An Interview
By
David Rondinelli
(Left, Ishii poses with Graham Koelbeins in Massive's clothing)
Anne Ishii is the co-editor and head translator for Massive, which is an anthology that showcases gay adult manga comics with an emphasis on the burly and massive body sizes of the men that inhabit the book. It also sheds light on the artists that create them too. These particular artists and their works have mostly existed on internet forums and websites, but it has been the aim of Massive to bring them to a wider American audience.
Hailing fromLong Beach, Ishii had aspirations of being a musician, Majoring in French and Japanese Literature with a minor in music at UC Santa Cruz, Ishii spent several years living inFrance. After tiring of the European climate she headed back to American where she attended a grad program atColumbia, but chose not to finish her MA.
Her next step was working in publishing for a Japanese publsiher called Vertical, which she feels was gratifying work. After leaving Vertical her next stop was at Asian Am, a strategic marketing company. Now, as the translator for Massive, she aims to brand the anthology by making a successful line of merchandise and goods that she would like to expand into more clothing lines and stand alone series.
Here Ishii offers a very colorful inside look at her work for Massive-Goods.com as well as what it was like getting many of these Japanese artists exposure on American shores.
David Rondinelli: Did you become a fan of this material the more you worked on this project?
Anne Ishii: Yes. It would've been impossible not to. Forget the talent level. The pool is just so extraordinarily wide and diverse in the gay comic’s universe. I mean, I may eventually get tired of my imprint on this, but I will never ever get tired of the artwork.
DR: Was there ever a time that the material became too extreme for you?
AI: It depends on how you gauge extreme-ness. In the world of fiction, I fundamentally believe nothing is off limits and I like franchising the difference between "jaw-dropping" (Human Centipede) and "cringe-worthy" (Brown Bunny), but yes, I have some boundaries, and that's why you won't see hairless minors in the book.
DR: What do you find to be the most interesting part of Massive the book and Massive-Goods.com?
AI: The fans (not just of Massive but of gay comics). Looking at our analytics, the search terms people use to find us are amazing. One of my favorites is "manga dad pussy." And the social media handles of our fans are. the. fucking. best.
(Ishii at a book reading)
DR: How long did it take you to put the book together?
AI: Massive took over two years, which is not really a benchmark for anything. It could've taken half the time but we lost our original publisher midway through production. And yet the magnitude of research and work that went into it is a real testament to Graham Kolbein's commitment to the archival significance of the work. We could easily have spent another two years on this. I mean also, I put a ton of hard work into the book but it all served several purposes, so I can't say it was just about the book. I like to think we started a marketplace.
DR: Take us through your day? What was it like translating and compiling the book?
AI: I dedicate every moment toward developing the future of the business, ideas, my personal goals. I write everything down in a very organized fashion and have an executive coach app to keep myself motivated. Two days in the week, is spent entirely toward creative work and finishing my novel and solo album. I do yoga and pilates every morning for three hours as the sun rises due east from my floor-to-ceiling windows, and I religiously take lunch breaks prepared by my private Paleo chef... is what I would tell you if I were a confident liar.
I spend too much time on social media and 90% of the rest of my day is spent emailing, bookkeeping, check-cutting, packing orders, squeezing my stomach fat hoping it will disappear if I hate it hard enough. I find it impossible to fall asleep. I am desperately attempting to fix bad insomniac habits, but as long as I stress and live in NYC that will never change. These days I am happy if I successfully compartmentalize anodyne from real problems, and I've learned to relish rather than wallow in abstract concerns like "how much longer will we be able to eat tuna without being a jerk?"
DR: How did you go about selecting the artists? Was it based completely on their style or just availability?
AI: Blend of all, really. Most of the artists featured were known quantities just waiting to be exported to the Anglophone market, and since we were setting out to introduce a genre, it was really obvious to reach out to its marquees. Style-wise we noticed certain tendencies in character design, but we tried to keep the narrative styles diversely represented.
(Ishii against Massive cover man's artwork Jiraiya)
DR: While compiling the artists, was there a work that struck you the most?
AI: I am in complete uninhibited love with Kumada Poosukeh. I can't pin it down to one piece by him, but his talent for humor is second to none, and I think humor writing is possibly the most difficult to export, so it may not translate, but I do hope more "gag comics" make it over here, and even if it's just about more Japanese readers finding his work in-language I'll consider my work done.
DR: Aside from the book, you also oversee Massive-Goods.com. What kind of products do you offer, and what are some of the new products we can expect to see in the future?
AI: Clothing is our mainstay at the store, but we also sell things like the Tenga double
hole cup and towels. It's called vertical integration... We want to do more mid-to-high fashion, and Graham is a purebred creative director killing it in that department, but if you're asking me personally, I would love to also start doing toys, and more original comics. Basically I want to create the most epic masturbating environment possible.
DR: Will you keep the book as an anthology, or do you plan to release a series on its own?
AI: We def want to do more books and have been flirting with some projects TBA. I do a fair amount of work for Gmunder Books inBerlin, who has started their own gay manga imprint of stand-alone graphic novels. More anthologies would be great.
DR: There is a large audience for women inJapanfor this type of material. Why do you think they enjoy it? What is the thinking behind it, especially if homosexuality inJapanis still not widely embraced?
AI: Tough question to answer succinctly but if there are political implications behind picking up gay porn, I don't think the women audience for male-on-male porn exists in spite of so-called intolerance but precisely because it is a statement against gender norms. That is, if women consciously acknowledge their purchases as pertinent to gay visibility to begin with.
DR: Do you think American women will be an audience with this book?
AI: We see a ton of women at our events so I think they already are?
(Fan's pose with Massive merchandise)
DR: Did you get a chance to speak to any female manga artists inJapanwho make this work that can comment on the appeal of the genre?
AI: I actually want to refer to a manga artist totally unrelated to gay manga to answer this.
Takeshi Obata, the artist behind "Death Note" and "Bakuman" (in other words, huge commercial comic’s properties with movies and tie-ins galore) was asked in an interview what was the hardest thing for him to draw and he said without missing a beat: Girls. He explained that drawing girls is really difficult because editors and publishers expect girls to always be cute, and he doesn't like drawing good-looking characters. If it were up to him, he said he'd have loads more girl characters but they'd look "weird" like his guys. Now, Obata has a huge female audience and there happens to be a sizable slash porn market of characters derived from his work (written mostly by women). So... perhaps because editors and even the marketplace hasn't allowed for different kinds of women or girl characters, it is by culture of habit that women resort to fashioning boys and men in different sexual modes, utilized as the problematic "neutral gender" because people have yet to fully embrace variations of the model girl/woman. Like, it might be easier for women to contort the male model than the female. Just an economic rationale though, and I'm avoiding answering the more problematic issue of psychology behind desire. I mean to be honest I'd rather not parse why Tagame's sadomasochistic fight club scat fest "Arena" turns me on.
Having said all that, we have indeed come across women writers of gay manga and there are great Japanese lesbian artists doing important work creating new female physiques that look nothing like Sailor Moon (sorry, girl). I can't speak to their interpretation of the market, but it should be noted there are a FUCK TON of women inNorth Americawriting gay slash fiction, too, so I don't know that women anywhere are an exception to the gay male content pool.
Follow all of Anne Ishii’s updates on Twitter here: @ill_iterate
Be sure to find more Massive merchandise at Massive-Goods.com.
