 An interview with the "number one" most supremely boring, extremely unengaging, and incredibly tedious MAL moderator. ""Humor loses all meaning without the ability to laugh at one's own expense." Interview conducted by: @Coolest1234D Reviewed by: @AlexPaulLEWZ To start off, could you please tell us a bit about yourself? I am a 26-year-old who really likes anime, which is probably easy to tell looking at my profile. I am a shy introvert with strangers and acquaintances, but quite lively and outgoing with family and friends. I prefer watching anime dubbed in English but will watch anime subbed if no dubs exist. One of my favorite things about anime are the soundtracks and theme songs, and I spend a large portion of my day, both at home and at work, listening to songs from anime. One interesting tidbit about me is that I was hit by a car when I was a kid, and when the doctors thought after examining my injuries that I would be crippled for months if not for life, I was fully healed and out of the hospital just a couple of days later. It turned out I had anime main character powers. However, that likely used up all my power, since I never ended up with a harem afterwards. Lastly, I am generally light-hearted and often display a joking attitude, even at my own expense. What is the story behind your username? So, my username is sort of a lame pun. A week before I joined MAL as a member on January 15, 2017, Amazon Prime launched their very own streaming service called Anime Strike. For those who weren't in the industry at the time, Anime Strike was met with a bunch of backlash due to a double paywall and a tiny library, among other things, and it was discontinued after just one year as the failure it was. At the time, I had been an Amazon Prime member for a few years, and I was likely one of the only dozen of people to actually bother signing up for Anime Strike. Since the timing matched, I thought it would be amusing to use the Prime title for my username to show my affiliation with the Amazon brand and the Anime Strike service. So I took the "Anime" from Anime Strike and the "Prime" from Amazon Prime, and crunched them together and came up with anime-prime. Could you give us a brief history of your time on MAL? After joining in 2017, I didn't really make a grand entrance. I just used the site for listing anime and didn't really participate in the forums. After some time, I started reading reviews for anime and browsing through the occasional anime thread. Fast forward to 2018, I started being a little more active on MAL, making a few friends and posting in the forums a little as well as starting to write anime reviews. I don't know how to find my very first post made on the forums, but my first review was for the Deltora Quest anime, which is based off of a very fun book series. Looking back on the review compared to some of my newer reviews, that first review was clearly a stepping stone, and it's easy to tell how much my review style has changed since then. After 2018, events snowballed and I had started becoming more and more involved in MAL in every aspect. One of my first goals which I accomplished to make myself more involved on MAL was to watch every top 100 ranked anime and top 100 most popular anime. While there may be some new anime on that list now, I got through it relatively quickly and moved on to setting more goals for myself to watch more anime, like watching every anime from certain studios, watching all related anime entries of a series, and so on. It was easy back then to watch anime since I had a job during which I was allowed to watch anime, and I watched anime off the job as well. So I was able to rack up a bunch of anime to my list during that three-year period. In March 2020, after being involved in the forums and with reviews a bit more and getting a good grasp on how much moderation the site required, I offered to become a moderator when Kineta posted a recruitment thread. I had plenty of time since Covid just shut down the world and I didn't need to do any work or school and I was free all day. At first I offered to be a review moderator, but when Kineta posted shortly after that review mod applications were a low priority and that forum mod applications were a high priority, I sent in another application to become a forum mod in case they didn't need any more review mods. Suffice it to say, my forum mod application was accepted first. And the rest is history. AlexPaulLEWZ: So you mean to say that we were once meant to become brothers-in-arms in review moderation?! That’s actually quite nice. How did you get into anime and manga? I have really been into anime (and manga) my entire life. Like most anime fans back in those days however, I only realized exactly what anime was once I reached my teens. I started as a kid watching (and reading) the classics of Pokemon, Yugioh, Sailor Moon, Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z, Zatch Bell, etc. I spent entire days in Barnes & Noble’s reading through those manga which I guess might have been inspired from being a fan of Captain Underpants back when I was a kid. I watched Pokemon and Yugioh repeatedly on VHS as well as some other kids anime, and once in a while, I would go to a friend's house and would be shown some episodes of Naruto and Dragon Ball Z. I only discovered that anime originated in Japan when I was fourteen and watched my first anime that I knew was an anime: Death Note. One show led to the next: Code