▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Interview #163 - @Robokiller87▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬  EL Psy Kongroo"School sucks yea. Stay in school though." Namine's Café in collaboration with MAL Interviews Interview conducted by Namine's representative: SuzakuTsubasa Could you tell us about yourself? Hey everyone, My name is Tom and I am 23 years old. I graduated as a chemist nearly 1 year ago and have been working out of the gates as a polymer chemist where I make coatings for medical devices. I am a huge Phillies fan and am excited for this upcoming year, but I am also very heavily invested in all of baseball as well. Sports wise when I was in school I played baseball and soccer and did track for all of 1 season. Though not a huge Philadelphia sports fan I have been very happy for many people about all the sports teams playing extremely well. I have a huge variety in musical tastes from classical to heavy metal, rap to 80's pop, and of course anime OSTs to classic rock . Gospel and Country aren't covered though. A huge reason why I have been less active on MAL aside from IRL items is I am also an avid gamer. I've been really into Overwatch since release and even though it has been a hot pile of crap in the last year I'm proud to say that my peak was 4130 as a reinhardt main and also a top500 CTF player and could've made the contenders team for Philadelphia Fusion. The reason I didn't was personal, however I am glad I was given the chance. I've slowly lost interest in Overwatch and have been hard grinding in OSRS for the last month with no stoppage in sight and another thing I am proud to say is I beat Recipe for Disaster in 1 month from a brand new account! If I had to pick what my favorite anime/manga genres are I would say I am honestly really open to anything. I've become much much more critical of anime since taking a japanese film studies course in college. There was an entirely new area of art that I was completely unaware of, but it has vastly changed my perception of how I view media. It used to be strictly for entertainment, but after that course I can now see a lot of artistic nuances that I haven't before. So when a show does something really irredeemable, instead of shrugging it off like I used to I get unnecessarily frustrated with the show. How did you choose your username? My username was picked about... 11 years ago by my younger self. I'll immediately dispel the assumption that the 87 is meant to be 1987 for the year I was born. If you couldn't figure that out with my age from earlier then now you know. My younger self needed a name for Runescape and as any young kid I wanted it to reflect something of my interests while being edgy. I liked robots a lot as a kid, so Robo was decided. Edgy? Killer. 87 was because Robokiller was taken as a username and it's just a random duo of numbers. My name is meant to reflect I am a robot that kills. Could you give us a brief history of your time on MAL? My time here on MAL was a very exciting one to me. I just started college and at the very very start I noticed the workload I was receiving started off a bit slow and my downtime was very boring. I came across MAL when I was trying to watch some anime and keep track of everything I've seen. I eventually made an account for that and wanted to get more out of it than just an account used for tracking things so I figured a way to kill time was to find some way to use the forums on MAL. I found Monia's Cafe where I soon met Namine. Within a month or so I was asked to join her cafe and I wanted to be apart of something new and try to make it into something Monia's Cafe wasnt and I did so with my active chatting. I would like to feel I helped create what was an apparently historic chat environment compared to the rest of MAL in terms of comments in the club made and the rest is history. I found a huge hole I needed to get through the majority of my college and had an amazing time and still do there with the intermittent activity I currently have there. So it's now mainly where I just log my anime and manga that I read. How did you get into anime/manga? I'd like to think like many people around my age Pokemon was a main reason why I got into anime. Just being exposed to it help bring an affinity of anime to me. Some of the earliest anime I remember watching was Zatch Bell, some Detective Conan (which freaked me out as a kid), Hamtaro, and what truly opened the floodgates for me was what I considered to be the funniest anime (at the time) was Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Looking at clips from it like 7 years later didn't invoke the same responses I had as a kid, but when I saw it when I was younger you'd probably just laugh from how infectious my laugh was and outrageous I was acting. As for Manga, I did not start reading manga until 2014 where I mainly read Yuri manga the first being Girl Friends. That trend continued for about a 1-1.5 years until I exhausted all of the good yuri manga out there and started going into many other genres however a key trend with most of the manga I read is that they're romances and depending on whenever some of the manga I have on-hold finish publishing I'll soon be at 100 different manga read! What other hobbies do you have outside of anime/manga and