Post

Daiz
@daiz.moe

Important update: I have received word from insiders that Crunchyroll executives have deemed the user backlash to be small enough that their subtitle enshittification & OOONA plans will NOT be cancelled, only delayed. I have added an update to the article. There's a summary at the top now too.

Daiz@daiz.moe

New article on ★ daiz.moe ★ Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reason daiz.moe/crunchyroll-... A ton of research and effort went into this one. This is the article to read to get to the bottom of Crunchyroll's subtitle changes! Replies here will show up as comments (eventually)

daiz.moeCrunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reason | Daiz.moeWith the Fall 2025 anime season, Crunchyroll demonstrates zero respect for anime as a medium as the presentation quality of its subtitles reach an all-time low.
Daiz
@daiz.moe

I have also chosen to license the article under CC BY 4.0. This means that anyone can translate it, adapt it, republish it, do just about anything with it as long as attribution is given. If we want to put a stop to these plans, we need to force a public promise out of Crunchyroll to do better.

daiz.moeCrunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reasonWith the Fall 2025 anime season, Crunchyroll demonstrates zero respect for anime as a medium as the presentation quality of its subtitles reach an all-time low.
Daiz
@daiz.moe

Ask yourself this: Do you want this to be the future of your anime watching experience, forever? If your answer is no, then act on it! If you are a journalist or anyone with a platform, talk about this! If you know such people, urge them to do so! Use my article as base! Now, before it's too late!

262 reposts439 likes

Jörd
@blancsl8.bsky.social

I'm actually so mad that ONE company will single-handedly ruin subbed anime for EVERYONE in the west. Some of these shows are nigh incomprehensible without proper typesetting. Even if you sail the high seas, you'll only find the enshittified subtitles 99% of the time unless some fansubbers get to it

Daiz
@daiz.moe

This is what the subs for the episode looked like on initial release. CR has since updated it with the better original script that the first-party subtitling staff made in the first place in a silent response to the backlash.

Daiz
@daiz.moe

That would be Crunchyroll subtitles under the new standards that executives are trying to push the entire site towards.

Daiz
@daiz.moe

They are adhering to Netflix's extremely anime-unfriendly subtitling rules, which among other things enforce a strict two lines at a time maximum, doesn't allow you to position those two lines on different sides of the screen, and requires those ugly flashes of nothing when the subs change on screen

Fox Paws
@fox-paws.bsky.social

This is absolutely useless, I've got bootleg evangelion tapes with better subs than this. Between this, the funimation buyout and absorbing rightstuf @crunchyroll.com has done nothing but ravage the english anime industry for their own profit.

Daiz
@daiz.moe

If I recall correctly (I might be somewhat off), while there's some laws in Japan about mandating closed captions for TV broadcasts, it only applies to daytime shows or something and not late night stuff, which anime falls under. As a result, a lot of anime just never has closed captions made.

Daiz
@daiz.moe

You could certainly handle this better given the constraints. Easiest thing would be to drop the secondary conversation entirely. But well, that would come at the cost of... dropping the secondary conversation entirely. Which could easily be subbed and comprehensible without these constraints.

Daiz
@daiz.moe

No matter what, limiting anime subtitles to constraints as unsuitable for anime as Netflix's results in having to make continuously bad and worse decisions as to how you're going to handle things, and it just makes no sense at all for an anime company in control of its own video stack.

Allie
@missbrainproblems.bsky.social

I haven't heard anything about you for years since fansubbing started to die out. Very appropriate that the first time I hear about you since then is you letting me know how bad Crunchyroll is screwing the pooch on their subtitles, good to know.

Nails the Tabaxi 🍉
@nailsthetabaxi.bsky.social

I've been watching anime subbed since the early 90s and I couldn't make out any of that. I thought it was being real-time "translated" by an AI and that's why the subs kept flashing in and out. That's intolerably bad. Oh for the days of Animeigo's high-effort subs being the standard...