After Stepping Down From Tesla, Elon Musk Shares Love For Anime; Plans To Build Giant Robot

Elon Musk has had his recent share of bad luck and predicaments from a certain lawsuit from a British diver to being asked to step down as CEO of Tesla, his own company, after making a disastrous marijuana reference for his girlfriend. So how does he deal with stress? Apparently, he watches anime too, like a lot of millennials out there.

During a rather ordinary afternoon on October 14, Musk tweeted a trailer for the award-winning anime film “Your Name” with the caption saying he loved it. Fitting, since that anime has a lot of time-traveling tropes which it successfully combined with romance. Here’s the exact tweet:

Love Your Namehttps://t.co/fRU7nTWnML

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2018

It wasn’t long before other anime fans took notice and started asking him some hardcore anime initiation questions such as whether he has seen some Hayao Miyazaki films, and apparently, he has, meaning he passed the test:

@elonmusk thoughts on spirited away?

— STEPHANIE L. JACKSON (@StephanieeeeeJ) October 14, 2018

Great. Also love Princess Mononoke.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2018

Then someone called him “weeblon musk,” as an amalgamation of Musk’s name and the word weeaboo, which is a situationally derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture. But then Musk corrected him with “Elon-chan” as a Japanese way of referring to children, close friends, or lovers.

weeblon musk

— spicy boy (@shawnwasabi) October 14, 2018

<ahem> Elon-chan

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2018

But what really made the Twitter discussion productive was when someone asked Musk if he has watched “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” an anime about psychologically disturbed teenagers piloting giant “mecha” robots. Surprise, surprise, Musk has seen it and even jokingly(?) plans to build a giant robot (mecha) himself, presumably modeled after Evangelion Units.