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Alaska B: It’s kind of a side project. It’s basically a side scrolling game, kind of retro, classic Super NES, run-and-gun type of game. It’s the kind of game where the character just consistently goes and it’s a matter of dodging and shooting enemies as you run. The entire game is scored, from beginning to end. So the entire gameplay is written to music. It’s all YT//ST music. It’s a mixture of new songs and rearranged versions of previously released ones.
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Me and Ruby came from mixed-race Asian backgrounds so we were raised in this 80s ninja movement. In the midst of all the massive comic book commerce we found weird relations to other people where we were growing up in Canada. People would assume that I could translate Sailor Moon for them. I’m actually not Japanese at all, I’m part Chinese. It was these kinds of assumptions we were raised with where we were called Astro Boy or something to make fun of us when we were kids.As much as we do enjoy anime and we watch anime and we grew up around it—and I was hugely into the cheesiest TV shows like Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon when I was a kid—we’re not trying to actively participate in some kind of otaku [someone who’s obsessed with anime/manga] culture, but rather these representations are undivorceable from the way we see ourselves. It’s become an obsession. What started as an artistic statement became a kind of style.

Ruby and I met at Concordia University, where you couldn’t get a break when people perceived you as being between worlds. We dealt with some weird shitty racism about the work we did. We had to demonstrate some kind of Asian-ness to “be Asian,” but we’re never “Asian enough” to do it. People put walls around culture. You don’t grow up with a concept of a barrier between cultures. You just take what’s on television or experience what your parents do and you build your identity around that. It’s only later when other people come in contact with you that it gets ugly.
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Being mixed, I’m not a part of any specific culture. So how do I navigate a world like that? In the work we do, we blatantly culturally appropriate and use imagery everywhere. But, we have to find an ethical line as to what we take. We’re more interested in misconceived representation. So, representations of anime don’t represent Japanese culture at all because they’re just cartoons. Just like the adventures of Bucky O’Hare don’t identify all white people from the 90s.Do you feel like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to race and culture?
I did do some studies in political theory, but I’m more interested in our personal experiences as artists and our exposure to culture and influences. I mean, a lot of our prog influences come from the fact that I grew up around Emerson, Lake & Palmer records, and in the same way that I grew up around anime, being from an Asian household. There’s definitely going to be some crossover. We’re all experts of our own artistic expression.
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