Just wanted to appreciate good typesetting in the recent Jujutsu Kaisen episode
I don't want to be thought of a shill but I am always interested in all forms of industry practices and as such, wanted to bring this up and make it it's own thread because I saw people commenting about it in the recent JJK episode thread. So for those who watched it, the last episode of JJK was basically overloaded with on-screen text for basically the entire episode. Thankfully, it seems like English Crunchyroll's subbing team took the effort to actually typset and time the translations so that everything was visible and legible even though there were multiple lines, sections and even different angles of subbed on-screen text
I make this point to contrast with Netflix. For as long as I've seen Netflix when they sub anime, they seem to have a serious issue when it comes to on-screen text. They usually just put the translation of the words at the top of the screen. This is usually not a problem but this does become a problem when someone's talking. For some reason they are unable to have one line of dialogue and another line translating the text, so this means someone can be talking and then the translation of the text pops up AFTER they are done talking or worse, if two people are in conversation one line will be there, the text TL will pop for a second and then the second person's line will be there
You can see how this would be a nightmare with what the last episode was doing. I couldn't comprehend anything that was going on because of that crap. They didn't even translate the rules properly, it was showing rules from previous numbers despite changing to a different number. It was impossible to understand (Also, Netflix's subs for JJK just in general feel off)
I also heard Crunchyroll in Spanish didn't even bother to translate the on-screen text which is even worse. Like, how do you know what they were even talking about about.
I heard that there may have been some backlash to CR's subbing practices in recent seasons because I noticed a couple of shows this season had the same fansub-tier typesetting (I mean this in a good way) that they were known for like in Tamon's B-Side having good typesetting. So if this is the case, then good job to those who brought it up.
I make this point to contrast with Netflix. For as long as I've seen Netflix when they sub anime, they seem to have a serious issue when it comes to on-screen text. They usually just put the translation of the words at the top of the screen. This is usually not a problem but this does become a problem when someone's talking. For some reason they are unable to have one line of dialogue and another line translating the text, so this means someone can be talking and then the translation of the text pops up AFTER they are done talking or worse, if two people are in conversation one line will be there, the text TL will pop for a second and then the second person's line will be there
You can see how this would be a nightmare with what the last episode was doing. I couldn't comprehend anything that was going on because of that crap. They didn't even translate the rules properly, it was showing rules from previous numbers despite changing to a different number. It was impossible to understand (Also, Netflix's subs for JJK just in general feel off)
I also heard Crunchyroll in Spanish didn't even bother to translate the on-screen text which is even worse. Like, how do you know what they were even talking about about.
I heard that there may have been some backlash to CR's subbing practices in recent seasons because I noticed a couple of shows this season had the same fansub-tier typesetting (I mean this in a good way) that they were known for like in Tamon's B-Side having good typesetting. So if this is the case, then good job to those who brought it up.
Commentaires
That's because Netflix uses an older subtitle technology that doesn't allow for the fancy stuff. Keep in mind anime is a tiny percent of their inventory.
The fancy stuff CR can have comes from .ass, the subtitle format fansubbers used since the 2000s for typesetting, which can accomplish a lot of ~~and, considering what early 2010s [commie] was up to, a lot of silly~~ stuff. CR literally hired the fans to get their operation (as a legal distributor) started and over time expanded web its player's capabilities to display more of the typesetting options .ass has.
What caused the backlash last fall was CR trying to switch to the half-baked format other streaming services use at scale, which for obvious reasons is a massive downgrade. [Here's the long version of the typesetting drama.](https://daiz.moe/crunchyroll-is-destroying-its-subtitles-for-no-good-reason/)
It's partly this and partly their own policies, like there's no reason they can't translate a sign and a line of dialog in the same subtitle event except that [their rules disallow it](https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/217350977-English-USA-Timed-Text-Style-Guide) (see section II.10. On-screen Text). That means that any time there's a sign (or "forced narrative" as they're called in the industry for some reason) that overlaps with dialog, the sign can't be translated at all unless there are gaps around the dialog to fit it in.
Amazon is the same.
Typesetting in last seasons shokuba was fine too.
Wash It All Away also had some real nice typesetting.
I guess the backlash had a real impact?