Answerman

Are Subtitles Getting Smaller?

A Reader asks:

Q: "Is it just my eyes, or are subtitles getting smaller?"

No, it's not your eyes. I have often thought the same thing, after my own traumatic experience managing the UK home video campaign of Evangelion: 3.33: You (Cannot) Release. Sorry! What? That's not the film's real title? You could've fooled me. That particular anime release was delayed by almost two years as Studio Khara insisted on supervising the re-recording of the English dub and the re-translation of the original Japanese audio and subtitles. A process they directly oversaw, which resulted in the DVD and Blu-ray release containing two "studio-approved" subtitle options. I remember one of the subtitle streams being so wordy that I thought they had to reduce the font size to fit it all on screen.

As a regular anime viewer, I am not surprised to receive this question. Anime fans are a particular species when it comes to attention to detail, and subtitling is actually one of the major impediments to enjoying the medium if you cannot speak or understand Japanese. When it comes to the quality of subtitling, all is not as it may seem at first, especially if you're a Crunchyroll subscriber watching the Fall 2025 season. But we'll get to that crisis in a moment. First, let's address your main concern about whether subtitles are actually getting smaller.

The Technical Answer: Your TV Is Lying To You

Good news! Dr. ANSWERMAN has run some checks, and I am pleased to inform you that you haven't contracted syphilis or any of the hundreds of serious infections that can lead to permanent loss of sight. I've done the research, and it isn't you; it's your Smart TV.

According to subtitle experts, standard font sizes have not, in fact, been getting smaller; however, display resolution and pixel density have been increasing dramatically over time. What this means in practice is that the higher your TV's resolution, the smaller the font size will appear, even though the actual point size hasn't changed. A subtitle that looks perfectly readable on a 1080p display can seem tiny on a 4K screen with the same physical dimensions. Higher pixel densities can help alleviate this challenge, but as we're about to discuss, don't rely on Crunchyroll to rise to that challenge. There's a reason "Subs" always won during the great Anime Wars of the early 2000s, whenever the "Subs Versus Dubs" debate would reignite over tequila-soaked trestle tables at regional anime conventions and on messageboards around the early social media landscape. The answer? Fansubs and Home Video Standards.

DVDs and Blu-rays were the primary means of distributing and delivering a premium anime viewing experience to fans. Physical media traditionally featured larger, more readable subtitles with full closed captioning, superior typesetting, and careful attention to on-screen text translation. If you watch Anime A on Blu-ray or DVD, the subtitle font genuinely does appear larger on screen than it does on a Crunchyroll or Netflix stream.

However! My simply writing anything complimentary about the subtitle quality on commercial Blu-rays has likely marked me for death. Many of the OG fansubbers pride themselves on their subtitling skills and the overall quality of their work. The fansub community developed incredibly sophisticated techniques for subtitle presentation, using tools and formats that went far beyond what commercial releases offered at the time.

“You're S.R.T. can kiss my A.S.S.”

This topic has taken me down wormholes I never wanted to visit. Take this one, for example: even fansubbers and professional subtitlers can't agree on what is the best software, file format, or font for subtitling.

Many subbers swear by ASS (Advanced SubStation Alpha) format and believe it should be the anime industry standard because it allows for custom fonts, colors, text positioning, and animation effects. ASS enables multiple speakers to be displayed simultaneously in different positions on screen, on-screen text to be translated and positioned exactly where it appears in the scene, and visual styling that makes subtitles feel integrated into the viewing experience rather than slapped on top.

By contrast, SRT (SubRip) is a simple, plain-text subtitle format; no styling, no positioning, just text and timecodes. It's the universal standard used by Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and nearly every streaming service. It's simpler to produce, easier to scale across platforms, and compatible with every device under the sun. It's also, unfortunately, what Crunchyroll has switched to for their Fall 2025 season.

The tool that made ASS subtitles possible for Crunchyroll was Aegisub - a free, open-source, cross-platform application for creating and editing subtitles. Originally developed for fansubbing, Aegisub became the professional standard for anime localization because of its advanced features and customization options. Users can translate, time, and style subtitles using powerful tools, then export them in various formats. It was Crunchyroll's secret weapon, the tool that let them deliver fansub-quality subtitles at a commercial scale.

One thing that the recent subtitling crisis reveals is that Sony seems to be moving away from using the Aegisub system preferred by fansubbers and Crunchyroll's original production and operations team since the platform's inception. And one has to wonder if that is a wise move for the world's favorite anime streamer?

Crisis on Infinite Subtitles!

When I started writing this column, it was going to be a short and sweet explanation about high-resolution LED TV screens and monitors, but the events of the past few weeks could not go without comment.

According to Anime By The Numbers, there's been a noticeable downgrade in typesetting and visual quality for the new Fall 2025 anime simulcast. The first episode of My Hero Academia: Final Season launched without any English language option. SPY x FAMILY Season 3 was delayed by hours. Multiple shows launched late, some with no subtitles at all, others with only Portuguese or Thai options.

As of writing, many of these issues seem to have been rectified, but not before Reddit user mudda-hello documented the changes, including Crunchyroll's signature typesetting. Multiple overlapping speakers were no longer represented at different positions on screen. The bold fonts with colored strokes designed for visual clarity had vanished. On-screen text was either untranslated or stacked clumsily on top of dialogue.

Imagine watching an anime where a character holds up a sign with crucial plot information. Previously, that text would be translated and positioned right on the sign. Now? The translation appears as generic white text at the bottom, completely covering the character's dialogue happening simultaneously. You have to choose: read the sign or read what they're saying. You can't have both.

