On June 28, 2024, Megan Thee Stallion released her third studio album, Megan, which predictably took off all over the internet. One song in particular among the album’s sixteen tracks made anime and manga fans everywhere perk up their ears—and that’s track seven, “Otaku Hot Girl.”
Megan Thee Stallion has never made a mystery of her love for anime and manga, so much so that she’s known for posting pictures of her cosplaying popular characters from her favorite shows and fans throw anime plushies on the stage at her concerts. She even hosted the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2024.
And as it happens pretty much every time a woman expresses a passion for something that is considered to be a hobby reserved for men—as if that’s even a thing—she has been met with some criticism among all the love and adoration, with some ignorant people accusing her of being a fake fan as if she hasn’t time and time again mentioned this particular art form in her music.
“Otaku Hot Girl” silences all those critiques in perfect Megan Thee Stallion style, with a song where anime references are an integral part of the lyrics—or better yet, the real heart of the song. So here’s a complete breakdown of them all, to truly get just how brilliant they are.
The intro and sampling
It all starts before the song even begins. The intro samples the music that plays during the mid-episode commercial breaks in Jujutsu Kaisen, one of the most popular shōnen of recent years—adapted from the manga of the same name by Gege Akutami—and also one of Megan Thee Stallion’s favorites.
There will be plenty more references to JJK throughout the song, with another one being right in the intro with a spoken bit by actor Adam McArthur, who voices the anime’s protagonist Yuki Itadori in the English dub. He reprises a line spoken by Yuuji during the first season of the show, changing it so that it doesn’t mention actress Jennifer Lawrence but “Grammy winner Megan Thee Stallion”.
“Can’t touch me like Gojo”
The chorus opens up with a line that has been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it, “Ay, can’t touch me like Gojo”. It’s yet another reference to Jujutsu Kaisen and arguably its most popular character, Satoru Gojo, known in-universe as the strongest sorcerer currently alive. To make pages and pages of explanations short, what makes Gojo so strong is his cursed technique, called Limitless, which essentially manipulates and distorts space.
Anything that approaches Gojo slows down continuously and never reaches him unless he decides he wants to be touched, and Megan Thee Stallion says that she’s exactly like him—nothing hits her unless she wants it to.
“White wig on, bitch, I’m finna go Gojo”
Satoru Gojo’s looks are iconic, with his head of white hair being immediately recognizable both on the page and on screen and his blue eyes—which hold another element of what makes him so strong, the famed Six Eyes—famously drowning all of Studio MAPPA’s animation budget, as fans like to joke.
“N- bow down when I pop out like Sukuna / Eatin’ these rap bitches, that get me booted up / Switchin’ my flow up, it feel like it’s two of us / If I let Tina out, that’s a coup de grâce”
Ryomen Sukuna is the great big villain of Jujutsu Kaisen—a sorcerer from the Heian era so strong and so ruthless that he became a cursed spirit known as the “King of Curses”. Skunk’s fame is so terrible and widespread in the jujutsu world that pretty much all characters fear him to some degree, which is what Megan Thee Stallion is evoking in the first line.
Then she continues with a reference to both the way Sukuna found himself sharing a body with Yuki Itadori—aka Yuji eating more and more of Sukuna’s cursed fingers—and also probably to what is speculated to be Sukuna’s cursed technique, which fans suspect could be something that has to do with cooking and eating food.
Finally, she also references the fact that there are indeed two people inside Yuji Itadori’s body—one being Yuji and one being Sukuna, who doesn’t come out often but wreaks some serious havoc those times he does.
“Sexy jutsu, I feel like Naruto”
Naruto is a pillar of the shōnen genre and another one that Megan Thee Stallion has previously referenced in her work. In this particular line, she’s mentioning one of the most famous abilities of the show’s protagonist Naruto Uzumaki, which he actually created himself—the sexy jutsu, with which he transforms into a beautiful woman so that he can prank or distract other men.
“Fighting demons in my head like I’m Itadori”
Back to Jujutsu Kaisen, Megan Thee Stallion is once more referencing Yuji Itadori and the fact that he shares his body—and his mental space—with Sukuna, a literal curse, who often taunts him from inside his own head.
“I’m not finna argue with a Sasuke avi”
The “avi” is an avatar, in this case of Sasuke Uchiha, another major character in Naruto whom Megan Thee Stallion has already mentioned in some of her previous songs. In this particular line, though, she is referencing how Sasuke, who is a character loved far and wide, is also particularly liked by anime elitists or newbies—the same people who question whether or not she is a real fan and with whom she has no interest discussing since she doesn’t need their approval to validate her love for anime.
“He don’t run from me / ‘Cause he wanna get caught in my domain expansion”
Probably my favorite reference of the entire song, Megan Thee Stallion is once more drawing from Jujutsu Kaisen. This time it’s the domain expansion, which is the most powerful technique a sorcerer can learn and one that very few of them, like Satoru Gojo and Sukuna, can master—the domain expansion creates a barrier that is infused with the sorcerer’s cursed technique, improving their performance and guaranteeing them a hit on their enemies as long as they stay inside the domain.
“Hoes want my technique, couldn’t be like me / With a Sasuke sharingan”
The final anime reference of the song returns to Naruto and Sasuke, who has inherited his family’s powerful eye technique, the Sharingan. This technique grants the user a wide range of abilities, which can be broadly divided into seeing other people’s chakra and copying their techniques and also hypnotise other people to do what the Sharingan user compels them to.
Since the Sharingan can’t be learned but it’s something that people usually inherit at birth, Megan Thee Stallion is using it to remark how everything about her, from her rap style to her persona, can’t be replicated—she is simply born with it.
Published: Jun 30, 2024 11:14 am