10 Times Megan Thee Stallion Proved She's The Anime Queen

Welcome to the Hall of Fame of cosplays. When it comes to transforming into an anime character, Megan doesn’t always wait until Halloween to ace her rendition. Take her nod to Jujutsu Kaisen’s main villain Sukuna, whom she cosplayed in July 2023. The rapper kept it simple yet accurate, matching Sukuna’s pastel pink hair and facial markings.

Now, here’s a taste of Megan’s Halloween cosplays. Last October, the rapper tapped into her inner Death the Kid from Soul Eater.

There are several anime openings that are too good to skip. Samurai Champloo’s “Battle Cry,” Shiki’s “Kuchizuke,” Demon Slayer’s “Gurenge,” Psycho Pass’ “Abnormalize,” JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s “Sono Chi no Sadame,” every variation of Hunter x Hunter’s “Departure” — the list is endless.

However, there’s one classic that will always belong in the top five of that discussion: Yu Yu Hakusho’s “Smile.” Even Megan’s aware of that non-debatable take, as she shared on X (formerly known as Twitter) that it’s her favorite musical opening. She doubled down on that stance in September 2023, when she danced along to the anthem on TikTok.

Welcome to the land of Kakeguiri — it can get a bit... interesting. The series follows a group of students at Hyakkaou Private Academy who are being ranked by their gambling skills. (If Kakeguiri’s storyline doesn’t intrigue you, the first season’s opening song certainly will.) Keeping true to her iconic cosplays, Megan transformed into the show’s main character, Yumeko Jabami, for Halloween in October 2020.

It’s euphoric to see traces of ourselves in our favorite characters, and Megan embraced her own connection to Izuku Midoriya (also known as Deku) of My Hero Academia. In the show’s beginning, Midoriya was a normal teenager who wanted to become a known hero. That dream seemed out of reach, considering he wasn’t born with the Quirk that would help elevate him to heroic status.

He soon obtains a Quirk from his favorite hero, All Might, and he spends the first two seasons adjusting to its power. With that journey came a handful of inner self-doubt monologues, and Midoriya was forced to retire that optimism — which came from his other classmates, as well — in order to become the hero he aspired to be.

Midoriya’s evolution resonated with Megan, and she elaborated on that admiration in a December 2020 interview with Amazon Music. “In My Hero Academia, you get to see Midoriya go from a bunch of ‘no, no, no’s to being the baddest b*tch. I feel like that applies to my life,” she said. “You know, sometimes you gotta hear a lot of ‘no’s and it only makes you go harder to be the best.”

As mentioned, Megan’s soft spot for anime is well-documented on social media. With that said, it wasn’t long until she had to answer a tough question: Which series was her absolute favorite? In November 2023, GQ asked her to rank five heavy hitters she’s gushed about in the past: My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, Hunter x Hunter, Black Clover and Jujutsu Kaisen.

“You know all of my favorite ones. They’re all number one,” Megan said, before she tried ranking them in order. The rapper became tongue-tied halfway through, her list changing a few times before she playfully gave up. “Damn, they’re all good. That’s a bad question!”

This isn’t the first time she’s talked about anime to GQ. In a November 2020 episode of their “Actually Me” series, Megan revealed she loved Bleach, Naruto, Soul Eater, and a few of the aforementioned shows. We love an anime queen with taste.

Clearly, the My Hero Academia universe sits high in Megan’s viewing list. With that said, it made sense that she tipped her crown to two of the series’ most tenacious characters: Todoroki and Mirko. In the August 2019 cover of Paper Magazine, the rapper embraced Todoroki’s signature two-tone fire red and ice white hair. Then, three years later, she transformed into Mirko’s quirk as a Rabbit Hero for Halloween.

Hot take: Half-demons (and the occasional white-haired jujutsu sorcerer) will always have anime viewers, including Megan, in a chokehold. In an April 2020 interview with Crunchyroll, Megan shared that Inyuasha is her favorite character in the self-titled series.

“Inyuasha is fine. He’s a cutie,” she said. “He’s such a bad*ss. I love how he was a real softie for his women, but I really didn’t like how he was going back and forth with [them]. But... it be like that sometimes.”

Elsewhere, she revealed the nostalgic series was the “first anime she ever watched.” She first saw it when it used to heavily air on Toonami, a late-night block on Adult Swim that mostly showed anime.

Another year, another memorable cosplay. In August 2022, Megan performed at the Summer Sonic festival in Japan in her most iconic outfit yet: a Sailor Moon-inspired schoolgirl uniform. That’s not all, though. That same month, she also visited an exhibition for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, aptly dripped in a purple two-piece reminiscent of the JoJo lineage. It’s all in the details.

While Megan’s detailed cosplays are gorgeous, it’s time to give her lyrical odes to the anime-verse its 10s. The rapper has compared her natural charisma to multiple characters, ranging from nostalgic saiyans to one-eyed ghouls.

On 2019’s “Running Up Freestyle,” Megan warned listeners of her power. “When I switch my hair to blonde, I’m finna turn up like Goku,” she spat, referencing the Dragon Ball fighter’s different forms. On her 2020 Good News single, “Girls In The Hood,” she flexed her love for Naruto’s Sasuke. And recently, she seems to be entering Tokyo Ghoul’s ravenous whelm.

In February, Megan shared a post of her wearing an all-white gown with red flowers on Instagram. Many fans noticed the colors resembled the red and white spider lilies from Tokyo Ghoul, which symbolized the death of the main character’s (Ken Kaneki) past self as a human to a now demon.

So, while Megan may be transforming for her new era, she’s clearly not leaving her love of anime behind.