Geass, Psycho-Pass, Steins;Gate, Black Butler, etc. Thus, I fully entered the realm of anime in 2012 and I started watching shows as they were coming out or shortly afterwards. Of course, those were only the famous anime: Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, No Game No Life, etc. I only started to binge older shows and check out other anime options in 2015 and I have been addicted to anime ever since. Any three anime or manga you’d like to recommend? That's a hard one because so many series can make this list. I guess I will try to recommend titles less popular that are more likely to not have already been seen by the readers. To start, Scissor Seven (Cike Wu Liuqi) is one of the funniest anime in existence and has amazing production values as well coming from China. Next, Golgo 13, which is actually the longest running manga in existence, is really unique with its morally gray main character and mature themes in the story. Lastly, Lupin the Third, another long running, iconic character from Japan. Lupin is a difficult franchise to get into since the original series is half a century old and the style back often then turns people off. However, people should be aware that every Lupin season is pretty much self-contained, and this applies to the large selection of Lupin movies as well. There is a reason Lupin anime keep being made 50 years later, and I really wish more people would get into the franchise and see how much it has to offer. Oh, and Bleach, of course. It's the best out of the big three in my opinion and the final arc (for now at least) is being animated soon, so now is the best time to watch it if you haven't already and to re-watch it even if you had seen it in the past in order to refresh yourself on everything that happened. In regards to manga, I haven't read enough to really suggest three which I can wholeheartedly recommend, so I will just suggest reading the Bleach manga three times. Are there any users you especially like or dislike and why? As a Community Mod (former Forum Mod), it's quite hard to answer that question. I could easily go on a rant about users I don't like. In general though, I don't dislike users who don't repeatedly break the rules and I don't like users who repeatedly (and often purposefully) break the rules. But if I had to answer from a non-mod perspective, I like a bunch of the old popular reviewers that give fair ratings and reviews to anime, the most notable of which probably being @Archaeon. Aside from reviewers, I am good friends with @Kenny_Stryker, who started the "Upcoming Dubbed Anime" thread, which is very helpful for a dub fan like myself. I do watch a decent amount of subs, but dubs are preferable if there is an option. If I left the reader's name out, I apologize. I like you too. From a non-mod perspective, I don't like reviewers who seemingly have fun just bashing anime in their many trolling-like reviews. I don't think I need to give names for these reviewers. What are some of your hobbies outside anime and manga? I like reading sci-fi/fantasy novels, specifically from Brandon Sanderson. I play a vast variety of sports, including football (American football, not soccer), basketball, and tennis. I also have been playing the drums for a good number of years now. How do you feel about the way the site is run? I have a few nitpicks, but those are mainly just on the coding side of things. There are a few areas where I think MAL could improve, but that's assuming it could be fixed with a snap of the fingers, which sadly isn't how things get done. The dev team is constantly swamped with work, so even asking them for something simple and minor can take a long while to just get looked at. I know many users complain about moderation, and as a moderator myself, it might come across as disingenuous to comment about it, but I think that as mods who work for free, the mod team does a decent enough job. The mod staff is really fun to work with and everyone has a pretty relaxed attitude, which I think is really important for being a fair moderator. Modding the forums and other places on MAL is hard work to do long term, and some users on the site make our lives harder than necessary. Bots and trolls don't help either. However, I do like that MAL allows more freedom of speech than some other anime site forums. It definitely makes it harder for us mods, but it's better for the users. MAL has been making a bunch of announcements recently which users seem to generally like, so I think the site is headed in a good direction. Do you see yourself leaving MAL in the near future? Sadly, I actually do think I will be retiring as a mod within the year and will be way less active on MAL once I retire. I am at the stage in life where I want to start a family and make a living for myself. If that doesn't happen, then I will likely stay on MAL forever, but I imagine once I start a family in addition to working full time, that continuing to use MAL will be much harder to maintain. Even continuing to watch anime might be a burden. It's a sad thought for me to contemplate, but that's life. Is the color maroon the perfect color for Community Mods? Why? If not, what color should it be and why? from @AlexPaulLEWZ I don't like the color and would prefer the green color of the forum mods, mostly due to green being my favorite color. What does a community moderator do, exactly? Or is that, like, top-secret? from @Kii_Ibarra A Community Moderator deals with rule violators