‘Giant Robot’ looms large

A new compilation reflects the pop culture zine’s influence years after its final issue

A new compilation samples what “Giant Robot” was publishing 30 years ago from an Asian American pop culture perspective.

Founders Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong display a copy of “Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture” at San Diego Comic-Con in July. “Giant Robot” began as a zine in 1994. PHOTOS COURTESY OF DRAWN & QUARTERLY

A “Giant Robot” spread details an account of visiting the World War II internment camp site for Japanese Americans at Manzanar in the Eastern Sierra.

Where can you get Giant Robot’s kind of copy today? “You just find bits and pieces on social media. And, it’s very neutered,” Nakamura says.

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By Liz Ohanesian

Correspondent

As Eric Nakamura has been going out to promote “Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture,” the 400-plus page hardcover compilation of articles that ran in the turn-of-the-millennium magazine, one question has come up often.

Where can readers now find the kind of stories that Giant Robot told in the 1990s and 2000s?

The short answer is, you can’t.

“It’s not in one place; that’s impossible. You just find bits and pieces on social media. That’s all it is,” says L.A.-based Nakamura on a recent video call. “And, it’s very neutered.”

(Nakamura and Giant Robot co-founder Martin Wong will appear with George Chen at the Los Angeles Public Library at 2 p.m. today as part of the L.A. Made Presents series.)

In 1994, Nakamura started Giant Robot as a zine, a DIY effort made with the help of friends who contributed articles and helped staple together the initial run of issues.

“I was looking at other magazines out there and thinking, wow, I don’t have the budget for that, but I can make a zine as thick as a magazine,” he recalls. “That was kind of the idea, making something as bold and thick. I think the first Giant Robot was 68 pages. It was actually pretty substantial.”

As the popularity of these homemade magazines grew in the middle of the 1990s, so did Giant Robot’s profile. Early on, copies landed in the racks at Tower Records. “They could take you international because there were Towers overseas,” Nakamura recalls, surmising that Tower might have been the only place where one could find Giant Robot in Japan.

And the magazine itself grew in both production value — from photocopied, black-and-white pages to slick full color — and scope of content. With a focus on Asian and Asian American pop culture and a punk rock attitude, Giant Robot was unique, even among the slew of independent publications that emerged from the era.

Today, you could easily rattle off a litany of names who were championed by Giant Robot before mainstream U.S. outlets caught on, like the artists Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, author Haruki Murakami and director Taika Waititi.

Giant Robot became a source for a wide range of subjects, from Hong Kong action films to anime to indie rock to art.

“We were just fans,” says Nakamura. “I think it all comes from being a fan of something, and I think that having a magazine was sort of a license to be this superfan.”

Plus, stories on travel, food and history often appeared in Giant Robot, always with a point of view that was unique among the publications of its time.

“It was always just from a different perspective,” Nakamura says. “I guess Giant Robot was technically a job, but it was always more than a job.

“It was seriously curation by just our personal interests and I think that’s one thing that’s different about the magazine — the constant evolution of our interests.”

For those who read Giant Robot during its initial run who return to it now, it’s clear that the magazine’s appeal wasn’t just the subjects covered, but how they were covered.

The travel pieces weren’t just lists of so-called hidden gems, and the food stories weren’t designed to make a hole-in-the-wall restaurant go viral. The writing was honest — blunt, even — and if something smelled off-putting, Giant Robot writers would tell you.

That’s not how things are done in the age of influencers, when what’s pushed to the top of your recommendations is designed to be aspirational, not real.

“Things don’t smell,” Nakamura says of what’s left out of today’s content. “They might not tell the exact truth. If they do, then it’s probably a less popular TikTok. The pretty ones are more popular.”

As a result, Giant Robot influenced culture as much as it covered it.

“I always felt like I was on the outside of that culture looking in because I was just a fan and in the moment doing things,” says Nakamura. “It’s hard to imagine that I was part of a culture doing that. I always feel like I was on the outside of it looking in and making a magazine that was looking at it and studying it, but not really in it. But I think we were in it too.”

The final issue of Giant Robot hit the streets in 2011, but the magazine’s ethos continues. Nakamura still operates the Giant Robot store and art gallery GR2, both located on Sawtelle in West Los Angeles.

“For me, doing the shops was just as vital for me as doing the magazine. It’s just as fun and I still am the buyer, so I am picking all of the products. I curate a lot of the art shows and I keep the ball rolling there,” says Nakamura.

“I think Giant Robot, in that way, continues on because it’s part of the vision I have and it evolves over time,” says Nakamura. “To this day, it keeps evolving. I find that I might be interested in something different and the things in the store will change just a little bit, but the store is still kind of in my image.”

In recent years, interest in the magazine has renewed. PBS’ “Artbound” ran a documentary on Giant Robot in 2022.

Lately, though, people have been asking Nakamura if he would bring back the magazine. It’s something that he considered even prior to the release of the book.

“A few times a week, I think about it,” he says. “It just pops into my head all the time. It’s just a matter of doing it.”