This is 19 year-old Kanna Motoyoshi. She got into cosplay as a way to show her love for anime character Tieria Erde from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Not everyone was so receptive, however.
Kanna didn’t always look like this. For example, in junior high school, she weighed around 176 pounds. As the screenshot says, this is an actual pic of her from that time:
[Photo: Yaraon]
Her story recently appeared on an episode of Japanese television Za! Sekai Gyouten Nyuusu (ザ!世界仰天ニュース), or, loosely, The! World’s Amazing News. Image below via nnkaoa:
A huge fan of Tieria, she decided to go to an anime event dressed as the character. Here is a dramatic recreation of the event with an actor playing her. The show’s depiction was hardly nuanced — note the bandanas, which are a stereotypical otaku, or “geek,” trope in Japan:
[Photo: Yaraon]
At the event, Kanna was mocked, with people saying things like, “What’s that? Who are you supposed to be cosplaying as?” [Photo: /akanenene000]
Then, she looked at herself in the mirror. [Photo: Eva08Ke]
The subtitle says something like, “Just a fatty looking weird.” Eh… [Photo: Shining Finger]
And after that, she wondered if she wasn’t bringing shame to the anime character Tieria — causing people to laugh at the character. On the show’s dramatic recreation, Kanna then apologized to Tieria. Why can’t the jerks who made fun of her apologise? [Photo: mocarain]
After that, she put the character’s cards where snacks were kept because…Tieria is always watching. [Photo: Megane_89]
And the result was, according to the show, that Kanna went from 209 pounds to 99 pounds, losing over a hundred pounds. [Photo: yuikatto3414]
The show visited her at home and showed off her stomach. [Photo: Yaraon]
She seems so happy! [Photo: har10b]
Look, people should be able to do what they want. If someone wants to cosplay as a certain character, and their body (or skin colour or gender or whatever!) isn’t an exact match, who cares. They shouldn’t be made to feel bad about that.
And if somebody wants to lose a lot of weight (though, this certainly seems extreme), that’s their decision. However, they shouldn’t feel compelled to do so to meet preconceived notions that other people have or unrealistic artistic renditions. They should do it for themselves.
ザ!世界仰天ニュース [NTV]
Comments
36 responses to “Young Cosplayer Lost Over 100 Pounds After Fat Shaming”
She didn’t even look that fat.
Right?
That’s massive in Japan, though. 🙁
She was big in Japan
Haha
what.
You’re kidding right? She was definitely significantly fat before, more than ‘just a bit chubby’ by any country’s standards, let alone Japan’s. She did well to lose the weight, perhaps went a little far but she looks great now.
The show visited her and showed off her stomach? And people wonder why this kind of stuff still happens… still I guess Japan is a very different culture.
No, not very different from Western culture at all actually.
Agreed this is Western culture too, or does the biggest loser shows, womens magazines or celebrity weight loss come from Japan ?
You’re kidding right? Or maybe you don’t live in Western society where every magazine is full of slim, toned and thin people showing off their midriffs, legs and chests as much as possible. Where our actors and actresses are celebrated because they are handsome and pretty. Where kids are bullied in school for being fat and ugly. Where we laugh at the fat people on TV making fools of themselves. Where we have reality shows about morbidly obese people trying to lose weight through, quite frankly, dangerous methods (Rapid weight loss is actually not good for you). Where we are told almost every day that who you are is wrong, and you should change yourself to be more like an unattainable ideal. Japan’s got nothing on us when it comes to celebrating the perfect body. /rant
So they got an overweight actress to play being ashamed of herself in the recreation? That’s messed up.
A friend of mine somehow went from even bigger than that to even smaller than that, between high school and uni. Didn’t even really try to do it, it just kinda happened. None of us could believe it when she showed the older pictures, it’s pretty amazing 😛
Yeah, party drugs will do that to ya!
But you can never take back the effects to your skin. 🙁
Yeah you can, it just takes time. Look into something like pilates which works wonders in that sort of area. Otherwise:
http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-get-rid-of-loose-skin-after-weight-loss/
Hey, whatever motivates people to lose weight.
Well, no. “It was motivational” is never going to be an acceptable rationale for being a complete jerk to someone.
I had someone tease me and berate me at 32 years of age for not having my license, it motivated me to go and get it.
