Most “pop culture” magazines today are more in the business of keeping their advertisers happy than in telling you about things that are truly worth your attention. Giant Robot is different. Started in 1994 by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong, the magazine is devoted to all forms of Asian pop culture – which, these days, has become a large part of the American cultural landscape. From its early issues as a photocopied ‘zine to its current status as a glossy magazine/ecommerce website/brick-and-mortar store, Giant Robot has stayed true to its vision of only exploring popular culture that its editors and writers believe in -- instead of just jumping on whatever’s currently being hyped. The magazine's success is directly tied to its creative integrity, which doesn’t often happen in the publishing world. We talked with Editor Eric Nakamura to find out more about the Giant Robot way of life.

How would you describe Giant Robot to someone who’s never seen the magazine before?

We just call it “Asian Pop Culture and Beyond,” so you could expect to see interviews with Asian filmmakers who may be obscure in America but who I think are masters – they’re just tomorrow’s stars, basically. I think you can read about a lot of things that come up in the future earlier in our magazine, but you can also see what’s current in art and design, including toys and animation. We write about a lot of things that are current, but we also try to keep it a little fresher, I hope. We don’t want to follow trends because those get old, so we just try to follow things we really like. Pretty much, whatever we want to put in there, we do. You’ll just have to trust us.

How did you guys originally get Giant Robot off the ground?

I actually worked for Larry Flynt – whoa! – but I really saw how magazines were being made there. It was almost like an assembly line: Two writers do a whole magazine; you have a design team that does five magazines. I saw this whole style of how they were doing it, and I realized that a ‘zine is just so much easier. It’s just stripped down, it’s photocopied, it doesn’t cost much to make. Because we had no money to make our magazine, we just started really raw and went with the photocopy type of thing. It took no money, but I think the content was original, and that caused a tiny wave of momentum. The distributors that were fans of ‘zines and pop culture picked up on it right away, and I think that’s how it got out there. But it was an uphill battle all the way – they were like, “What is this? Asian what?” People didn’t really get it at the beginning.

There was a whole ‘zine explosion type of thing about six or seven years ago, and we were part of that. We were thinking, “Wow, ‘zines – it’s great, but what’s after a ‘zine?” We kept wanting to improve. I think that was kind of the key, to keep pushing it a little – every issue we were like, “Okay, what are we going to do to improve Giant Robot this time? What is it going to be?” Every issue, we did something better. Now it’s 35 issues, so over time we figured things out – we fine-tuned how we do things to make it more economical, or how to make this thing without staying up 80 hours a week working on it. In the beginning, that’s how long it took, and now we kind of got it down to little better of a science.

Why do you think Asian pop culture is so prevalent in the U.S. now?

It didn’t just hit overnight. We watched it slowly grow. You see the Hong Kong movie actors come over and they didn’t do so well, and then you realize the movies they made in Asia were even better. Over time, you realize all these little things started growing and growing. And then all of a sudden, a movie like Crouching Tiger comes out and that’s really exciting – you’re like, “Well, it doesn’t have to be in English, and they don’t have to be acting with Mel Gibson. This can be all done in Asia in a foreign language, and it’s still awesome.” And all those movies are starting to make it here, and then they’re remaking a bunch of Asian movies that you don’t even know were Asian in the first place, like The Grudge. Some people don’t even know that’s originally a Japanese horror movie. It’s kind of like that -- it keeps expanding on itself in different ways. It’s getting bigger and bigger, but I think it’s doing the right thing: slowly getting more popular. It’s not like booming huge and then just dying. I think it boomed even bigger a few years ago, but now it’s doing the right thing – the quality is starting to come out. That’s when things last.

Has this growing popularity affected your editorial decisions on what you cover?

We’re kind of oddballs: As soon as that stuff gets too popular, we end up finding new things to cover just to keep ahead. We don’t really think of it that way, but when we start reading about it everywhere we’re like, “That’s less interesting to write about.” So we just start finding other things to write about. So every time something blows up or gets huge, then we start looking at other things to see what else is good. If anything, we work against it in some ways – we promote it, then it gets really popular, and then we start something else.

What kinds of upcoming pop-culture imports do you see making a splash here?