throughout all of MAL, while Forum Moderators focus primarily on the forums. Forum Moderators can remove posts and threads and send rule reminders, but as of now can't provide official warnings or ban users for rule violations. That's the job of Community Moderators. A lot of our time is spent on profile pages, people pages, bots, alt accounts, trolls, etc. We still deal with the forums, especially in cases involving violations which are warn/ban-worthy, but we are also busy in other areas around MAL. Has anyone ever suggested a song for Anime Song of the Day that made you check out the series it was from? from @Kii_Ibarra Yes! In fact, @Tsarko recently suggested a song for Anime Song of the Day which I loved so much from the first second of the song that I decided right away to check out the anime and the artist. The song being "Fate" by KOKIA, the OP for the 2010 version of Broken Blade (a series of six movies). The song is heavenly epic and the anime is pretty good as well. Besides this, there are times when the suggestions compelled me to re-watch an anime. What does an average day of MAL modding look like? from @MaxiDennis I guess that might depend on the mod in question, but for me, an average day of modding on MAL is going through the queue where all the reports are compiled and hoping that it's small, and then see it's really large and groan before starting to take care of the reports one by one. From there, it really depends on the severity of the reports. Sometimes mods can just spend hours doing many simple reports, like moving, merging, or removing easy to handle threads (among many other types of reports). Other times though, mods can be stuck with just one report for hours, whether it's due to having many pages to read through or it being a complicated case where a mod might want opinions from other mods on what to do, which often results in long meetings discussing what to do. But I guess an average day would be dealing with a thread which is against the rules in some basic way (like in the wrong board, an x vs y thread, an overrated/underrated thread, etc. Then as the mod goes through the reports for an hour or two and comes across thirty different threads which have the same problem, the mod will facepalm and sigh a lot. Sometime during the session, the mod will come across at least one more severe type of report, like abuse or trolling, and will have to spend a significant amount of time dealing with it properly. A lot of our time each day is spent composing messages to users. Sometimes we have prepared messages ready for that, but there are many times where a mod will need to spend a good chunk of time writing out individual messages. And then there is the time that is dealt with speaking to users who found their accounts banned (which could happen for many reasons besides for a mod banning them). So in short, an average day is pretty busy. Why do you have a strong passion for anime dubs? from @NextUniverse I would call it just a normal passion. There are plenty of people who have stronger passions about dubs than I do, but the reason I normally stick with dubs can probably be summed up to two reasons. For one, I like to be able to google things while watching, and it's convenient to be able to do that without needing to pause the video since I can keep it playing and understand what's going on just from the dialogue. And two, I find it more enjoyable to be able to see the show in all its merit without having to take my eyes off the center of the screen to read the subtitles. This is especially true for shows that are well animated and I can appreciate all the frames in action. Of course, there is the argument that the dubs are inferior due to the Japanese VAs being much better, but even if that was a factual statement and not a subjective one, as someone who has seen multiple anime in both languages, I have personally found that the voice acting quality doesn't really change my impression of an anime's quality on a general basis. Of course, that's just me, and others feel differently. Why are you known as the most based mod? from @NextUniverse Ummm, maybe because I am the only mod that plays baseball? What are some things you wish users cease doing to make the burden on Community Moderators less? One of the hardest types of reports to moderate are threads where a user, whether intentionally or not, baits another user with an opinion that starts a massively ugly back and forth, which then many other users join in, causing the thread to be filled with abuse thrown in every direction. These threads can often take hours to deal with, and it would be extremely helpful if instead of replying to the user, users either report the post if they think it violates the rules and/or don't respond to it or at the very least talk to the user privately about it so it doesn't bog down the thread or make the thread into a rule violating mess from multiple users. Of course, that's not to say that users shouldn't be allowed to argue on the forums. They should. That's part of what they are for. But at least keep the debate civil and on topic if you even want to have it on the forums at all. This is a part of what made the now archived Current Events board so frustrating to moderate. So for example, if a user sees a thread titled, "Who is your favorite Bleach character?" and in the thread there is a post like, "all Bleach characters are terrible." What the user should do is report it as off topic