Recently, someone teased me and berated me, and my son was teased and berated over my weight. My eating has completely changed and I’m steadily losing weight and now walking at least 10 k’s a day. It’s not the nicest thing to have happen but sometimes, just sometimes that kick up the arse can change your life? If it’s helped her, then so be it. I’m not endorsing bullying but in the end, if she’s happier, good on her. She can now look forward to a life hopefully without a lot of the negative effects excessive weight can bring on, which I myself am now trying to avoid like heart disease, diabetes etc which are most assuredly more common in overweight people.
I’m in favour of ‘whatever works’, but the point that becomes useless at excusing the shaming is when it doesn’t work.
There’s a LOT of people out there who need to lose weight. Some people – a LOT of weight. They already KNOW they’re fat, they know it from the shortness of breath, the odours, the discomfort, the odd aches and pains in places they should at ages before they should.
They know it, they know they need to do something to be healthy/attractive (because being attractive DOES feel good), but they don’t have the drive to do it themselves. If an external source can inspire that, even if it’s negative? Good.
But a lot of the time, even that isn’t enough. There are some people who simply don’t have (or don’t believe they have) the strength to persist with the discipline it takes to gain significant ground in the struggle to a sustainable lifestyle. They give up. They try literally anything else. Strap-on muscle massagers, ‘diet pills’, crystals, acupuncture, whatever.
A good number of one of my circles of friends are medical professionals. GP, radiography, surgery, nursing… and these people have seen it all. Overweight people run to the medical profession to cure all the aches and pains and troubles they’re having with digestion/joints/muscles/lymph nodes/liver/blood pressure/etc, etc, etc, and the one thing they have in common is a desperate desire to find something else. Some deep, dark, immovable denial tells them: “Oh that whole line about, ‘you need to lose weight’ is just some social pressure fad thing for skinny people or superficial people who only care about looks.” As opposed to fucking medical professionals who are sick to death of hunting for some tiny, minute chance that they can find some un-related cause which might be exacerbating the conditions you have which are very readily and immediately and obviously caused (or made infinitely worse) by your obesity. I’ve known one radiographer who had to deal with the stress of finding some way to tell a patient that they were simply too fat for the scanners to get an effective reading on them because they’re configured for adult humans. And that they might have to go to a vet, or zoo. In the end, he decided he couldn’t wear the responsibility of getting sued for hurting someone’s feelings and had to get a manager to do it.
You would think that being told you cannot be treated as a human but must instead be treated as livestock or exotic animal would be enough to convince you that it is time to turn things around.
But nope… even that’s not enough for some. They’ve made the choice: this is how they will die. Despite every way their lives and the lives of the people who love them would be improved… It’s just too hard.
And if or when that happens… the shaming is not motivational. It is just kicking someone who is already down.
You’d have to be pretty damn in-touch with exactly what does and doesn’t motivate a person to be ‘justified’ in shaming tactics. And I’d wager most folks who do it… aren’t.
Sometimes, just sometimes, no matter how hard you try, no matter how little you eat, how much you exercise, how positive a mindset you maintain, how much you ignore the hatred, disgust and revulsion in the eyes of everyone you encounter, sometimes doing everything right just doesn’t fucking help.
And then people tell you that you chose it…
(this is a generalist rant rather than aimed specifically at you, you’re a champ)
In my 3 decades of experience, I’d go so far as to say that no one alive is and they’re every one of them an arsehole for trying. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to leg press half a tonne & bench press the weight of an adult man back in the days when people were more open about abusing me. Then again, probably for the best or I’d likely be in prison for GBH because after all, it’s just words…
Mrs. Quiz_b gets a lot of crap about her weight. Medical professionals sit there and berate her to the point of tears, so she feels ashamed and like she wants to punch them in the face.
Especially when they then look at her medical file and notice that she had to have a massive dose of steroids as a baby due to her asthma condition being life threatening from the moment she was born. Then they say ‘oh, right, that amount that early on damages the body’s ability to gain nutrients from food leading to people being overweight.’ Then they continue on like nothing happened.
Honestly, if we had one of those 24 hours where we’re allowed to do any crime and get away with it, I would just run around hospitals punching doctors in their faces.
