There was a time when anime was something you were teased and bullied for watching. For a lot of people back in the day, it was lame and exclusively for nerds. However, nowadays, watching anime has become one of the most normalized pieces of media you could consume. It helped when stars like The Weeknd and Megan Thee Stallion acted as ambassadors for the medium, removing the stigma entirely. They weren’t uncool, so anime was officially cool.
For the XO crooner in particular, anime was actually a pretty pivotal part of his origin. In a statement for Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards, where he’s to present Anime of the Year, he shared his connection to the medium. It affected everything in his life, even his earliest crush.
“When I was first introduced to anime, I was a child. Sailor Moon was one of my first crushes,” The Weeknd admitted. “Goku, my first imaginary sparring partner, and ‘One More Time’ by Daft Punk was a song and music video I couldn’t get out of my head.”
The Weeknd Shares How Anime Impacted His Love Life and His Music Career
However, once he became a teenager, his relationship with anime grew even stronger. “One specific anime changed me forever and became part of the fabric of my early career: Samurai Champloo by Shinichirō Watanabe. It was the first time I experienced two of my favorite mediums—anime and hip hop,” The Weeknd continued in the statement. “Blending so seamlessly that it completely reshaped the way I watched film and listened to music. The fusion of a samurai story told with auteur precision, paired with the sounds of Nujabes, Fat Jon, and Force of Nature, was nothing short of transformative.”
Additionally, Samurai Champloo was so fundamental to The Weeknd that it inspired much of his classic debut mixtape, House of Balloons. “The Morning,” “Glass Table Girls,” and “Loft Music” were all written with Nujabes instrumentals initially. “Without Watanabe and Nujabes, House of Balloons simply wouldn’t exist,” he stressed.
“Samurai Champloo opened my eyes to a more mature world of anime and helped shape my visual DNA. The works of Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, and Katsuhiro Otomo became foundational to the look and feel of The Weeknd,” Abel Tesfaye added. “So it’s safe to say I wouldn’t be here without anime. It’s an honor to celebrate the artists behind it and a medium that continues to inspire the world.”
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