Step into Frances Delgado’s Los Angeles apartment and you’ll be immediately bombarded with miniatures as far as the eye can see. From the TV stand to the coffee table, every surface is adorned with bright-eyed, candy-haired, colorful anime figurines. Sometimes poseable, sometimes static, and sometimes in risque outfits, they’re based on the Japanese anime characters Delgado loves.
With her own galaxy-colored hair, Delgado, 29, looks almost like a part of the collection. She’s been collecting anime figures for more than ten years. Today, she is a professional in the anime and gaming industry. And it may never have happened if she hadn’t started her blog.
Delgado’s ten-year-old blog, How A Girl Figures , was one of the first to narrate the world of anime figure collecting from a woman’s perspective. Eventually, it caught the attention of one of the most influential figures (no pun intended) in the industry—Aki Takanori, the CEO of Good Smile Company, which produces many of the figures Delgado collects.
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I sat down with Delgado to discuss her unique career trajectory that elevated her to the level of industry professional—and which all began thanks to her being a fan.
Frances Delgado: I started my blog in 2007. At the time, I had this MySpace group about anime. I was able to promote it by saying it was the biggest anime group on MySpace—because it had 10, 000 followers, which I was super proud of.
MySpace fell by the wayside and people stopped using it, but I liked the community building aspect, and wanted to build something like that again. I had a whole bunch of friends who were doing blogs. One friend asked, why don’t you start one too? I told him no, I’m not a very good writer, I’d be embarrassed, and he said the only way you can get better is if you practice.
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So I started the blog. At first it wasn’t called How A Girl Figures . It was just “Dancing Queen’s Blog.” I just wrote about anything and everything. Some of my older blog posts would be about a food I ate or a series I watched. It didn’t have a clear focus, but my favorite blogs at the time each had a really clear focus. Everyone had their own niche.
At that point I started getting more and more into figurine collecting. I was already posting photos on my website and people really liked it. So I thought, “I want to make this a figure blog.” At the time everyone posting about figures were all guys. There were no girls doing it. People would be really shocked that I was posting these photos and I was a girl.
Delgado: Most of the figurines, especially at that time, weren’t focused on a female market at all. They were geared 100% toward Japanese men. You’d have a figure of a cute magical girl who looked really sweet and really innocent, but then you could take off her skirt, take off her top. Also there weren’t many US vendors selling figures at the time; you had to import them from Japan. My high school friends didn’t see figurines as art, they saw them as sex objects. Meanwhile, I saw them as miniature personifications of characters that I loved so much.
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Some of them are heavily sexualized, but my collection started off with female characters I really liked and didn’t have anything to do with sexy poses. My first figure was from a series called Mai Hime, and it’s Mai just standing and pointing. I found one on eBay and bought her because heck, she was cute. I bought Ichigo and Renji from Bleach. There weren’t that many male characters made at the time. You didn’t see a huge outpouring of female collectors at the time because figures weren’t geared at them at the time.
With the blog, I didn’t want to promote myself because I’m a woman, but I realized that in this niche world, everyone needed to have their own thing, and the fact that I’m a woman is part of my identity as a figure collector. It felt like I had a unique perspective on figure-collecting.
Delgado: I live with my boyfriend, and we have always been really open about our collection. We don’t have kids or kids visiting. Our parents at this point understand. Some of our parents appreciate the collection, the others roll their eyes and say, “OK, you guys will eventually grow out of this.” My boyfriend works for Fakku, so we both have a history working within the animation industry with 18+ companies. We felt, “Why should we have to keep these hidden in the bedroom?”
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I’m very proud of these figurines and think that they’re beautifully sculpted. A lot of 18+ figure manufacturers really go out of their way on these. Even though they can be completely exposed, I think what’s the difference between having that or a sculpture of the Venus De Milo in my living room? They both have their boobs exposed.
I can’t say I’m attracted to them. I’m attracted to beautiful things. The human body is a work of art, both male and female. You go to the Louvre and that’s what you see. This in my opinion is the new era of that kind of sculpture, and a much more accessible way to own it. For me personally, they’re not about sexual desire but artistic expression.
Delgado: Back in 2011, the president and CEO of Good Smile Company, Takanori Aki, came to Anime Expo as a guest of honor. At the time I was doing volunteer work with Anime Expo. I hosted a live weekly show they did called AX Live, just general animation news. I remember telling the AX staff that I had to meet him. “I worship the ground this man walks on.” There ended up being some complications and I wasn’t able to interview him for the show. I was very upset because he’s my idol. I used to say, “If I could work for Good Smile just sweeping the floors, just being near the figures, I would do it.”
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I was able to get the opportunity to interview him for my personal blog, but because of all the complications with AX Live, I had already given away all my interview questions to AX staff to use in their interview with him. So when I got the chance to interview him, I realized I had already given away all my good questions. I decided, “I’ll ask him questions I want to know for myself as his fan.” One of the questions I remember asking was, “How do Japanese figure manufacturers get around the censorship laws in Japan?” Censorship in Japan is very strict and you can’t show full nudity. But many figures are fully detailed with no censorship. He said there’s a loophole because figures are technically sculpture. He was in shock that I asked the question. They didn’t expect a fan from the west would have done so much research on their product. At the end I gave him my business cards, which have pictures I’ve taken of my figures for my blog. He and his translator left the room and I thought that was it.
Delgado: A year later, I was in Spain with my family and I got an email from Good Smile. It’s from the woman who was translating for Aki-san, and she wants to meet with me. We meet and she asked if I was looking for work, and as it turned out, I was between jobs. She told me Good Smile was looking for a social media person. “We’ve seen the work you’ve done on your blog and for Anime Expo, and think you’d be a really great fit.” The way I tell the story to my friends, I had to put my hand under my chin to keep my jaw from dropping on the floor. I thought at most they might want to give me figure samples for review on my blog. I never expected them to extend the offer for me to work for the company.
I helped grow the AX Live page. I have a How A Girl Figures Facebook page that I was growing. They could see I have the ability to use social media the way they wanted, to grow the community they were looking for. They told me they’d rather hire somebody who was passionate about the product than somebody who had a marketing degree but no knowledge of figures.
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Delgado: There were a lot of times at the office where we would have a meeting with somebody and they would be asking about the history of a product or the history of the company. They’d always direct these questions to me because I already knew it all even before working for the company, because I’d been a fan of Good Smile Company for so long.
Right off the bat, one of the first things I remember telling Aki-san after I got hired, he asked “What do you think we can improve on?” And I said
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