First of all: hello! I'm the guy who posted that initial discussion thread on SDA that started the whole speedrunning-Drawn-to-Life thing. I'm deeply sorry about that.

Second, I'd like to discuss the matter of timing runs. I submitted that thread years ago, and when I first suggested start/stop times, I was thinking in the mindset of "people will want to see everything the game has to offer", without really considering how that affects the run's length and/or enjoyability.

To that end, I'd like to suggest a change to when start/stop times should occur: My new suggestion is to start timing once you gain control of the Hero, and stop timing once you deal the final hit on Wilfre. This would cut out the boring beginning of the game (where you basically just mash A until you finally get a character to control), as well as the fairly pointless end of game tasks (going to the secret beach & saying goodbye to Jowee). As far as time goes, it would remove somewhere around 8 minutes overall (not necessarily game-changing, considering the run is currently 7 1/2 hours, but still a decent amount of cut time).

So, yeah. Thoughts?

I personally agree. The currently defined start and end cutscenes of the run are extremely annoying. I'll probably be trying out a speedrun of DTL and maybe DTL2 sometime, so making the entire thing that little bit less arduous would be very helpful.