by Jaya Gupta ’25
February 14, 2025
It seemed that K-pop’s downfall was inevitable after a grim 2024, but Megan Thee Stallion might end up being the knight in shining armor to bring it back again.
Netizens are speculating that Megan Thee Stallion’s rise in attention to the East Asian pop culture community might just be a phase or a popularity stunt, however, she has been an open and avid member of the anime community since 2020. She’s cosplayed various characters from various shows, posting pictures on her social media platforms that boosted her popularity in the anime community. One of her cosplays, from an anime called My Hero Academia, was noticed by the original artist of the character. He even used her cosplay photos as reference for drawings of the character later.
More recently, Megan has been incorporating her interests into her music collaborations as well. In July 2024, Megan released “Mamushi” with Japanese rapper Yuki Chiba. The song’s lyrics are partially in Japanese, and Megan assured online that Chiba helped teach her the pronunciation of the lyrics so that she could properly represent the language. The song, paired with a trendy dance, went viral on social media in all communities including the anime community and the native Japanese community. Megan and Chiba even performed the song at the VMAs in September. In October, Megan released a remix of “Mamushi” with the most famous third generation K-pop girl group TWICE. This extended the reach of the song’s popularity to the K-pop community as well, making the song more successful.
Following the release of “Mamushi” as a single, Megan released her album Megan which included the track titled “Otaku Hot Girl.” Otaku is the Japanese phrase commonly used to label a “fangirl” or a “stan” of something, specifically anime.
For context, Megan has cosplayed as multiple characters from the hit anime Jujutsu Kaisen in the past years. The main character, Itadori Yuji, is dubbed in English by voice actor Adam McArthur, who posted a fanservice TikTok in 2021 rerecording an iconic line from the show, where Yuji describes his ideal type of woman. He replaces the name Jennifer Lawrence with “Grammy-winner Megan Thee Stallion.” The clip was spread through the anime community, and blew up when Megan added it as the intro to “Otaku Hot Girl.”
Additionally, the lyrics are about Jujutsu Kaisen, specifically the “infinity” ability of the character Satoru Gojo, which makes it impossible for people to touch him: “Can’t touch me, like Gojo / Look good in all my photos.” She references other popular characters from Jujutsu Kaisen and Naruto, as well as uses some Japanese phrases, further appealing to her Japanese and anime-fan audiences.
Also in September, Megan released “Neva Play” with RM of BTS. In part because BTS has been on hiatus for over a year to complete their military service, the BTS and greater K-pop fandoms were eager to promote activity from the group’s leader. The song’s catchy rhythm made fans jump on it to make edits of their favorite characters and idols to mirror the collaborators’ excellent musical chemistry. RM even raps in the song, “Me and Megan on the way / For Asia, man, we paved the way,” comparing Megan’s impact in popularizing East Asian pop culture among her fans to the infiltration of BTS in Western culture.
Megan most recently made a splash in the K-pop community with her feature on TWICE’s title track “Strategy.” Although the lyrics of Megan’s feature don’t match TWICE’s concept per se, fans still support the collaboration and hope that Megan can continue interacting and working with K-pop artists.
This might come sooner than fans could have hoped, since Megan recently announced her starring role in the competition series “KPOPPED” with Apple TV. Her co-star is none other than PSY, the singer of “Gangnam Style” and arguably the most famous man in K-pop. The release date hasn’t been announced yet, but K-pop fans are already buzzing with excitement from the prospect of new Western exposure to K-pop culture.
And it’s all thanks to Grammy-winner Megan Thee Stallion.
