A Magazine Gone Gonzo

On a Macintosh PowerPC in his bedroom of his parents’ Westside home, 27-year-old Eric Nakamura is having a blast, and maybe inventing a new pop subculture in the process.

But chronicling Asian American culture for his peculiar magazine, Giant Robot, probably won’t include the top 100 Asian entrepreneurs or an Anna Sui fashion spread. In an issue of GR, you’re more likely to find articles about sumo wrestling, foot binding and Asian porn.

Nakamura, who started the magazine two years ago with co-editor Martin Wong, once referred to his quirky interests as “Asian junk culture,” but ditched the label in favor of “Giant Robot culture,” after the sci-fi movie character. He’s particularly drawn to aspects of Asian culture that go unexamined elsewhere. Whatever the label, issue eight is underway, advertising is healthy, and circulation has grown to more than 10,000.

After quitting his job as an associate editor at Larry Flynt Publications, Nakamura set out to create a publication for the interests he developed while growing up in West Los Angeles. Besides collecting imported Japanese toys, he fondly remembers watching Japanese samurai movies and Bruce Lee triple features.

“I also saw Gamera movies at the Nuart as a kid,” he said. “At the time I was so into it, and the crowd would be laughing at certain scenes. I’d be asking, ‘Why are you all laughing?’ ”

Wong, 28, who works as a senior editor at McGraw Hill, developed a similar sensibility in Anaheim Hills. Manga (Japanese comics), Hong Kong films and robot toys were all a part of his childhood.

“I’d watch Japanese superhero TV shows, even though I didn’t understand Japanese,” he said. “The costumes were cool, the fighting was cool . . . but you couldn’t go to school and talk to your friends about it.”

After Nakamura and Wong met through mutual friends and started GR, their similar backgrounds, along with their love for punk music, provided a perfect springboard for their DIY (“Do It Yourself”)--and at times irreverent--approach to stories. Packed with information and written in a conversational style, GR goes where mainstream Asian American magazines won’t dare.

In a recent issue, Nakamura and Wong decided to write a survival piece about Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp Wong frequently passed en route to snowboarding trips. “We uncovered more stuff than I’ve ever read about,” Nakamura said. “Like the reservoir--we found a skate spot that no one’s ever touched! And the dump--there was garbage there from the 1920s!”

The resulting article featured action skateboarding shots and examples of tagging by “vandal Manzanar internees,” along with a more serious sidebar interview with an internee who organizes pilgrimages to the site.

“To go and skate Manzanar is such a brilliant thing,” said actress Margaret Cho, who recently began contributing to GR. “To take a horrible, painful memory and reclaim it by skating it is so punk rock--it’s so cool.”

The editors’ fascination with the obscure or unscrutinized lead to articles such as “The Sickest Asian Porn Video in the World” and a real-life account of working in malls as Hello Kitty, the popular Japanese cartoon character. Other topics have included Asian soft drinks and frozen desserts and interviews with director John Woo and actor Chow Yun-Fat.

Though GR readers say the appeal lies in the magazine’s informative yet humorous approach, some scholars believe the magazine is chronicling a larger, mainstream interest in Asian American pop culture.

“I think subcultures may have exhausted the storehouses of American pop culture to recycle,” said Steve Dubin, a sociologist at Purchase College in New York. “They may be having to look globally for pop culture--kind of like a pop culture colonialism.”

Darrell Hamamoto, an associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, was intrigued by how GR synthesized elements from Asian culture into U.S. culture. Last fall, he included GR in his list of required reading for a class.

“What I find interesting is that up to this point, we haven’t had a distinct Asian American pop culture. Giant Robot seems to be among the new, young cohorts trying to develop something along those lines.”