Interview with Steve Bennett

There's no denying that Steve Bennett of Studio IronCat is loved by convention attendees everywhere. If there's one thing Steve is known best for, it's his generosity with the fans. I managed to catch up with him for this interview while he was in the process of individually signing every DVD cover in four boxed sets, for a fan. While our time to converse was relatively short, he showed off his skills as a master storyteller.
 
 
Anna May - A lot of people know you got your start in anime by working on the Urusei Yatsura anime. Can you tell us how that came about?
Steve Bennett - Many, many moons ago when I was a young kid, living in Tokyo Japan, because my father was in the United States military and my mother is Japanese. My father got stationed in Korea. So instead of going to Korea, my mother decided that me and my brothers, Brian, Kevin, and the two twins Pat and Matt, would go to Japan and live with my grandmother in Tokyo.
While we were living in Tokyo, my cousins Seiji and Hiro introduced us to anime by showing us episodes of Dr. Slump, and Urusei Yatsura. Just a whole slew of anime that were popular at the time, that they had recorded on beta max tape. After I saw my first episodes of Dr. Slump and Urusei Yatsura, I just fell in love with the stuff. I had no idea that three weeks later, my brother and I, Kevin- well, all of my brothers actually, we were on the train. It was my brother Kevin who spotted the animation studio from out the window of the train and said, “That’s where they do Urusei Yatsura.” So we went over there, and that’s how history sort of came about.
 
Anna May - How old were you at the time that this happened?
Steve Bennett - I was probably about thirteen-years-old… Yeah, thirteen. Very young.
 
Anna May - And how did you become an animator at the age of thirteen?
Steve Bennett - Well, after we took this tour of the animation studio, Studio Pierot, I was very fortunate to meet a lot of animators, because the tour… It was not really an official tour, we just kinda showed up. A few weeks earlier, we were at Toei Animation Studio, which is like the Disney of Japan, and they do official tours of the studio. When we saw the place Urusei Yatsura was done from the train, we thought they probably do the same thing. So when we went there, it was a very tiny studio, very small, and the Japanese were like, “We’re so sorry, but… What are you doing here? You can’t be here,” kinda like that. Of course we don’t really understand them that well, so we’re like “We’re American kids, we like Urusei Yatsura, and we just wanted to take a tour of the studio,” and before we knew it, they brought down an English-speaking lady by the name of Tomoko Kawasaki, who spoke English very eloquently, and was very happy to accommodate us, and took us on a three hour tour of the studio.
She was married at the time to the animator Nobuo Furusei, who eventually became my teacher. As we toured the studio and got to know the people and whatnot, we met Mr. Furusei, and afterward, again, Mr. Furusei eventually became my teacher and then eventually my boss.

Anna May - That’s a very interesting start. So how did you get from there to working on Studio IronCat?
Steve Bennett - Many years later, we had to come back to the United States, of course my father wanted me to continue going to school, and I just wanted to stay in Japan at the time, but I’m glad that he made us come back to the states.
So while I was here in the states, I was a member of a Japanese animation network/club based out of Richmond Virginia, with my good friend Roy Bruce, and all the guys down there. At first I didn’t tell them I worked with anime, because I just wanted to kick back and enjoy it like a fan, but Roy kinda knew all along that I did work over there. He was very smart, very bright guy, and very up to date on anime resources, even when at the time, you were lucky if you even had character descriptions, or some kind of script. Back in those days in the 1980s, there were no anime magazines in English, there were no massive clubs- well, there were massive amounts of clubs everywhere, but it was just still, how do you say… it was still garage gatherings, or the Saturday afternoon viewings at a friend’s house of an old tape that was eighteen generations old, from some soldier that brought it over from Japan. So anime back in those days was very hard to obtain.
So while I was attending these meetings, the facts eventually just came out that I did work over there in Japan, so Roy Bruce tried to get me to go to anime cons, and I didn’t want to at first, though I’m glad I did start going to them. So when I did start doing cons in ’95, talking about “American kid experiences working in Japan with anime”, I wound up meeting my future business partners, who all decided “Hey, it’s nice to talk about the past, but why not create a new company so we can talk about current and future projects?”
So Studio IronCat was born at Otakon in 1997, between myself and two other Japanese individuals, Masaomi Kanzaki of the Street Fighter and Xenon fame, and also Kunikaza Kimura, who used to work for Antarctic Press way back in the day.
 
Anna May - So what’s IronCat working on at the moment? Anything you can tell us about?
Steve Bennett - We’re basically working on books- getting caught back up on the titles that are delayed. We had a little bit of a bumpy ride in the last half of 2003, but we’re on our way to rebuilding the company from the bumpiness. We do have a bunch of new titles that we are getting ready to release, but at the moment we can’t really discuss them until the ink is dry, and of course we get caught up with the other books.
We do have directions we’re moving into, of course getting caught back up on old books, and working on new books, but there are also possibilities of us branching out with things involving music, things involving toys, and in general a whole lot of new and different opportunities that IronCat just did not do for the last few years. We’re finally breaking that mold, and getting back on track where we should be.
 
Studio IronCat has a number of great manga in their library, including Futaba-kun Change, Central City, Crusher Joe, Hyper Dolls, and My Code Name is Charmer. They also carry graphic novels from Toshiki Hirano's world of manga, including Vampire Princess Miyu, The Wanderer, Vampire Dahlia, Vampire Yui, and New Vampire Miyu. On top of all this, they also sell IronCat t-shirts, calendars, bags, mugs, and more. Be sure to check out Studio IronCat here!

~Ashley Clark (Anna May Belle)
 
Editor's Note- Unfortunately, Studio IronCat closed their doors since this interview.  In the meantime, you can find out what Steve's up to on his own website, SteveBennettArt.com.  Also, be sure to join the Koala Klub while you're there!