Hardball Films proves once again that it's not impossible to re-release older Aniplex shows: Coming soon in November is Sekirei, with season 2 to follow later
Cost saving for encoding / distribution would be only possible, if the changes allowed to reduce the number of video encodes - which we don't know if it was achieved or not. And even then it wouldn't be a problem to stil use full ass on plattforms that support it.
Crunchyroll manages to bring the videos even with Aegisub to Roku or potato CPU smart TVs - yes, they used burned in encodes, which sometimes causes delays.
And even if that wasn't possible, that's not a good excuse for plattforms that support good subtitles natively.
I was fully aware that vobsubs & PGS are technically just timed & partly transparent bitmaps - but nevertheless they offered a far better viewing experience even on hardware that is outdated or ancient by today's standard than Amazon's & Netflix approach.
... So did Crunchyroll just go back to some 1970s "industry standard" because their largest competitors (& partners) Amazon, Youtube & Netflix didn't support any actually modern industry standards or at least something that offers a similar quality level?
Not to mention that most mayor players in the industry discontinued that standard in the early 00s, because, better alternatives existed already? With the exception for some broadcasters, but only due to mandatory backwards compatibility issues.
Not to mention the improved successor PGS from ~2006, also supported by Sony, Fox and many others...
It looks like they went back to some kind of CC standard from the 70s? That anime companies only used for a very short period in the 90s because there was nothing better at that time?
Some said the "new" Crunchyroll subtitling style was some kind of "industry standard" - but which?
Even the vobsubs standard from ~1997, supported by companies like Sony, Disney, NBCUniversal was far more flexible than the current Crunchyroll style...
Honestly there are quite some situation / tasks etc in which AI actually works or at least. But there are also many, in which AI is just used as a way to get some sub-par results with almost zero efforts... The problem is: Some really think those sub-par results should be used "as it"
Bocchi the Rock is an Aniplex show and as such it's quite likely that Aniplex is in control of dubbing - or not - these shows in English. You might have noticed that the show got several foreign language dubs already.
It gets even better! There are already TWO SEASONS of this, despite it being dated to just a week ago (9/27/2025), and the episode synopsis for all six episodes are literally just the full Lorem ipsum text.
I'm almost crying from how utterly dumb & hilarious this is.
Closed Caption Converter is mentioned in the first lines of the actual subtitle files that the Crunchyroll website uses to display the subtitles. However as the software has the ability to import subtitles from various other softwares, it's kinda impossible to tell which software was used to
Today is probably the biggest day for the fall anime season/Preview Guide and things are...not looking great on rollout today for Crunchyroll.
Both MHA Final Season's first episode and the new season premiere for Spy Family are both up on Hulu. CR is 9 hrs late on MHA and it lacks EN subtitles
Remember the Funimation x Crunchyroll partnership that started in August 2016 and resulted in Funimation going almost dub-only? ...well, going dub-only is a solution if you can't offer good subtitles
Why doesn't Crunchyroll follow the actual industry standard for Closed Captions? That would allow even faster distribution at lower costs!
Instead of translating what's spoken just CC [Speaking Japanese] in 90 % of all lines. I'm sure fans will love it, like the barely readable subtitles now.
not only is the sign subtitle flickering & distracting, the subtitle is not even placed in a way that one could easily tell which of the signs in the back was translated
Update on this: more fall seasons are starting to roll out on Crunchyroll, and they all seem to be using Closed Caption Converter. It's hard to overstate how dumb this is. They're destroying one of their major competitive edges in the name of some asinine "compatibility" with their competitors
Some details: It seems that for at least two new in-house subtitle releases (A Wild Last Boss Appeared 01, Kaiju No8 23), rather than the usual Aegisub the subtitles were created in "Closed Caption Converter", which cannot do styled on-screen text at all. CR work with Aegisub on left, CCC on right.
and the official trailer for "Let This Grieving Soul Retire" Part 2 uses Youtube AI autodubbing www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iN...
Still, for now, no such disgusting violation of honor and taste has been their for an official disc or streaming release of a full Japanese Anime, but time will tell...
![Screenshot from A Wild Last Boss Appeared episode 1 from Crunchyroll, featuring a single on-screen text to translate at the top of the screen, with white text in a black box. Crunchyroll's usual work could basically replicate this box very accurately for immersive results, but with Closed Caption Converter we instead get regular subtitles reading "WAR SYSTEM [linebreak] - Different nations engaged in PvP combat." with zero styling involved. They're even placed right on top of the sign, resulting in just a total mess in terms of general readability.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yezjmch53wfkkmm7i3hiccua/bafkreiabvthl42loeakmqdhottd4uxcab4fzljhlg5wbdekolduipjw3ky@jpeg)