What Actually Happened

While Crunchyroll's official statement blames "internal system problems," leaked reports paint a very different picture. According to sources, the majority of Crunchyroll's subtitling staff had been using Aegisub, the open-source software beloved by the fansubbing community. Recently, however, everyone was forced to abandon it and switch to cloud-based software called OOONA, a complete, proprietary system developed by an Israeli company. Many staff members were reportedly very upset about the decision, particularly coming so soon after major layoffs in August that gutted the localization and operations teams.

It is important to point out that OONA is fast-becoming an industry favorite. Global production and digital broadcasting behemoth, ITV (Love Island), has recently integrated it because it is a robust industry-grade tool for managing large volumes of subtitles. David Padmore, ITV's Director of Accessibility, commented: “We chose OOONA because the team really understands our access services and localization workflows, and the platform supports these off the shelf.”

Padmore also emphasized that OOONA lets ITV “make good use of AI and automation developments within a secure environment” as part of improving their production processes. However! ITV is not a global anime streaming platform, and one could fairly argue that the type of programming they deliver, reality formats, scripted dramas, game shows, etc, does not require the same level of bespoke subtitling that each anime series does.

OOONA, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, specializes in cloud-based software for translation and localization. It's also used by Netflix and Disney+, services that have never prioritized anime-specific subtitle styling. The software reportedly uses AI tools for various tasks like speech editing and video localization, though Crunchyroll has not confirmed its use of OOONA and denies any changes to its subtitle creation process.

The timing is damning. The August layoffs included some of Crunchyroll's longest-serving employees, people who had been with the company since its fansub roots, who understood why anime subtitling requires special attention. Then, right as the fall season launches, arguably the biggest anime season of 2025, with the final season of My Hero Academia, SPY x FAMILY Season 3, and One Punch Man Season 3, things fall apart.

Crunchyroll's official response to Anime News Network stated: "Over the past few days, some users experienced delays in accessing the content they wanted and subtitle issues across certain series. These were caused by internal system problems, not by any change in how we create subtitles, use of new vendors, or AI. Those internal issues have now been fully resolved."

The community isn't buying it. When Reddit users contacted customer support, they received similarly vague responses about "technical and software issues" causing subtitles to "appear differently," with assurances that this "was not an intentional downgrade." After massive fan backlash, Crunchyroll reverted the subtitle font to their previous style, suggesting this wasn't a bug at all, but a deliberate change that they subsequently walked back when the outcry became too loud. Proper typesetting is crucial for deaf and hard-of-hearing fans, as well as viewers with visual impairments. Crunchyroll's previous subtitle style used bold fonts with colored strokes specifically for visual clarity. The new generic white text is significantly harder to read.

This comes after Crunchyroll's ongoing failure to provide closed captioning for most English dubs, a problem that's persisted for years despite competitors offering CC as standard. When Crunchyroll absorbed Funimation, many English dubs that previously had closed captions lost them.

For over a decade, Crunchyroll used subtitle formats that let translators be creative with how text appeared on screen. On-screen signs blended naturally into scenes. Text messages showed up translated where they belonged. Multiple speakers could be tracked easily. It made the shows better to watch, and for a moment, that was all gone.

Reincarnated as a Streaming Service: I Have Overpowered Market Share, But My Subtitles Are Trash

It's easy to dump on The Man, but from a purely business perspective, Crunchyroll might actually be making the "right" decision. Even though it hurts fans.

Crunchyroll doesn't just stream anime directly to subscribers anymore. They sub-license major titles to Netflix (Solo Leveling, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle), Disney+ (My Hero Academia), and other platforms. They're available as a channel through Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV. All of these distribution partners require standardized subtitle formats that work across dozens of different apps, devices, and platforms. In some of their fastest-growing markets, the app is distributed via Netflix and Disney+, which aren't going to accommodate Crunchyroll's special ASS format files. They want industry-standard SRT that slots seamlessly into their existing infrastructure.

Additionally, Crunchyroll is rapidly expanding into new international markets like Brazil, Mexico, India, and Indonesia, where they need to produce subtitles in multiple languages simultaneously. From an operations perspective, standardizing on the same tools and formats that every other streaming service uses makes scaling much easier and cheaper.

But Crunchyroll isn't like any other streaming service, and its subscribers aren't like any other media consumer. They're supposed to be the anime-first platform, the one that understands what makes this medium special. As one industry analyst noted, "If Crunchyroll stops doing typesetting work, for most anime, it will simply cease to exist. The viewing experience for the typical anime fan will go down."

With anime making up just 4-5% of Netflix's total viewership and an even smaller share of Hulu, Disney+, and Prime Video, those platforms will never optimize the viewing experience for anime. They can't justify the investment. But Crunchyroll's entire business model is built on being the definitive anime platform. When they abandon what made them special, what's left? Understandably, Sony might stumble while rapidly scaling into new markets that lack decades of anime localization infrastructure, but it isn't as if they didn't acquire almost every single successful Western anime distribution business of the past 30 years, either. Surely! They have the largest international braintrust for the global anime distribution and monetisation at their disposal. Don't they? Where have all of their anime experts gone?

What Sony seems to misunderstand is that selling anime to anime fans is not like other tech-based product services. They are detail-oriented people. They notice when fonts change. They care about on-screen text translation. They built the fansub community that Crunchyroll originally displaced. And yes, they can be pernickety pains in the ass, but you can't treat them like passive Netflix consumers.

The subtitle crisis of Fall 2025 is about more than typesetting. It's about whether the world's dominant anime streaming platform will honor the community that built it, or whether, as with so many tech platforms before it, growth and profit will trump everything else.

Your eyes are fine. It's Crunchyroll's vision that possibly requires correction.

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