Advertisement

Grady: Even at that point, it was a fan scanlation website. Around that same time, a large publisher in Japan sent me an email requesting a takedown. We’ve taken notice of you since people in Japan are using Fakku. It was a strongly-worded legal threat. I replied, saying, Hey we took all your content down. This was never about piracy. It was always about bringing a bigger audience to you and to the audience. Total shot in the dark, I said, Hey, instead of taking this scorched earth approach to your fans overseas, where they can’t read any of this stuff, you have all these fans around the world who want to read all this content. It’s not about hurting the artists. It’s about wanting to read and consume more content. They joined up with us and we negotiated a big publishing deal. A few months later, we announced it and, later that year, we published it. That was 2014.

It really was just me saying, Fuck it, you only live once, let’s see. I flew out to Japan to meet the big company and a bunch of Japanese execs and artists. We signed probably the best publishing deal in regards to what we’re able to do for any publisher outside Japan.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: What makes it the best?

Grady: Around 1.5 years ago, we went premium-only. We have a subscription. So, in Japan, they have Shonen Jump and all these super popular manga magazines, and they have the same thing for hentai. Every month, you can buy the latest issue of various hentai magazines. There are maybe 10-15 really actives ones. Now, we’re simul-publishing four of them. The same day they’re made available to customers in Japan, they’re made available to users on Fakku in English. Convincing the Japanese publisher to give us access to the work ahead of the Japanese street date is incredible. We can release it completely uncensored.

Advertisement

On top of that, paperback books and digital releases are DRM-free. It sounds like a marketing thing, but it’s such a big deal. I don’t want people to pirate our books, but we make it incredibly easy for people to pirate the books.

D’Anastasio: Who translates the manga now that Fakku isn’t technically scanlating?

Advertisement

Grady: The team has grown. We have 20 full-time employees, three to four translators and 10 editors. They’re working constantly.

Fakku’s release party for Legend of Overfiend with Toshio Maeda, hosted at Floating World Comic in Portland, OR.
Fakku’s release party for Legend of Overfiend with Toshio Maeda, hosted at Floating World Comic in Portland, OR.
Advertisement

D’Anastasio: Damn, that is an amazing deal. What’s your defense of scanlating, though?

Grady: I think scanlation fan-subbing has been a net positive for the most part. But I think the entire purpose of fan-subbing is for it to stop existing. As a scanlator, you don’t wanna do it. You want to do it until the official thing is out. I think it’s awesome we’re at a point now with anime and manga where fan-subbing is going away and we get official stuff right away.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: So, back to Fakku going premium-only. It pissed off a lot of people. Some even said you were betraying the hentai community, which, you know, loves free hentai. How do you respond to them?

Advertisement

Grady: That’s something I’ve heard before. I think all the content we release is worth the price of the subscription or the book. If we did have a free tier, we’d be reliant on advertisers. I know Crunchyroll deals with this a lot, too. You sort of have to accommodate the advertisers as well as the users. I don’t like the idea of being beholden to an ad company. A lot of people see it as us turning our backs on the community, but even a larger part of the community has embraced it.

I get to go meet these artists in Japan. I’ve gone out drinking with countless ones. They think all foreigners are pirates, and I want to change that perception. These artists have names. There’s one named Bosshi we publish. He’s in Japan. He types his name into Google and the entire first page is just pirated copies of his works. His website or Twitter aren’t on the front page. That may have changed now because we actually protect him. Hearing that from the artist was like…. Woah.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: On the topic of hentai itself, I’m curious whether you think there’s an emotional difference between real porn and hentai, in terms of how people consume it. Some people say they feel more comfortable watching illustrated men and women do things than if a real person was doing them. Their inhibitions as viewers are lower. What do you think?

Grady: I think it’s like that with comics in general. I don’t view Fakku as a pornography company. I don’t view the work we put out as pornography, like, “I delivered you this pizza, how do I pay you?” To me, that’s pornography. I view what we’re doing as publishing comics for adults. I have an expectation of our readers and they have an expectation of us where we all act like adults. We publish these works saying, Hey, not everything we publish is gonna make you happy. Sometimes we’ll publish something that makes people sad or uncomfortable or elated. I’m viewing comics as a medium of creative expression. I want to be able to publish everything. I don’t want to censor an artist in Japan or America.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: Hm, I see what you’re saying, but I’m looking at Fakku’s front page right now. It’s definitely hentai.

Grady: I certainly hear that. To me, it’s all art. It falls under that umbrella. Obviously, we publish pornography. A lot of the time the stories we publish have an emotional impact outside of just masturbating. I’ve gotten to that point. I read a comic and I get sad or happy or jealous or involved with the characters. I think that exists in this medium of adult entertainment and doesn’t exist in mainstream pornography. Granted, I don’t seek out normal pornography with storylines. I’m sure it exists, but I don’t know if it has the same impact as a story you’d read on Fakku.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: I’m curious, though, how do you respond to people who might say some of things on your site are truly wretched, like rape, or sex scenes with “18-year-old” girls who appear much younger? It’s stuff people aren’t comfortable seeing a human do, but are into seeing animated people do.

Grady: With BDSM, people prefer hentai a lot. That’s a genre where people say they straight up prefer hentai.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: Is there anything on Fakku you’re uncomfortable with?

Grady: We published a book called Metamorphosis. It’s the story of this girl’s downfall and drug use and sex life. It is a story that fills you with sadness. That’s the point of the story. I wouldn’t get off to a book like that. I felt sadness for this character. The title of the book is a reference to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, with the dude who turns into the bug. There are stories that make you uncomfortable. I like having my views challenged. I’m actually a super vanilla guy. I like romantic stories.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: Right, but I don’t know if you really answered my question. Are you comfortable publishing hentai manga, for example, about about girls who aren’t 18?

Jacob Grady helping to launch Toshio Maeda’s kickstarter
Jacob Grady helping to launch Toshio Maeda’s kickstarter
Advertisement

Grady: We don’t back down from publishing anything. Shakespeare wrote about rape, about incest. Art has existed of characters of all ages doing God-knows-what for a long time. I wouldn’t want to censor or change an artist’s vision for something even if it’s something that makes the reader feel uncomfortable. If it’s a 15-year-old or whatever, I want to preserve that. Fortunately, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot.

We teamed up with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which protects comic book artist publishers and readers from the ramifications of reading something like that. I think art deserves to be protected even if the end result is a feeling of uncomfortableness.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: What’s your favorite thing you’ve published?

Grady: There’s a book called After School Vanilla I really like. It’s all these cute vanilla stories. Every book we’ve published has its special place in my heart. We’ve published 32 books since a year and a half ago. Four hundred artists.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: What’s next for Fakku?

Grady: We’re working with a publisher in Japan to create a service like Fakku in Japan where Japanese people can pay a monthly fee and read manga. It doesn’t exist.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: How can that not exist already! Huh.

Grady: Fakku has been such a cool part of my life. I’ve seen people meet on the forums and get married. I think it’s crazy I created a hentai website and people got married.

Advertisement

D’Anastasio: Thanks so much for your time.

Grady: Thank you!