and as bait, and not respond to it like, "if you don't like Bleach, why are you even here?" or something along those lines, because that will likely just derail the thread into an off topic, abuse-filled, unproductive back and forth mess. What are your feelings about the closure of the Current Events (CE) board? It definitely made modding easier for the mods. One of the biggest issue of CE is that it became so political, that it was hard to mod the board in an unbiased way, which was part of the reason I tried not to mod there much, since I didn't want my political opinions to sway my judgment of who to ban or not ban, or what threads to allow to stay or what threads to lock or remove. If there was a topic which I didn't feel strongly about one way or another, I didn't mind modding the thread, but more often than not, the reported threads were topics which I had strong feelings about one way or another, and in those cases I tried not to get involved. I am not sure if I was the only mod who felt this way, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least a couple other of the mods felt the same way. Like with what we are seeing now with people debating about whether or not Twitter is censoring content justly or unjustly, it can be quite a controversial issue. I have heard often that in sports (or at least some sports), the referees who are fans of a certain team generally aren't allowed to officiate the games that the team plays in, since their biases might get in the way and cloud their judgment. That's pretty much how I look at it, and I feel like it would be immoral of me to moderate political threads in which I have a strong opinion about. In addition, I think that CE being carried on in clubs that users made worked out better either way, since users that make clubs of that nature have total control of what goes on there. Of course, a neutral CE club with neutral admins and officers would be ideal, or alternatively, admins and officers with opposing views to keep things balanced, but I am not sure if this is currently being done in the major CE/political MAL clubs. If it is though, then it would likely solve a lot of potential issues that may pop up in those clubs. When you are in a bad mood, do you prefer to be left alone or would you rather have someone help comfort you? I would much rather be alone, but I definitely think that having people comfort me in those very rare instances is a much healthier option and is often much more effective, despite my preferred option of being left alone. What do you like most about traveling and what’s the most favorite place you visited? My favorite part about traveling would be doing the planned activities once there. So my favorite place that I visited would probably be Austria, where I had an amazing week of summer skiing. Not only was the skiing fun, but the entire trip was full of breathtaking scenery. And of course, it was the friends who came along that made it as fun as it was. How do you think the community views you as a community moderator and as a user in general? Like an evil, nasty, immoral person who likes banning people for fun. I would hope they see me as a normal user for the most part and as a helpful moderator that they can turn to for help if they need it. Though of course, it wouldn't be shocking to hear that a majority of forum users find me either as a mean and ineffective moderator. As a normal user though, I think most users who see my posts would say I am simply a well-mannered and thoughtful user... hopefully. You mentioned earlier that you will be retiring from the Staff and from MAL. How will that affect the way you spend your time and the amount of time spent in MAL? It's not a sure thing yet, though I guess everyone retires eventually. If I leave due to having to spend a substantial amount of time devoted to a potential family of my own, then my time will likely be largely split between work and the family, and that will likely result in a large decrease in the amount of time I spend on MAL and matching anime. Of course, there are people who are able to spend a bunch of time on MAL despite being extremely busy with family and work so perhaps I will be able to manage it as well. Only time will tell. How would you like to be remembered? (As a mod and as a user) I think I would like to be remembered the same way for both: fair, kind, and helpful. Of course, there will be users who might not like me much as a mod, regardless of whether or not I modded anything related to them in the past, and I won't judge anybody for that, but I hope that nobody dislikes me for anything I have done outside of modding. I guess being remembered as "The Bleach Fan" wouldn't be too bad either, haha. If you had a theme song, what would it be? It's hard to really narrow it down to one, especially when this question can be interpreted in different ways. Like, is this only referring to anime themes which already exist and I am just applying one of those to myself or am I picking a non-anime song to transfer over into a character theme? So along with being able to take this in different ways, there is also the question of whether I should pick my favorite song or pick the song I think fits me best as a character theme even if it's not my favorite. I guess if I was picking an anime track which would characterize my personality the most accurately, on the top of my head I would pick a track from the Naruto soundtrack called "Afternoon of Konoha." It's