MAL? I sort of went over this earlier in some detail, but to try to expand on what I said I am a huge baseball fan. I have been since the Phillies roped me in winning the championship in 2008. So the last 10 years I have been following baseball vehemently. If anyone were to ask who my favorite players over the span of the last 10 years are, I'd say Chase Utley, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Roy Halladay, Clayton Kershaw, and Jim Thome. I also can't consider anyone who has done steroids so if you're a fan of baseball who idolizes Bonds, sorry! If I had to pick an American League favorite it'd have to be the Red Sox and this wasn't decided just now and because they're doing great this year I decided if there was a point when the Phillies went south (and they did) I'd follow the Sox which was around like 2011. I mentioned I was very much into Overwatch. I'd say that Overwatch was the main reason why the majority of my activity has stuttered on MAL since the summer of 2016. Overwatch to me was a much needed replacement to Tf2 and at the time I enjoyed it greatly and after 3800+ hours of tf2 in 8 years I decided it was time to try something new to kill my time. Around 2017 I invested in a gaming computer and since playing on it I went from a Plat player at 30 FPS to my peak GM at 280 FPS. I mained tank, support, and Junkrat for the first 7 seasons of overwatch and got a DPS smurf where I rank 3700 as Pharah, Genji, Soldier, Widow, McCree, and Tracer. The game has gotten really stale due to slow dev team who is resistant to core change and are now focused on their esports league so I moved over to runescape. I played it for an entire year from 2007-2008 where I made it to combat level 100. Unfortunately, I gave up runescape at that time and my brother got it perma'd for paying w/ IRL money to get gold. 10 years later, one of my friends from a different community heard I used to play runescape and wanted to make a small boss raid party. He invested about 3m in me from the very start and I've grown my account to nearly half or more of what I accomplished in 6 months back in 2007 in only 35 days. So Runescape, Overwatch, basically video games in general, Baseball, and confidential stuff about my work is what I have been doing outside of MAL. How do you feel about how the site is run? Especially in regards to the moderators and admins. Interesting question. I believe if I am not mistaken due to a huge variety of staff members here it's hard for them all to be on the same page. Personally I can't remember if I have ever been approached with an issue from the staff themselves so I have nothing right or wrong to say about them when they are confrontational, but from what my friends have told me there's a lot to be desired when it comes to a few selected staffers. Though it irks a lot of people and me personally, I do applaud them for their vigilance in regards to keeping an accurate data base no matter who or what is listed as a character for an anime or manga, all I say is don't list RWBY the animated series as an anime. They can do it with the manga and not the animation. Otherwise they've been on my good side or I should say I haven't been on their bad side. Do you think you will return to your former level of activity on MAL in the future? I would certainly like to. My former level of activity was the culmination of a variety of factors relating to stress, work, free time, and just what to do with my life. During 2013-2017 I was in school and I needed a distraction. Anime was the distraction. Talking about anime was also apart of it. It was the void to also fill free time I had as well. Now that I graduated college almost a full year now and am working 40 hours a week (compared to like 20 hours or less a week in college) there's much less free time and I need to ration what time I have for what I want to do. Another factor of my activity decreasing was the unfortunately inevitability of the decline in activity just strictly pertaining to the comments section of Namine's cafe. What we did was unprecedented and we did it for so long. To sustain that kind of activity requires more than 10 people on a daily basis chatting there, and we had that and much more during various times in Namine's cafe history. However, life has taken a toll on the people's activity who would participate as it did to mine and there seems to be more activity in terms of active chatting with the cafe's discord. You'd think I would join that activity and enjoy the fun, but I personally hate discord and try to use it as little as possible. If I ever get over that hump of hating discord, that's where I'd find myself most of the time. So I don't believe I'll ever return to my level of activity in MAL, but I will certainly still use it for tracking my shows and manga. Since you studied Japanese films, your view on the medium has changed. Did that make movies and anime more enjoyable for you? Did it influence the quantity or the kind of shows you watch or how recent they are? It made it more easy to appreciate the kind of work that the animators and directors put into the shows and movies they've worked on. Akira being one of the most famous anime films and also one that should commonly be watched in one of these courses goes over an amazing amount of hidden details to describe