I don't see a reason to adjust the timing method. Starting timing on New Game is how it is, and probably should be, for almost any game anyways, except the ones that use JRTA timing (Power on). Also, I personally feel that changing the timing to what you suggested wouldn't even change anything except for making the run appear 4 minutes faster than it actually is.

Yeah, I agree with Nev, there's really no reason for it.

I haven't really done too much research yet, but wouldn't the purpose be so you can pick whatever character you want and choose a name that isn't "a" or whatever without having to stress?

I completely agree with the OP. I think having the freedom at the beginning to make your character without the clock harassing you would be nice.

Especially since we're speedrunning an RPG here. It would be nice to at least enjoy the appearance of your character for the next 2 hours. (Or is everyone shoehorned in this game into picking a specific race due to stats?)

The run is so long, that maybe 3 menus at the beginning of the run don't matter. I name myself and choose a costume for my lady Selkie. I'm probably losing upwards of 10 seconds on that. Big whoop.

I mean, I would agree with you normally. And likely when I run this game I'll just deal with the time loss so I can name my character and such as well... But... 1st and second place are within 10 seconds of eachother. That timeloss does make a difference here. The leaderboard times are all very tight.

No they aren't. What category are you talking about? None of their first and second places are within 10 seconds of each other. This run has a ridiculous amount of RNG in it, you can lose 50 seconds without it being your fault. Losing at most 10 seconds for naming yourself means next to nothing in this game.

Also, just to point this out. Quickly menuing to create your character is part of the game/speedrun. Plus, the top 3 runs all name their characters properly, actually. It just so happened that all of them were 3 characters long, iirc. You're basically asking to cut out some menuing and a 3 minute intro out of the run for no actual reason. In fact, you're asking to reduce "skill requirement" by removing character creation from the timing.

As for the appearance of the character you gotta have to look at for 2 hours. It takes literally less than 1 second to adjust the look of the character. The only thing that would take time is the name, which, as explained above, isn't actually a problem since everyone names their character normally. Even if you don't and go with "a", you're still not at a point where it'd matter to save those 3 or 4 seconds. (To answer your other question, race is preference, although Selkie/Lilty is the most common one, whereas Yuke straight up sucks).

TL;DR Again, there's no reason to change the timing.

edit: typos.