pokeballs ready!

  60. lua April 4th, 2012 10:43 pm

    I hope it isn’t fake…it wouldn’t be fun :/

  61. Animal Planet Mermaids Show Bodies Found That Create Nightmares [pictures & videos] | Z6Mag May 29th, 2012 12:34 am

    [...] Sources: pinktentacle.com/tag/paranormal/ forgetomori.com/2007/criptozoology/ningen-a-bizarre-japanese-cryptid/ [...]

  62. limonar lipas February 13th, 2013 5:13 am

    I wonder if they can also eat humans?

  63. pilopha decas February 13th, 2013 5:17 am

    Why these kinds of animals exist in these world?

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