the plot of the story and undertones that you wouldn't understand otherwise. It's not just for Japanese films that these intricacies take place in but it's really all of Japanese media. It can be further extended to all media in general, however it's much less common to find meaning in a potted plant in a western room compared to a potted plant from a Japanese room. You'd just think "it's scenery or the owner likes plants" but in a Japanese setting assuming the director cares about what he wants to portray it'll be perfect to the # of petals on the flower and if any petals are on the floor and when you revisit that plant you may see a wilting flower for symbolism. This also hilariously but professionally extends to camera angles in much older Japanese films where you'll be at a table eating, but the camera angle will be as if you are actually sitting in a Zaisu and the camera man would have to film it at an awkward position like so. I found it fascinating. So once I saw all of that my entire perspective on anime also changed. One of the first shows I saw after I took the film course was Kimi ni Todoke. Typical romance show. In the OP at the very end of the song both MCs are divided by the border between windows just showing the split between the two MCs. Normally if you're not thinking of something like that in a romance show OP they'll be together or doing something romantic or with other friends, but they specifically chose that scene imo to just show exactly what I said. Without spoiling anything, the show supports that too. I may just be reading too much into it, but that just adds another element of fun into anime. However, I can still smell crap from a mile away with or without taking that film course so I'd say it overall improved my outlook on anime in that I can enjoy it even more so, but I will probably be much much more harsh on anything inexcusable. I highly suggest anyone who is even slightly interested in Japanese film directing to watch the seven samurai. It's a long long film, but it's one of the best pieces of film I've seen. Everyone who knows you also knows about your love for Steins;Gate. Can you tell us more about it? What makes you love it that much? I was so very lucky to have found out about S;G in 2013. Tl;dr for anyone who hasn't seen it without spoiling, time travel real science weaved into the sci-fi science, drama, comedy, thriller. I highly recommend anyone who can withstand a 'slow' first half of the show to watch it. The show takes off in the 2nd half and it takes off immediately. Considering I was still on the fence about what I wanted to do in College, and I was always somewhat interested in science. This show sort of cemented the fact I wanted to be a part of the sciences. Though the main premise of the show is a thriller... to me it's hard to ignore the amount of effort put into their sci-fi world using real world logic and spinning it to make sense. That's how you sell people on something like warp travel through space or cryogenic freezing (both impossible, but people full heartedly believe it's possible because they were sold so well on it). Now I'm not saying a microwave can create time travel. I wasn't sold on that. I was just sold on the fact they cared for their content, they researched psychology, physics, and chemistry to make it seem realistic enough to be possible. Personally to me I understood everything they were talking about and the rest was history. So one reason why I enjoyed it was the science part, the next was that slow first half portion. It gave you so much time to become invested in the characters and their distinct personalities. You enjoyed their slice of life and wanted to get more and more. Once you hit the half way point your investment pays off in an unfortunate way and then the rest of the show toys with you until the very end. Lastly, Okabe and Kurisu is the best MC duo in anime fite me about it readers I'll own ya. Most of my enjoyment of the show is personal as it should be. There's a lot of plot holes because time travel paradoxes. They do a fantastic job at minimizing them though which just adds to the charm of the show. I'll end my rambling here before it becomes incomprehensible if it hasn't already. You seem to be really into games too, you spent many years in the few you named, which are online games. Any favourite games? Any genre you like/dislike? I've been gaming since I was probably 5 years old so I've played a plethora of games over the last 18 years. I used to play console games mainly being SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Xbox 360, and Wii. I did own every single american released nintendo handheld up to the NDS. I've not gotten a handheld since the NDS. I primarily play PC now because PC master race there's nothing that I have to buy multiple consoles for and to enjoy the next gen game, just upgrade a PC and enjoy it for a longer lifespan than the common console. My absolute favorites are Dragon Quest, Sonic (purely nostalgic at this point, any new games are relatively unplayable outside of sonic mania, and the best game I played sonic wise besides mania was sonic adventure 2 and any sonic games prior to that), TF2, Overwatch (albeit it was a high peak enjoyment and has exponentially petered out because game development on it sucks) Advance