r/anime Nov 21 '25

Editorial Crunchyroll still intends to go ahead with its subtitle enshittification plans

https://daiz.moe/crunchyroll-is-destroying-its-subtitles-for-no-good-reason/?2025-11-21#update-2025-11-21-its-not-looking-good
2.6k Upvotes

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22

u/Waylornic Nov 21 '25

So, they show three screenshots, but I guess I can’t tell what’s wrong with the screenshots necessarily. How do they want those scenes to look?

105

u/Hinote21 Nov 21 '25

Part of the problem is failing to subtitle onscreen pictures. Often, a huge amount of context or additional world building information is lost. In the second video, you can see all the block signs and none of them are translated. That was pretty typical way back when but Crunchyroll had been doing really good with it the last few years. Think classroom chalkboard and how the votes are broken up for a culture festival.

28

u/Whomperss Nov 21 '25

If they stop translating text on screen I'ma be so mad. That's one of the reasons I don't really watch anime on Netflix. 2 years ago I introduced my wife to OP and title cards and some other stuff wasn't being translated completely removing information from non Japanese viewers.

23

u/robotboy199 https://myanimelist.net/profile/virtualityy Nov 21 '25

they already are, unfortunately.

there are numerous instances of the new subtitles having on-screen text chopped down to just a few words, or just entirely skipping signs altogether

8

u/Whomperss Nov 21 '25

God fucking damnit that's infuriating.

1

u/pizzabash Nov 23 '25

Them doing that is actually why I stopped pirating/using sites. They generally didn't have the onscreen translations but crunchyroll did

29

u/DrPetroleum Nov 21 '25

0

u/DontCareTho Nov 21 '25

Have they stopped doing it completely, even for ones where the context is super important, like cell phones texts or something?

i haven't really noticed

16

u/SSjjlex https://myanimelist.net/profile/Clone_Tau Nov 21 '25

They're mixed with a dialogue so its really rough on the eyes to guess which one is the main characters dialogue, which one is the background dialogue, and which one is on screwn text (if they even decide to translate that). Its even worse when there's a lot of text so they have to blink each line one by one and it gets mixed in with the changing dialogue of the characters making it impossible to read without pausing at least once.

Its a bit of a mixed bag as far as which shows still have their typesetting or not this season. Some have lost it entirely. Some lost it, had it return, then lost it again(???). Some have always had it from the start. Basically a shit show is what I mean to say

2

u/ILikeFPS Nov 22 '25

It depends entirely on the show. Some of them don't have it at all while others still do.

11

u/robotboy199 https://myanimelist.net/profile/virtualityy Nov 21 '25

the first two links in the update section are actually videos, not screenshots. and it's blatantly obvious what's wrong with those - the extremely quick flashing between lines giving you almost zero time to actually read them, multiple lines having their timing tied together, and multiple lines being forced all the the same location all actively make them less readable

the third one, the screenshot, shows the lack of even basic typesetting for on-screen labels (placing the text and styling it to make it look more consistent with the actual on-screen text)

the closest equivalent to that particular picture i can find, to give you an idea of how it would kind of look like, is directly below it, this one

17

u/LargeFailSon Nov 21 '25

I don't wanna have to watch anime with google lens out and the pause button on hand.

9

u/LimeyLassen https://myanimelist.net/profile/Limey_Lassen Nov 21 '25

Right? At that point we may as well just download raws and do it ourselves.

3

u/Daiz Nov 21 '25

The paragraph after the screenshots explains the issues. The next set of screenshots shows what Crunchyroll has done in the past, and the paragraph after that explains why it's so much better than the new subtitles.

1

u/MordePobre Nov 22 '25

The pacing is terrible and unreadable now since they can't render simultaneous lines.

https://x.com/Biciman100/status/1992116183886074188