My interview on Metropolis
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This week the Tokyo based magazine METROPOLIS published a short interview to me...
http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/803/qa.asp
Francesco Fondi
"Magazine publisher, writer and otaku"
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What was it like being an otaku in Rome?
Italy was among the first to have an anime boom, with [UFO Robot] Grendizer in 1978. Maybe ten TV channels play anime, and even older people know popular series. When I was 18, I was a techno DJ and electronic musician. There was a huge otaku influence there. Everyone was into games—even before PlayStation—and event fliers were decorated with kanji, manga and giant robots. I was writing about this techno otaku culture for magazines. Then I started working as an IT consultant for banks. I came to Japan for the first time in 1996 for a rave, Rainbow 2000 at Mt Fuji. I also came for Akihabara. From a Western perspective, it was like seeing the future.
When did you encounter dating simulator games?
I went to Dusseldorf in Germany, which has a large Japanese population, and bought Dengeki Oh, a [now defunct] gaming magazine with four pages on eroge (erotic games). I was impressed that in Japan there were games meant for adults, and the gaming culture was so advanced. After visiting Japan, in 1998 I founded Play X, the first eroge magazine outside of Japan. It was 48 pages, plus a CD-ROM. This is the mook (magazine book) format popular in Japan, and I wanted to bring it to Europe. It was published by the company behind the Italian edition of PSM, and appeared right at the peak of the PlayStation boom.
Tell us about your move to Japan.
In 1998, I went to interview Sogna, the Japanese company that was making Viper games, a series of eroge famous because they featured scenes drawn by famous animators under pseudonyms… At the meeting, I was asked if I would like to work in marketing eroge in Europe and the United States. In truth I was making too much money in IT consulting, sometimes over $1,000 a day, and I had time to run my magazine. People said I would be crazy to leave that behind, but I felt that this otaku culture was going to grow. I quit my job in Italy and started working for Hobibox (a dating simulator distributor) in Japan. It was because I was making a lot of money that I was free to choose. If you cannot choose because you make a lot of money, then you are missing the point of it.
What do you do now?
I quit Hobibox six years ago and started my own publishing company, Hobby Media, which focuses on pop culture and Japanese subculture. Our mission is to showcase Japanese culture and let people know about things not promoted abroad, especially new trends. Examples would be doujinshi (fan-produced comics), do-it-yourself electronics (and other) underground things. There is a lot of content that is interesting, but it is not products being promoted by a big company.
What is your ultimate goal?
My goal is to make otaku culture understood as culture, not a subculture. A culture, not a market. The way we interpret otaku as consumers is strange. A trip to Wonder Festival shows there are more creative people making more creative objects than anywhere else in the world. This is an otaku renaissance—cultural production on an unprecedented scale. We would not argue that the great masters and their works are not part of culture, and so we should accept otaku as such.
What is your best memory of Japan?
My first trip to Comiket. I saw half a million people supporting one another in circles of creativity. It really reminded me of the early rave days when we used to say “Support those who support your underground.”
For more information, see www.hobbymedia.it. Patrick Galbraith
