Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture
Eric Nakamura, ed.
Drawn & Quarterly
October 2024
Identity in the United States (and some will argue, elsewhere, too) is a fraught labyrinth. These days, seemingly at every turn in America, you must negotiate who you are and where you fit in the “melting pot”.
Over 13 years since it ceased publication, the magazine Giant Robot stands as an indelible force in the American melting pot of popular culture. Our media wasn’t always this diverse. Giant Robot was created during a time in US history when representation of Asian Americans was problematic, if not scant, in American media. When there was representation outside of Bruce Lee and a few others, it was relegated to Asian stereotypes. Giant Robot was created by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong in Los Angeles in 1994. Driven by a punk ethos and according to Nakamura, the small zine “encapsulated the passion and energy of what excited my small world of friends”.
In the 1990s, Hong Kong and Japanese cultural exports were popular around the globe, having markets as far as Latin America, where I was first exposed to them. Domestically, in the US, Asian American communities were vibrant. Giant Robot‘s legacy helps young readers in the US to appreciate these and many other rich cultures. In her introductory essay, comedian and actress Margaret Cho writes, “I think that I wanted Giant Robot to exist for my entire life. Maybe because I was constantly looking for proof of my own existence.” Indeed, the magazine’s influence is, well, giant.
The newly published collection Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture is essential for those who missed the magazine in its heyday. This book encompasses a lot of history. Read it to glimpse what made Giant Robot such a force and how it influenced generations of readers and artists.
This beautifully presented book is edited by Nakamura and Drawn & Quarterly’s Francine Yulo, Tracy Hurren, Megan Tan, and Tom Devlin. The magazine published 68 issues between 1994 to 2011. At over four hundred pages, this book collects some of “the best” articles published in Giant Robot. In Nakamura’s words, at its height of popularity, “You’d see [Giant Robot] next to Vogue or National Geographic. In the 2000s, Giant Robot shops with gallery spaces opened in LA, SF, and NY…” Giant Robot‘s success can’t be overstated.
Designed by Megan Tan and Tracey Hurren, Giant Robot combines the varied art and layouts throughout the magazine’s history into this volume. Walls of text, an assortment of photographs, original illustrations, and graphic design layer every page. It’s as pleasant to look out as it is fun to read.
This omnibus includes new archival photographs and two introduction essays from longtime Giant Robot contributors Claudine Ko and Nakamura. It is divided into sections covering “Identity“, “Comics and Manga”, “Food”, “Fashion”, “Media”, and the arts more broadly. Additional essays by the magazine’s fans, all showing their appreciation for Giant Robot, are also included.
Giant Robot is also a look into a bygone era of popular culture journalism. Reading through this omnibus, one understands how – with style and a bit of irreverence – Nakamura, Wong, and company built a consensus around the concept that “Asian is cool.”
There are moments of Gonzo journalism in articles like “Sumida River Blues” by Nakamura. He interviews and documents the makeshift dwellings of homeless Japanese. In the haunting “Return to Manzanar” Wong and Nakamura controversially skate in the former concentration camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the Second World War. “Just about all that’s left are cement foundations, some plumbing, and the cold, dry, and dusty wind. This would be a shitty place to live, even without 8 guard towers and the military police armed with 21 rifles, 6 machine guns, 21 submachine guns, and orders to shoot to kill anyone who tried to escape.”
On a lighter note, in “Chinatown”, Wong and Ko explore three Chinatowns US cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City “to bring you the best and the worst of each place”. Ko concludes that the NYC Chinatown “does not fuck around”. There is a lot here, including gems like “Pikachu is nothing but a prize rooster in electric-yellow drag,” courtesy of actor Gabe Soira in an article about Pokémon.
Most articles are interviews with an eclectic mix of artists and individuals. Giant Robot is a treasure trove of archival interviews. From film legends Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeah, Wong-Kar Wai, and John Woo to animator Hayao Miyazaki to Yoko Ono and writer Haruki Murakami, Giant Robot provided a place to read about artists shaping 20th-century art. Today, many of those artists are revered by US cultural institutions.
There are also unexpected pieces on Sun-Min Kim and David Horvath, creators of the plush toys Uglydolls, which inspired Kelly Asbury’s 2019 animated film of the same name. Karen O of the seminal New York City band Yeah Yeah Yeahs is also profiled. There are even interviews with a Japanese male host of a drinking establishment whose patrons are women and with bento box lunch chef Makiko Ogawa.
Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture is a celebration. This volume preserves much of what made it special. It doesn’t include all the magazine’s articles. However, the new material included in this massive book—the interviews, archival photographs, and reflections—combined with its curation of older material makes it a must for fans of Giant Robot and pop culture aficionados.