This post was updated Oct. 31 at 8:09 p.m.

With punk rock, Japanese candy and underground filmmakers, Giant Robot changed the world one zine at a time.

The alternative Asian and Asian American culture magazine Giant Robot is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Before gaining popularity, UCLA alumni founder Eric Nakamura and co-founder Martin Wong wrote about niche anime, Asian food and undiscovered artists as a way of exploring their underrepresented interests. The magazine’s readership soon grew to a size that the duo never expected, Wong said.

“I never thought that Giant Robot energy could explode like this,” Wong said. “It’s still changing the world through … other artists and filmmakers and people that read it back then. It’s the roots of something even bigger.”

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After graduating college in the ‘90s, the pair took over an unused garage in Sawtelle to work on their magazine, Wong said. Now, a Giant Robot store resides near where the publication first started on Sawtelle Boulevard, he added. Catering toward a small readership with no monetary reward in its early days, Wong said the project began as an evident labor of love. He said he met Nakamura through attending punk concerts with mutual friends – and often being two of only a few Asians there, the pair quickly connected over the heritage and passion that eventually fueled Giant Robot.

“We were Asian dudes with long hair going to punk shows,” Wong said. “People would actually confuse us for each other, which is kind of funny. So eventually we would have to meet, right? And then when you meet, either you become enemies, or you’re friends, and we became friends.”

With a name like Giant Robot, it’s not uncommon for readers to wonder where the title originated – unless one is familiar with 1960s Japanese sci-fi. Originally, the magazine was going to be called “Great Mazinger” after a very specific manga and anime series with the same name, Wong said. However, Nakamura changed it to “Giant Robot” on a whim – using the title as a reference to the Japanese TV show “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot,” in which a young boy uses his watch to control a gigantic robot to defeat monsters. Wong said he and Nakamura felt like the protagonist in the show – using their zine to fight “boring” culture.

Coming from a background working on zines during college, Wong said he discovered his interest in print publication early on. Studying as an English student at UCLA, his education prepared him for a long career in writing and editing – which later came to serve him in Giant Robot, he added.

Nakamura was a student in East Asian studies – a major that no longer exists at UCLA – and said his educational background unexpectedly became useful later in his career. As the founder of an Asian and Asian American magazine, he said having knowledge of Asian history from his classes allowed him to make corrections in Giant Robot where they might otherwise have slipped through the cracks.

“A lot of people said, ‘Wow, you actually used your major as a career,’ which I never thought of it that way,” Nakamura said. “But there are a lot of things that I learned that when it comes up, I’m like, ‘I know everything about it.’ … It wasn’t just some jokey pop culture thing. I knew the history behind it.”

Nakamura said one of the most rewarding aspects of working on the zine was receiving positive feedback, with some supportive subjects even becoming contributors themselves. Daniel Wu, for example – a revered Hong Kong actor and filmmaker – wrote a fan letter to Giant Robot while the zine was still small, which then developed into a pen pal relationship and eventually a partnership in the zine, as he worked as a writer for 10 years.

Today, Nakamura said he is still taken aback by the immense adoration he receives from fans claiming the publication changed their lives, which happens more often than expected. What started out as a passion project – a desire to discuss their unique interests without seeing an existing platform to do so – developed into the responsibility of upholding a culture and enthusiastic community, Wong added.

“I first found out about Giant Robot because my friend … brought some zines into the office, and I remember going over them and being like, ‘Whoa, it’s amazing,’” said Wendy Lau, a longtime designer of Giant Robot. “They had such a confidence in their voice that I hadn’t really experienced as an Asian American person growing up at the time.”

Wong said Giant Robot has developed itself in unexpected ways. He often meets readers and contributors while traveling, and he feels like their spirit is a reflection of the energy Giant Robot represents, he said.

“I see ripples echoing back from Giant Robot at the times that I least expect it.” Wong said.

[Related: UCLA cinema, media studies program challenges classical view of science fiction]

As a tribute to the zine’s 30th anniversary, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities will present a film series co-curated by Nakamura from Friday to Nov. 17. The event will feature Asian cinema classics such as “Chungking Express” on opening night and a telefilm with episodes from the zine’s title inspiration. Nakamura said he feels that each film listed encapsulates an aspect of the zine that he is proud to share in celebration of the publication.

“Community doesn’t form immediately. It takes time,” Nakamura said. “That’s a big part of what Giant Robot is, and that’s not even something I realized until more recently. So imagine, I’ve been working for 30 years, and then you realize six months ago that it’s all about community – that’s what I’ve been working on this whole time.”