a pretty chill and laid-back track, which I think is the most accurate way to characterize myself. Is there anything you wish MAL had? This question sort of ties in with my point about dev work and coding. I think if there was one thing I really would want, it would be a method to subscribe or follow specific pages for studios and people (like VAs, directors, artists, etc.) which would then give you a notification when a new role was added to their pages. This could also be utilized for user pages, so that you could get a notification every time a specific user made a post or review. A MAL anime streaming service would be awesome, though I am not getting my hopes up for that one, haha. Any feedback on the interview format? The format is very nice and clear. I do think that a little more individuality for each interview would be a nice touch, but I guess that's what the community questions are for. Is there something unasked that you would like to talk about? Sure. Let's talk about legally streaming anime vs. pirating anime, cause that's always a fun debate. I am a big believer that not watching anime legally (or non-anime) is stealing. Plain and simple. I know that's a pretty controversial and radical thing to say, but hear me out. People spend money making anime, and expect to be paid by others to enjoy what they made so they can use that money to make more anime, expecting to be paid by others to enjoy what they made so that they can use that money to make more anime, etc., round and round it goes. If everyone pirated, then the anime makers wouldn't be able to produce money to make future anime. So obviously they would like to be compensated for their work, and if one person enjoying that anime should pay for that arrangement to work, then everyone who enjoys that anime should pay for that arrangement to work. Of course, there are the common rationalizations given for pirating anime. Like, "I don't have the money to pay for that, and I won't pay for that, so if I wouldn't pay to watch it either way, there is nothing wrong with me not paying to watch it. Additionally, if I watch it for free, I can spread word of mouth, which will get others to watch it and pay for it." While the latter part of that rationalization is a decent point, it doesn't excuse you for not paying yourself. If everyone used that logic, the entire world could theoretically watch it for free without paying for it. So while it happens to have an element of truth to it, it doesn't negate the fact that you are choosing to be the one to watch it without paying for it with no absolute certainty that anyone who watches it because of you will end up watching it legally in the first place. In regards to that first part about not having money, that's pretty much the least credible reason for being allowed to pirate anime. A person doesn't have a natural born right to watch whatever he wants whenever he wants. It's a privilege that one has when purchasing the right to do so. So if you don't have money to spare to pay for the anime, then you won't end up with the permission to reap the benefits of purchasing the anime. So in short, even if poor, benefitting without paying from the work of another who is expecting payment is still stealing. Other rationalizations are: "The legal options are terrible cause the website is terribly run or extremely overpriced," and "Barely any of the money I spend will even go to the creators, so why should I pay for a service when the people who made the animation won't even be making extra money from it?" And again, the same point as before applies here. If you don't want to pay for a service, even if it's incompetent, that doesn't give you the right to watch something without paying. About the reason for the creators barely getting any profit from you watching it, even if that was true, they are still getting something, and even an extra penny would help them out. And if you add a penny for every illegally watched episode of anime, that would be billions, possibly trillions, of pennies. Plus, the more money that the streamer has results in more money to spend on streaming a larger number of anime each season and theoretically having the potential of improving their platform. Of course, I could delve more deeply into those rationalizations and give many more, but this is supposed to be a debate, so I will just end off with one last point before giving you the floor. The rationalization that I see is the most excusable for pirating anime is "I would pay for it, but it isn't available legally for me to stream or purchase (even with a VPN), so since they aren't giving me an option to pay for it, they won't lose out any potential profit if I do watch it illegally. " These are the times that I myself will resort to pirating. Of course, it technically is still stealing according to the definition of stealing, and I shouldn't do it, but my rationalization is that I would gladly pay for it if I had the capability to do so and that it will eventually end up on a legal streaming platform and that I will watch it again legally when it becomes available. Perhaps it comes across as hypocritical of me to even make these arguments when in the end I will resort to piracy just like many others if I want to watch something badly enough. Although at least in my case, the people making the anime aren't losing any potential profit. What do you think? Coolest: As a person who hasn’t really spent a lot over the years watching