wars, Soul Calibur, Kirby Air Ride (most kirby games really), Runescape, Toontown (purely nostalgic), Binding of Isaac, COD MW2 (only cod I liked), Pokemon games up to the generation that had Diamond, SSB, Double Dash, Paper Mario, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Cel Damage, Monkey Ball, and Time Splitters. There's so so many more games I just can't name them all and those are just the ones I remember. I don't have a particularly favorite genre. As long as the game is engaging, entertaining, fun, thought provoking, and strategic I'll give it a go. I'm sure if anyone mentions a number of games from those consoles, handhelds, or on PC I'll be like "Oh yea I liked/hated it!" When mentioning your favourite anime/manga genre, you said you are open to pretty much anything but isn't there a genre you hate? Or just don't like? So of the genres I can stand but have tried out, I only ever dived into ecchi or harem anime early on in 2013. I don't think I have watched a single ecchi or harem anime since I watched Infinite Stratos 2 which was by far one of the worst anime I've ever seen. Now as for genres that I really don't go out of my way to find, I would say mecha, horror, fantasy, and straight comedy are things I don't necessarily try to go after. Is there a game/anime/manga that tends to be hated or criticized but you really enjoy? Oh boy is there ever. Even though I hate Overwatch myself and others do as well I still enjoy playing it and people just bombard me with questions like "you always say you hate it, but you play it anyway just stop playing it so you stop complaining about it" even though I complain because I care. An anime that doesn't really rub people the right way would be Clannad After Story because they always think it's overhyped and are baffled by why people cry watching it. I can understand where they come from, but it's a very specific demographic imo that really makes the message of that show hit home. Like I wouldn't expected old farts, young kids, or cynical people to really understand the show. Even if you aren't of those groups and you just don't like it, it may not appeal to your personal taste. I think I found the anime at the perfect time and it really was a great show to watch when I was watching it. Lastly, I haven't discussed my manga I've read with anyone just because my tastes are really out there at times and there's so much more manga than anime it's more difficult to find a conversation about "hey I read this what'd you think" but if I had to pick a manga that people probably don't get how good it is I'd say Girl Friends. Yea, it's a yuri manga and people aren't into that. But it's the top manga in the yuri section I think and if you're into romance just give it a shot. Get over yourself! You mentioned gaming, with Overwatch for example, what do you think of the competitive side of games? Do you consider yourself a competitive player? Have you played games competitively? If yes, which one(s)? From @_Ako_ The competitive side of games is healthy for the gaming industry. The place where it falls apart is when it tries to be something it's not. That's primarily when a competitive video gaming scene acts like it's an actual sport. Overwatch has a competitive scene called Overwatch league (OWL). This is unfortunately my introduction into esports. Since I am a very hard to please person, nothing about OWL is redeemable. The casters are impossibly annoying, the gameplay is chaotic and stale (by stale I mean the same meta that has been in the game for the last year and a half after having 3 different metas in the first 3 competitive seasons), there's no parity in the league, and like I said before it tries to play itself off as an actual sport. When the casters tell you "our league has a team with the longest losing streak in professional sports history" or "NY and Boston the classic age ol' rivalry taking place in our 5 month old league it's time to watch all the action" to me it's trying to hard to be something unique when they can just give us a great game to watch in a unique game and just be exactly that. It's really an unfortunate thing that I watched OWL for as long as I have, it was an awful introduction into esports. I imagine that OWL is an outlier in terms of just how bad of an esports game it is. It's an extremely large market where DOTA, CSGO, and LoL thrive in and that's why Overwatch was primarily made to become an esport, but they're doing it wrong and trying to forge their own path to riches when the road paved with gold was made by the predecessors. So it's an extremely viable scene and I can't wait to see what happens to it later on and hopefully it doesn't leave a more sour taste in my mouth than OWL. I am an extremely competitive player. My peak rank of 4100 is in the top 1% of all overwatch players (35 million accounts for overwatch made, not everyone of them still plays though). I used to be a top 100 winston, Reinhardt, and Pharah in all of NA. I had the chance to be on the Philadelphia Fusion's OWL secondary team. I opted to not do that because my career is more important than my hobby and they don't pay well. I used to be a semi-pro tf2 player which is the deepest I've gone into the competitive video game scene but I've been retired from TF2 pro play since 2011. Any users you