Wowza.

I never even could imagine the support the Tomie interview would drum up. While I definitely wanted it to do super well, the sheer speed in which it gained attention from the PMD fanbase was mindblowing, and for that, I am super proud of you all! Of course, I did what I normally do whenever I get a big project like Eternal/Unscripted Memories out, and tried to share it where I was able, and hope the momentum would keep going… And luckily it did.

I’m proud to say as of now, it seems like the Tomie interview is my second most popular piece of work I’ve ever made for the Seafoam Gaming website, at around 4K views. If it seems like I got a lil carried away on Twitter wanting it to be seen far and wide, well, you can thank the fact my most popular piece of work was a really, really dumb article I wrote speculating on the AM2R takedown all those years ago, (when the true reason ended up being that Samus Returns was in the works) so to say I’m way more proud of this Tomie interview than that poor attempt at speculation is an understatement! Ultimately, I’d love if lifetime views of the Tomie interview could surpass the 8K that article got, but I know that these sorts of hopes doesn’t happen overnight, especially when 4K in a week is nothing at all to be ashamed of.

But man, reading a lot and seeing who shared my article and from where… Really reaffirmed to me how far and wide the PMD fanbase is. Despite being smaller in scope than the mainline series, it’s a very strong group of fans, and one I still feel do a lot of great in the community, even if I have butted heads with some of them in the past. Hearing from other people who noted that the older PMDs pulled them out of a similar rough spot in their lives, taught them to find new friends, helped them join a community, or even awaken their true identities, that just gave me so much joy and hope that I did the right thing, and hopefully Tomie will know that his work means a lot to so much fans, and that due to my article, more PMD fans know who to thank for the amazing stories!

So… What’s next for SFG, and how do I even begin to thank new readers who’re now aware of my work thanks to my life goal being accomplished? I mentioned that a bit last week before I uploaded the article, and for the most part, that’s still true: I do reviews mainly, and I had a big queue built up from very rough events in 2019 that dealt a mental toll on me. Truth be told, I was afraid something like that would happen again as yesterday (from when I’m typing this), one of my longtime family friends abruptly passed away, which completely wrecked me for a day.

However, I have enough energy to push forward, mainly due to me knowing that person would not want me to be bogged down by sorrow for them, even though they were hoping to read the article and I’m still unsure if they got around to it before their hospitalization. I shouldn’t have been the most important thing on their minds anyway during their final days, and I hope their family managed to spend the last moments they were hoping to. I probably won’t be 100% as a result from this loss for a while, but I’m not gonna let it derail me like 2019 did, so I’m still working on the review queue, and being very limiting for new codes I allow, to not fill the queue right back up after I start emptying it.

You may have also noticed in the Tomie interview that it was labeled under “Interview Initiative”, where I put the interview with David from 3DSBlog under a few years ago. Yes, I’m proud to say that I officially brought this back in full force with the Tomie interview, and the main goal behind the original Initiative pre-covid delaying everything, was for me to interview a bunch of devs that played a role in my site/life in some way, and try to let readers know how these folk are doing in the modern age, and to let the subjects know how much their work meant to a lot of people! Tomie was actually originally meant to be the grand finale of it all, since I didn’t think I’d actually find him, but with him being my second interview as part of this big goal, I gotta think of other cool people to interview, don’t I? I have some I’d like to go for, including more PMD folk, but both due to shyness and me having spent a lot with Tomie, I think I may hold off on a big scale interview for a little while.

Once again, super thanks to Kody Nokolo for being the interview translator, as his work was pretty much critical to establishing this long-awaited dream of mine. I know I often mention how SFG is a 100% solo joint, and that’s still mainly true in terms of writing… But some thing I just can’t do alone, even if I’m the only one with control of the site, and thus, I’m happy to make exceptions and bring on someone I feel can do a project justice.

So, how did Tomie react to the interview doing well, and what’s the goal from here? Well, I’m sad to say that he seems to have not seen anything yet: I haven’t heard from him in a month actually, since I got those answers and the clearance to post them. I did send followups of course, but also keep in mind that Tomie is a super busy man. Busy on what? I dunno, and it’s not my time to speculate, (I’m sure we’ll see whatever he’s working on at some point) but patience paid off the first time, and it’ll no doubt pay off this next time, so I’m eager to hear what he thinks and of course I’ll let you all know when he does! I still don’t think I’ll do a full scale followup interview with him right away, but I definitely want to keep in touch with him, and I have some personal ideas on how I may thank him for his time!

However, there is one thing bouncing around in my head… Some PMD fans have shown desire to do something to send to Tomie to let him know how much the fanbase enjoys his work, and I’m on board with that! However, I’m the last kind of person meant to juggle or even decide how to do a huge group effort, so while my idea is an Art College, I have no idea how to establish that or moderate it, of course… Nor do I know the legalities and how I’d ultimately send it: via email, like before, or via snail mail, across the ocean? Consider that a low priority thing I may do depending on if you guys want to see me try hosting that or not. Needless to say though, I am not disclosing his email to anyone out of respect for him, as the man stays mostly private. Part of me honestly just wants to hear what he thinks of those PMD remixes I included in the article, since I’m especially hopeful he hears the vocal rendition of the Gates ending song, so maybe I’ll wait for a response on that first.

That being said, once again, thank you all so much for your positive response to the interview. I also got good feedback on grammar and such and I’ll aim to incorporate that in the near future, but since I am still doing a full time job, I’m of course a very busy fox. If you guys wanna support me further and get minor extras, (a behind the scenes writeup on the interview, mainly featuring questions I threw out is to be up in the next few weeks) then you can go nuts and consider supporting the SFG patreon. I only charge when a major thing like my video retrospectives of stuff of scale to the tomie interview is done, so it’s not too often, and it’s only $1 to get the behind the scenes write ups and early 1 week access to video retrospectives!

With that said…

Video version?!?!

Yes, as I hinted at in the teaser video, I do plan on releasing a video this summer that goes over my nine year quest to interview tomie. No, it’s not a video interview with him, or my article read out in video form, but more akin to my usual Eternal Memories retrospectives, where I look into things I grew up with and reflect on what I think of them today. Granted, this is out of my usual EM season schedule (already super delayed from the data loss I had months ago), and probably won’t even be in my usual retrospective format, but… If you wanna hear about the nine year journey and how I slowly gained the courage and determination to finally contacting Tomie, stay tuned for mid August, that’s my goal for finishing this video up.

So yeah. Pretty basic update, with me going back to reviews and continuing to manage the job as I wait to hear back from Tomie, but yet again, thank you all for the support! Here’s hoping the Tomie-san interview continues to be used as a helpful source for all MD/Chunsoft fanatics alike.