anime, I think it would be fair to say that I am in favor of pirating. And with all that you've said, my argument will barely amount to anything since you've clearly already stated about the "possible reasons people pirate." But that's kinda the thing. The fact that we can't exactly do much is what makes us pirate. We don't know if what we contribute "actually" goes to the studios and their animators. For all we know, we give the money to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, etc. We don't know how much is given to the producers, and how much goes to the actual hardworking animators. And I do believe that pirating doesn't negate this in any way. In fact, there's been many instances in which studios have gone bankrupt because of piracy (directly or indirectly). The studio of the famous Mushishi—Artland Studios went bankrupt back in 2017, and Manglobe (Deadman Wonderland, KamiNomi, etc.) went bankrupt in 2015, and sadly both of these had to be shut down. There are many more examples of these studios shutting down. Yet even after these studios have shut down. Their anime are still being streamed to this day on various OTT platforms. Now where does all this channel to? Clearly not the studios. I can't fully agree with you. But what I can agree on is that animators are worked to the bone but are sadly not paid anywhere near the amount they deserve I'm sure that many people would love to contribute to studios and animators if we knew that it would directly help them instead of multibillion dollar streaming services You say you can't fully disagree with me. About what issue exactly? Do you think pirating anime isn't considered stealing? Or do you think that pirating anime in these cases may indeed be considered stealing, but that it's excusable for the reasons you provided? Coolest: I can't fully agree that we should drop pirating this very moment and go make accounts in one of these sites to watch anime "legally," because it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that not much of what we pay actually ends up with the original sources (studious, producers, etc.). But I do agree that if in the future, something so convenient does come, it should definitely be opted by the masses. I see. All of those are valid points which I won't delve into right now, since at the end of the day, it doesn't really relate to my main point. Just to be clear, pirating is arguably a big part of what has made the anime fandom as big as it is today, which does result in more people being aware of anime which results in more people legally paying for anime. So I wouldn't even propose that pirating should disappear. My entire point is that pirating is stealing. And if you are okay with that, then so be it. The part of pirating which irks me the most is when people say it isn't stealing or illegal. If one wants to illegally watch anime, I can't and won't stop them. But a person should be aware that telling himself that he is only doing it since it isn't really stealing is just telling himself a convenient rationalization so he doesn't have to think of himself as someone who is engaging in illegal activity, and this applies to me as well. Either way, I don't like preaching to people with the exception of my younger siblings, haha. I just wanted to spice up this interview a little to provide the readers some food for thought for them to engage with, and they can message me their opinions on the matter one way or another, and we can move on to the rest of the interview. Can you recommend three users whom we can choose for an interview next, and briefly explain why you would like to read their interviews? I don't really want to put specific users on the spot for being invited to be interviewed, especially without permission, but I would in general like seeing other moderators being interviewed to see their view on these questions and other major users in the MAL community for the same reason. @Kenny_Stryker has given me permission to be recommended. Kenny created what is almost definitely the largest and longest consistently used thread on MAL which isn't a mod-created mega thread (like the help identify this anime/character thread) or a Forum Games thread. This thread is the Upcoming Dubbed Anime thread in the Anime Discussion Board. It has been going strong since December 2017, and it just continues to grow in popularity each year. So I would love to read an interview about Kenny's thoughts about that and how it was like dealing with that thread for over five years now. I definitely think that there can be a lot to be gained from such an interview for users who either make threads or want to make threads. Anything you would like to say to our readers? Thanks to everyone for reading! Watch Bleach if you haven't already. |
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| This was a super cool one in the making Prime Was cool to find out more bout ya 😁😀 |
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| Probably best to not tag you, since you've got, well, mod things to be doing, I'm sure, but good luck with starting a family, anime-prime! And I'm sure many people here will miss you if you do become less active PS: Keep up the good work moderating! We all appreciate it! :) |
My greatest contribution to this website:  |
| Finally, an interview from the coolest mod on MAL and as a dub watcher, the upcoming dub anime thread is very helpful. |
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