like/dislike? Why? I can't say I have anyone I dislike because anyone who has gave me a hard time was out of my sight at least 2 years ago when they were banned from Namine's Cafe. I completely forgot about 99% of those people. And because I wouldn't want to throw around slander I'll just name those who have really just been the perfect company when I was on MAL everyday. @0namine1 was one of the first to throw me a bone and try to bring me on her wild idea of having a brand new cafe. @elkensteyin gave me the opportunity to help that cafe grow into what it is now and is always a joy to talk to about his eccentric tastes and how he's like a million years old. @Volunteer though I haven't talked to him regularly in 3-4 years now was one of the best people I've ever came across in MAL just because he doesn't mince his words, but is very friendly and will treat you how you treat him. I always enjoyed a conversation with him about anime. @Himikoi is one of the nicest people I've ever met and it was always a joy to talk to her during the peak of Namine's cafe. She was always the peacekeeper and friend to everyone and it was a blessing that the cafe had someone like that for as long as it did. Wim was another like Volunteer except he's just more boorish in how he treats people which isn't a bad thing unless he's always picking fights which he doesn't. It's the kind of behavior that just keeps you locked on to what he's saying and he keeps a conversation going about almost anything. Lastly, @LAOG is one of the regular who have miraculously stuck around (along with Wim) in the cafe for as long as he has which I am impressed by. One of the harshest graders I've seen on MAL (which I suppose, I haven't seen much. That is the joke that people would go for here), but he also doesn't mince his words and will tell you straight up what is good and bad in his eyes and be extremely adamant about it which makes for good conversation about anime to get all of the minute details as well as observe the big picture about what the anime tries to do and how it succeeds or fails. Anyone who positively came across to me on MAL and whose name I can't remember don't be mad that I couldn't remember you, but be understanding that since my activity has shifted to 3 other communities since 2015 it's hard to keep track of names from here if I haven't had extensive or impactful experiences with you for consecutive years. Is there something unasked you'd like to talk about? I'd would like to say the following: School sucks yea. Stay in school though. Would you rather break your back in 10 years or 30 years depending on if you got an education and trying to stay afloat. If your bullies say school is dumb, bitch stay away from them. Any feedback on the interview format? I found the format to be very MAL-centric which it should be. I found that enjoyable. Personally, I would try to stay away from any negative comments or name dropping type of questions about anything negative. Can you recommend us 3 users to look into for potential future interviewees? I recommend Volunteer, Wim, and Namine. |
SuzakuTsubasaMay 7, 2018 5:43 AM
  |
| Awesome interview - Robokiller (I'm one of the few who refuses to call him Mayo) was such an integral part of the success of Namine's Cafe - couldn't have come close to doing it without him, and I consider him to be one of my closer friends on MAL. Good interview Suzaka and thanks for being our representative in MAL Interviews. |
 |
I graduated as a chemist nearly 1 year ago I'll look up to you now sempai~~ I just started college and at the very very start I noticed the workload I was receiving started off a bit slow and my downtime was very boring I fear the end of the month... Gosh the double exams +due essay on English I too enjoyed S;G, and I do agree that the first half were quite slow-- not boring. I don't hate horror that much. In fact, I love gore but let's separate Corpse Party anime adaptation... That one is just plain, bad, though someone mentioned that the game is good but I'm not inclined to try it. I still think that Clannad: After Story is quite good; yes I find the S1 quite boring. I think I did mention at overall, I'd prefer Little Busters over Clannad Wow, overall, nice interview... I dunno but ever since I stopped playing Counter strike because somehow my brother decided to include a cheat and we got IP banned and I can't play multi-player anymore. So I decided to not play... FPS games is for me just not there anymore... Well I still do enjoy CrossFire and will probably play it... I did once time play it and a lot of users are angry about people hacking and shit... |
| I added a new question in the interview. You can find it here if you don't want to go through all the interview to find it. |
SuzakuTsubasaMay 7, 2018 5:43 AM
|
More topics from this board
Sticky: » Nominations V2 ( 1 2 )Skittles - Nov 21, 2021 |
64 |
by Dapper_Dhampir14
»»
Sep 2, 2023 6:01 PM |
|
» Interview 24 - KinetaDaconator - Jun 10, 2015 |
15 |
by cornonacob
»»
Aug 5, 2023 3:36 PM |
|
» Interview #267 - lpfspaceslut - Mar 28, 2023 |
1 |
by Disapeared_Ghost
»»
Mar 29, 2023 9:30 AM |
|
» Interview #254 - IrrelevantGuyNextUniverse - Apr 9, 2022 |
8 |
by IrrelevantGuy
»»
Mar 22, 2023 4:30 AM |
|
» Interview #200 - ShinahMimurona - Oct 13, 2019 |
10 |
by Shinah
»»
Mar 9, 2023 10:19 AM |