Taking Work Home: Ani-Gamers, Coding and Game Nights
03–11–2016 | Editor
From our subscribers and fans to our employees, at Crunchyroll, our community is what sets us apart. Just take our weekly game nights. Whether it’s Artemis, Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart, our office encourages an environment where you can take a step back from the daily grind and just have fun with co-workers and fellow anime fans that are as passionate as you are. On Thursdays, we play Magic: The Gathering, and welcome all employees, and even some former coworkers, to hang out and survive many intense Magic duels! One game night regular and core member of the Crunchyroll team is Evan Minto, software engineer extraordinaire. So, how did Evan find his passion for anime?
Many of us remember the exact moment we discovered our first obsession, whether it was coming across the initial Harry Potter book or kicking a soccer ball for the first time. For Evan, this moment happened when he was 10 years old, and he stumbled upon an episode of Pokémon on television. Evan had never seen anime before, but from the moment he started watching, he was hooked.
This was back in the late ’90s when the internet was still a new thing, we were all on dial-up, and “Google” was not yet a verb, but still a fledgling startup. There wasn’t an easy way to search for other shows out there like Pokémon — and, there was no medium like Crunchyroll. So, Evan turned to Toonami first to watch Gundam Wing and Dragon Ball Z and then, with persistence and a few late nights, he found some reliable sources online and began to deepen his knowledge about anime. As his library grew, Evan transformed his anime obsession into more than just a hobby like most of us at Crunchyroll. He channeled his passion online to engage with other anime enthusiasts around the world.
Combining his computer programming skills with a desire to interact with other fans, Evan launched his own successful anime blog — Ani-Gamers — in 2004. And, it was through Ani-Gamers that he discovered Crunchyroll. Upon graduating from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2013, Evan was determined to create a career that utilized both his programming and animation degree. So, he singled out Crunchyroll, reaching out to an internal contact he met through his blog, whose friendly recommendation got his foot in the door for a technical interview.
Just as we see in many anime series, sometimes the unexpected launches a great storyline and journey. Evan has now spent just under three years as a full-stack software engineer at Crunchyroll and has become an integral part of our team and culture. Though his main job revolves around programming and technical skills, Evan also hosts a podcast for Crunchyroll called “The Crunchycast,” where he talks about his favorite shows, engaging with the Crunchyroll fanbase as well. Like other Crunchyroll employees, we encourage Evan to tap into his creativity, tell his story, and directly interact with our fans, so that collectively we remain active in the conversation and understand what our community is most excited about.
A huge Crunchyroll fan and user himself, Evan is always thinking of new ways to improve the experience. When he codes a new feature, he personally tests out what he created at the office, often involving his friends and fellow Crunchyroll subscribers in the process too. This kind of direct relation from the code to the fan isn’t that common in the technology industry, but at Crunchyroll, we are fortunate enough to have a number of employees who are fans themselv
