A few weeks ago I interviewed Crunchyroll’s almost do it all person (though her main role is social media) Victoria Holden. I encourage you to give it a read when you get a chance. Then after that, come back here.
This is what I’m going to coin “interview DLC”. For that, you have to thank Muse’s brother for me thinking about naming it this (Don’t worry about how I came up with the name).
So, about this free Victoria Holden DLC…
There was a bit more information that couldn’t be included in the main interview for a lot of reasons (length, flow, context, etc), but I still feel like there was some info worth sharing. So, might as well share a few that at least interested me:
- Like her parents. They were very influential in her upbringing, so I had to ask about that. A few things I learned: one, her dad’s anime favorites are Yamato, Record of Lodoss War, Berserk, and both Full Metal Alchemist shows; two, her mom likes to play difficult games (“She plays a lot of the Elder Scrolls games,” Victoria said. “Morrowind, Skyrim, she’s the worst, Dark Souls, I’m like, ‘How do you do this to yourself?’”)
- I have to provide more context for this line:
“Having been raised by a dad who tried to convince her friends’ parents why anime has more plot than Western cartoons”
So, the real story is when Victoria was growing up, since her parents were big into anime and games, her friends weren’t allowed to go to her house. When her parents had to meet the other parents, Victoria explained he would try to explain anime’s appeal. “Whenever I remember watching him do it, he would always be like, ‘You know I’ve been growing up and I’d been watching things like Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes and when characters die they come back. Maybe Bugs gets his head blown off but then it springs back — but the first time I saw Star Blazers (Yamato), somebody died and they didn’t come back.’ So he was trying to use that as an analogy to explain to them, it’s not like a cartoon, it’s not kids stuff. It’s a story, it’s just a medium.
- On a random note, she’s invited them to be on the Crunchycast, but that’s a no go so far!
- Shoutout to Miles for helping Victoria out with social media.
- Lastly, here’s a bit from Victoria on how CR listens to the fans: “CR does hear — like me, Miles, Danika, all of us, we’re out there talking about anime, we know what the fans wanna see, we know which shows they want on CR. I don’t know if they know how powerful their voices are or communicating with us is. We do talk directly to our licensing team and let them know and we’ll get them anything they want, anything we have to get approved for them to go the extra mile. And things aren’t always in our control, but when the fans want something we try really hard to get it and I feel like 2016 is gonna be a year where a lot of people are very happy with our announcements.”
Anyways, check out the interview on MAL, and if you have any thoughts, you can come back here and comment below.