You know its funny, since I stopped eating red meat (I take iron supplements now and eat a lot of kale to balance out iron deficiency, still eat a lot of chicken and fish though), and since I stopped potatos, rice, breads and most sugar? My body odour has stopped almost entirely except when I’m sweating like an absolute pig from either working out or a really hot temperature. It’s amazing the immediate effects of diet change that aren’t necessarily related to weight loss but health itself?
Good for her.
100 pounds! I hope she finds her purse!
Hooray! A victory for fat shaming! That makes all those suicides worthwhile… I’m sure…
I’ll just leave this relevant video link here
Maths is fun!!!
Help me understand your snide “maths is fun” comment here
209 to 99 = 110, which is over 100 pounds… whats the issue? Is it because he didnt write “losing 110 pounds” – in which case thats a pretty pedantic comment
It was the redundancy of it, saying either “went from 209 to 99” or “losing over 100” would have been sufficient (though the former is more exact and so preferable). There was indeed a certain measure of pedantry involved but it was linguistic rather than mathematical.
What’s a good analogy? It’s like saying “I turned on the air conditioner and not only did it make me cooler, it made me less hot as well”, totally pointless to say the second half because the first half communicated the exact same information just in different words.
What he typed was not redundant at all – in fact its completely acceptable. The first part was giving factual information about her before and after weight (209 to 99), while the second part is a completely tangible (effect) comment on the amount of weight she lost (over 100 pounds)
Your analogy was terrible however – its more like: I turned on the air conditioner (fact) and did it make me cooler (tangible effect). I had to remove ‘not only’ because in fact they were the redundant words.
i Get it, its the in thing on Kotaku for you cool kids to pick on “Bashcraft” – but you are way off the mark
Well…. I suppose that’s one up-side? It’s good that she lost the weight, but no one should have to go through that. You can argue that mean comments motivate, but you can get good results with encouragement and positive comments too – there’s no NEED to be mean.
One of the many ways in which Japan is just as fucked as western culture. Except Japan doesn’t even try to be subtle about it.
western culture tries to be subtle?
Well… compared to Japan.
Of course, Kotaku is a haven from having to see cosplayers of different sizes (despite their costume skills), only cosplayers who are physically attractive and with costume skills.
Good on her. I know people say “you should be comfortable at any weight!” but those people must either avoid or pretend to not be affected by the physical pain and the social exclusion that come with being fat. All my friends used to play sports but I couldn’t join in for more than 10 minutes without running out of breath, it sucked. I eventually started going to the gym with them and it helped a lot, finding friends to help you along with weight loss is a great way to do it if you can. Being fat sucks and if anyone you know wants to do something about it please help them in a positive way, even if it’s just getting them out of the house or teaching them to cook right or whatever.
Edit: I watched the video (94mins on), the cosplay teasing was just the last straw. She had trouble with teasing in school but also things like sweating and a family that actively over-ate. She was definitely on the path to an early grave. Her parents joined her and they lost a ton of weight too, meaning they will all live longer and happier lives now.
http://say-move.org/comeplay.php?comeid=1076766
First of all I want to say that I don’t condone bullying in any way. That disclaimer out of the way…
I think it’s fantastic that she lost that weight, she’s gonna thank herself for it so many times over the coming years. I also think that it’s fantastic that she was able to turn something that was negative into a motivation to lose the weight.
Sometimes, I think it can be needed… some people need something that shocks them into realising they need to do something about their weight. But… it’s the sorta thing that is impossible for an outsider to judge, and the sorta thing that most people who really could and should say it, won’t say because of the social stigma surrounding it. Pointing out that someone needs to lose weight for a variety of reasons is the right thing to do, for their own benefit, but definitely should never be from random nerds who choose to be arsehats towards a random stranger.
are we gonna ignore the fact that she was only 19 ???? and also the fact that they made some comedy episode out of it and aired it on tv??? I don’t even think it is right they did what they did. There is a difference huge between motivating someone and being a fuckass like they are here. Plus anime body shapes are unrealistic and dangerous to maintain. There are plenty of positive ways to motivate someone. Someone can set up an award system with positive goals without being berated if the goals aren’t met with perfection For serious though the dramatization wasn’t made to motivate her it was made to make fun of her she just happened to gain motivation to lose weight after seeing how much the world is full of assholes and she felt ashamed