I've been obsessed with Giant Robot since high school. They were the first magazine that really seemed to "speak" to me...Asian Pop Culture. And that doesn't include rice-rockets.

It's been almost a decade since Giant Robot stormed indie bookstore shelves with their first 'zine (to the left). These days, they're overlooking 2 stores in Los Angeles, curate art shows, produce their own signature t-shirts (you 've seen em..the monkey, and Bruce Lee on the turntables!), and even publish their own books.

Editors Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong have become the go-to guys for what's going on, not only throughout Asian

youth culture, but everything cool, period. You thought Louis Vuitton was the first one to peep Murakami? Check out the Art Attack issue which came out a year before any of that happened - these cats knew what was up!

Speaking of which, over the years, I wasn't the only one GR was "speaking" to. On any given day at the GR1 or GR2 stores, you'll run into white businessman in ties, twiggy model chicks, and punk skate kids. Recently, Los Angeles Magazine even gave them mad props in a multiple-page spread.

Yup. Giant Robot has blossomed into a full-on cultural phenomenon. Here's their story through the words of Eric Nakamura.....

have no answer. We had no concept before we started...just Asian pop culture stuff that we liked..that I liked..whatever, we were just gonna put it on paper. There were no websites in 1994 really. There were, but they were really sparse. Hyptertext links, that's it. It was really rough, it was a zine. It was all just fun energy.
How did you get interested in making a 'zine, per se?
There were zines out there like ComicBust, Maximum Rock N Roll, Flipside..you see that kinda stuff and think these guys are strapped. We could use the same kind of format and do something that's not about punk rock and music only. We could do stuff about other things that we liked. The big 'zine boom thing started a couple years after we started. It was

a big zine revolution where zine publishers were getting really crummy book deals. It was hot news, but it was just a trend for a minute. But we started before that.
When did this begin?
1994. Back then, there was no Asian pop culture. It was really undefined at that time.
So what'd you concentrate on back then?
Stuff that I liked. First issue had my friend who was an underground filmmaker, Jon Moritsugu. I thought he was really cool. That punk rock band, The Boredoms. They were really awesome at that time. Just whatever we liked. We were into robot live action shows .. anime .. shows from the 70s.

Kung Fu films. We were tripping out on all that stuff at that time. We were always into that stuff even before that but we never had the power to put it into a zine. This was before I knew how to use a computer. I didn't even know how to type at that time. It was 94, it was just raw. Quark? Macs? WE didn't know what Quark was and we didn't have a Mac. Beginning it was finding someone who had a computer who could type it for us. Here's the text, just cut it out and try to make it fit.

You and Martin alone worked on this?

In the end, it al took place in my bedroom, my parents' house. Took over my parents' house.

How was the response? Where did you distribute it?
First issues were taking it to record stores, bookstores, you could kinda tell they had some indie vibe to them, so you'd just ask them "Would you carry this?" It was kinda humbling because a lot of times they would just say "No" and you're just carrying it and saying "Fuck, all this work and no…" but eventually people started taking it and liking it and we started getting letters. Then I sent it to Tower who used to carry zines, and still do, and they were interested in it, and right away they said they would take 300 and so we were like "Whoa, that's a lot." From there it kinda grew. Next issue was the same way. Just had more distributors. The whole zine

Big Robots. American robots are...humans control these robots. Automatrons that clean your house or mow your lawn. The ones in Japan are always massive, right? Fifty stories tall, blowing things up, fighting, you know what I mean? Sometimes they were controlled by humans but sometimes they weren't. Kinda interesting. In America, robots are 4 feet tall and R2D2.

Short Circuit!

Exactly. Japan had a better concept of robots at that time.

What has changed in terms of Asian pop culture?

Asian pop culture had its time about 3 or 4 years ago, where all of a sudden Jackie Chan started coming to America, Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li was on his way. Now it's kinda blown over. It was hot for a second, articles in Time Magazine, LA Times.

Did you get hit up a lot during this time?

Everywhere. All the time. They were asking us ridiculous questions. What is this? The whole time we were saying, "Man, you're not gonna be writing about this a year from now. This is a trend." We were about longevity..we wanna be

around 20 years from now. And there are these Asian pop culture things that people look at as trends and some are...they're not here to stay. I kinda look at it that way, that it's always changing but for us it's whatever we wanna put in our magazine. But media-wise, its always been bad.
Any time someone writes an article about it, it's kinda bad. But it happens, it feels like, every year or every other year, where all of a sudden we'll get hit up by Time Magazine Asia, stuff like that.

You had a nice write-up in Los Angeles magazine.

That was REALLY nice, that was more about

our magazine than Asian pop culture. IT was really nice. It was huge, couldn't believe it. That article was way long and he said really nice stuff about us. At the same time, there have been articles that long on Aisan pop culture and usually theyre bad, inaccurate, or something..not cool. But we get hit up a lot. I always give the same answers.

Like what?

I can't really help them, ya know? I just tell them the same things..it's just a trend, I tell them the truth. You wanna know about Pokemon? In two years you won't care about Pokemon. It's a trend, not a cultural thing that

will last. They wanna know about anime all the time. I'm like, "Anime's cool I guess..there's a lot of it!"

Where is Asian pop culture at right now, specifically?

I don't know..I don't think you'll read about it in too many places anymore…it's been exhausted ..the topic's over. I think Asian pop culture, basically, is back to Asia. The cool stuff is coming out of Asia, Hong Kong. There's a lot of cool stuff that's getting done..the toys, shoes, all the limited edition weird stuff. Kubrick. I always thought it was cool but now it's one of the only things still standing. All the actors are burned out. There

.

are good horror stories from Asia. The Ring is an example but there are even more that aren't even here out

The Eye.

The Eye is good. They're making the Eye 2... sounds like it's gonna be good. I think there's a lot of stuff out there still coming. Horror movies are a good example. That's right now. But who knows.. in 2 years, it'll probably be something else. There are movies in Thailand, Korea, that are popular right now. A little bit of India. Three years ago, no one gave a shit about Korean movies. Now, it's like action movies from Korea are like "Whoa, watch those." In terms of what we see in America, it's limited. You gotta really

search. It gets harder and harder. As all the big stars, Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan get big..all the underground stuff... people don't know about it because they're too busy looking at that. That's how it is for everything, not just Asian pop culture. Mainstream culture puts up a big front and it's up to you to go under that.

What'd you think of "Better Luck Tomorrow"?

I really liked it! That would be Asian American pop culture I guess. I lump it all together. I liked it a lot. I saw it early at a Cast and Crew screening and thought it was really special and a year later it's doing pretty well. I think the good thing about it is that although it has an All-Asian cast...

[ A return to ROOTS! Pick up Robot Power, Giant Robot's throwback 'zine to the glory days! ]

American magazines go out of business ..they have nothing really solid to write about, they only have bad stuff to write about.

It seems like a lot of Asian pop culture right now..what you're focusing on are Asian artists?

I think people are paying attention to graphics now. Ten years ago, even five yars ago, there was less space for independent artist kids who graduated college, or who didn't go to college, making a living doing art. That's a new thing, I think. I think there's enough space for it now…for a bunch of kids to like, make art. If they're good, they can make a living at it now. That's an important thing, that people are paying attention to graphics. It's a

way of communication, kinda. Everyone's wearing t-shirts, but people are more savvy about it. People are raising the bar on graphics all the time. Even big companies, like Nike, are doing all this stuff with artists now. They're seeing the value of good graphics, good art…