Everything comes in such weird waves. Like, we thought all the Hong Kong films were going to be big, and they eventually came through. And then we were looking at all the Korean and Japanese films that are underground, but they’ve just started coming out now. And then we saw the toy thing kind of happen, and that’s still climbing on itself. I can’t really predict the next exact thing, but a lot of the things we talked about actually did come out. I’m trying to think about what we’re talking about now. Some of it is about young designers, some get popular, some don’t. We try not to predict trends; we just try to write about what we really like. Once you start trying to predict, I think it’s all over – once you start missing, then you’ve done bad.

We started off doing mail order with people sending us concealed cash in envelopes with napkins and stuff like that. And then we did an ecommerce website in 1998, kind of early in the ecommerce thing. So were doing everything before we even had a retail store. But people were saying, “No retail store! Be like Amazon. Do Giant Robot, but make it like Amazon!” And we were just like, “What?! How are we gonna do that?” So we just decided, “Let’s open a retail store.” And I think that was exciting because it was our magazine but in 3D – it just made people see everything in person. I think it made a difference. In both ways it helps: the store helps the magazine, and the magazine helps the store. It kind of goes back and forth. We get so many people who come in who don’t know there’s a magazine, and then we get people who come in who just see everything and go, “Oh my God, I read about all this stuff, and here it all is.”

How did vinyl art dolls become a popular trend?

I think it started up in Hong Kong. There’s a kid there named Michael Lau who designed what looked like sort of hip-hop, but sort of designer-ish dolls. We interviewed him way back – this was like over five years ago – and we actually imported his toys. He said, “Hey, your magazine doesn’t necessarily sell stuff, but would you like to import my toys?” No one was doing it. So we were the first, and once we got those in it inspired a lot of people to decide, “Hey, we could do it, too.” A lot of American kids, even, and other Japanese kids just started making different kinds of toys. As the prices started getting high – it’s $100 sometimes for an 8-inch toy – everyone started making smaller ones. So I think that’s where it’s at now; there are a lot of small toys being produced.

It’s hard to say, it’s completely by taste. There’s a point where I think people are buying just anything. But now I think people are getting pickier and choosing what they really like. Again, that’s a good mark of quality – you start leaving aside the stuff that you realize you don’t really like, not just buying it because it’s a trend. People are getting them now because they like them, and that’s cool.

Does Giant Robot have a reputation overseas with creators of Asian pop culture?

It happens all the time: I go to Japan -- let’s say I have a meeting with a company that designs toys -- and I see Giant Robot. They don’t really speak English, but they buy it anyway because it’s out there and they realize there is some kind of cross-pollination of design and things that influence them, and vice versa. Something about our magazine resonates there, especially with the designer art toy crowd out there. That’s kind of an honor, you know? Because that’s where a lot of that stuff comes from, the things that we like, and to see that the creators are independently buying it on their own without us telling them about our magazine is kind of cool. Because they have to go to more obscure newsstands or something like that to find it – they have to actually know about it.

You’re also planning on opening a Giant Robot restaurant. What will it be like?

We have stores, but we decided that to make it a more complete experience for Giant Robot we’d offer food. I mean, we give you something to read and think about, we give you merchandise and even clothing, and now we want to be able to feed people. I think our food’s going to reflect who our audience is for Giant Robot, which is pretty mixed. So the idea is not to have Japanese food or Chinese food; we’re just going to have homemade, home-cooked, healthy American food. It’s going to have some Asian influences in there, but I think the idea is to give people something that’s wholesome and basically American, because that’s what Giant Robot is in the end. We talk about Asian things, but it’s also very American. People are always asking me what it’s going to be like, Chinese or Japanese, but I’m like, “No, our audience is so mixed that we want to try to make food for everybody, not just have it pigeonholed in one way.” It’s Giant Robot food. We’re thinking it might open in early January in West L.A.

Way back when, did you ever expect yourself to be going into all these different businesses?

No, I think I was more like, “Geez, what am I gonna do after I graduate from college?” It’s one of those kinds of things. I didn’t expect anything. I just thought I was going to get a job, which would have been fine with me too, but I ended up doing all this other kind of stuff. I learned how to be a business person along the way, but I was far from that. I was watching too much television and stuff like that, not wanting to work. But ended up doing something I was passionate about so I think I lucked out that way. I could have been totally unhappy, so it worked out.