Ai Never Thought Tattooing Manga or Anime Was Possible

For most of my childhood life, I grew up in Oshawa and Richmond Hill. Growing up, Oshawa was very punk rocky and people were into WWE. Tattoos fall into that. I was always into art and people would make comments about how I would be a great tattoo artist. Tattooing wasn’t even on my radar and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I went to elementary and high school there until my parents divorced.

Art became a gateway for me to form relationships and friendships. 

I’m mixed - half Trini and half Finnish. The two sides of my family are polar opposites. My dad is religious and Caribbean and strict. He’s in the Canadian Armed Forces, so you get the idea. My mom is Finnish and they’re introverted but supportive and warm. My dad was the one who introduced me and my sisters to the wonderful world of anime. To this day, we’re the biggest nerds and he’s the keystone that started all of it. We weren’t very privileged and I grew up living under a rock. I was very introverted, so my dad would go to P-Mall and bring back pirated anime DVDs and manga from the library for us. I would redraw the cover art of the mangas I read. These DVDs and mangas were my world and art became a gateway for me to form relationships and friendships. 

I’ve been told I inherited the artistic gene from my grandfather on my dad’s side. In the beginning, my parents were a bit hesitant about my artistic inclinations. I won awards in elementary school and art teachers hung my art for everyone to see. Even with this acknowledgement, my parents thought art was a hobby for me and never thought of it as a real job. So when I graduated, I went to school doing things my parents wanted - psychology, behavioral sciences, and things like that. 3 months into university, I was super depressed and miserable. My mom and grandmother told me “Just do anything. Anything is better than you doing nothing.”

That was the moment I found tattooing. I don’t know anything about it but people told me I’d be good. I found a place in P-Mall that let me do my apprenticeship and my mother dropped me off with a $2,500 fee. I remember to this day that when she paid the fee told the guy they better hire me. One week into my apprenticeship I was hired. This was in 2016.

It was a very lackluster apprenticeship. The shop has a wonderful group of people. I still chat with them to this day, but it’s not a great place for a new artist. I was given my two coil machines, a power supply, fake skin, and a picture of what I was tattooing that day. They showed me how to make a stencil and how to apply it to the skin. I still recall this vividly when my mentor said in these exact words “If the needle stops moving, you’re going too deep.” I basically taught myself for $2,500. 

When I started, I never thought that tattooing manga and anime was possible. The people I was learning from, they were old school. Realism. Trad. Micro-realism. The shop is a heavy traffic area that does walk-ins, so you get a lot of infinity signs, flowers, and script. There wasn’t an opportunity to promote or even develop your own style. You start posting the tattoos you did and it’s a vicious cycle. My only exposure to anime and manga at the time was from my boss Marvin. He’s a very big nerd and we went to Comicon together to sell his work. I will always be grateful to him for those times.

Eventually I left my old shop. Long story short, a couple men in the workplace (not my boss Marvin) thought I was biting off more than I could chew and tried to fire me. Writer’s note: It’s a long story, you’ll have to book with Ai herself to hear the full version. After I left I started Oblivion Ink with my partner Joseph (Inkognedo). Our studio went through its own share of chaos, but even in my own space, I still stuck to the neo-traditional style I did at my old shop. Then one day I saw a new artist at my old shop do anime tattoos and started seeing more and more people posting their anime tattoos. That’s when it finally clicked. I wanted to be one of the first female artists to do this. I spent the last 7 or 8 years doing what I thought the world wanted me to do. Turns out the world wanted what I wanted to do.

I think a lot about why it took so long for me to realize this. I was in a very male dominated space since I started my tattoo career. There was micro-manipulation everywhere. Work was just being funneled to me and I never had space to explore my style. I just didn’t have the freedom to think about what I wanted to do. Even when I started my own studio, it was so ingrained in me that I needed to give people whatever they wanted. I was just hellbent on making my business succeed. We opened a month before Covid shut everything down. Timing was very poor and I didn’t have the time to focus on myself outside of surviving.

Now I’m finally bringing in clients that I can truly relate to. When a client comes to me with a manga panel, I know immediately what type of personality they have. Almost always, they’re very private - emotional or sad stories - and for some tattooing is part of healing trauma. For me, it’s anything my dad showed me and my sisters during our childhood, like Evangelion, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, or anything that addresses some sort of healing from trauma. To bring that nostalgia and energy and help them relive those happy moments on their skin permanently is such a good feeling.

The hardest thing right now - and I’m hearing this from artists all around - is social media. My tattoos are so intimate. It’s more than just art to me and I don’t feel that it’s mine to share. Now the world demands more and the algorithm demands more. I’ve never been a tech savvy social media girly, but social media is the difference between a popular artist and an irrelevant one. Maybe it’s the hopeless romantic in me, but I’m struggling with all of this and I’m almost not willing to break the sanctity of it.

I’ve done a lot of healing in the past year. I’m finally able to grow as me. I’m in an environment that 12 year old Ai would be ecstatic about: My gaming setup, all of my figures, a really nice creative space, a motorcycle, my cats, tattooing anime and manga - I have everything I wanted. I have this new found freedom that inspires me to do whatever the hell I want. 8 years into tattooing, I still love it. 

Ai’s books are open. Book her and and relive one of your favorite anime or manga moments at her private studio, Oblivion Ink.