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Answerman - Why Do Credits Only Sometimes Get Translated?

For awhile back in 2010-12, Funimation was going waaaay overboard to shoehorn translated credits in, even when they didn't have the proper creditless assets to do so. So we'd get releases that squeezed the video/JP credits to one side, (Ragnarok: The Animation), or freeze-framed an image (My Bride is a Mermaid), or added clumsy overlays (Sekirei), or shrunk the whole original video to the upper-left corner (Birdy the Mighty: Decode) to add English paged or scrolling credits. Birdy was an especially atrocious case, since the last episodes of each season had actual action/dialogue going on during the credits, instead of just the standard ED videos.

Since credits are the topic here, I have to bring up Kingdom for the umpteenth time (sorry). I've never seen any other release done like this. There are no English dub credits. No cast, no ADR director, no scriptwriter, just the translation and DVD authoring credits.

If I'm not mistaken, usually fans who care about Japanese credits are die hard fans who are into Japanese Seiyuu, Music groups, and/or Sakuga fans. Those fans are obsessed with works done in particular anime that caught their attention by confirming which actor, director, or artist are credited in that show and its individual episodes. So having barebones credit only consists of main director(s) and localization actors frustrates those fans as they can't verify their hypothesis on their favorite artists' work/performance right away without slogging through internet translation which is pretty much hit or miss.

Most anime viewers don't care much about credits in general, but those fans who care about credits tend have strong subconscious desire to make connection with artists. Those types would stand in line for hours to get autographs or getting obsessed with their favorite artists' work on online forums and social media.

Since credits are the topic here, I have to bring up Kingdom for the umpteenth time (sorry). I've never seen any other release done like this. There are no English dub credits. No cast, no ADR director, no scriptwriter, just the translation and DVD authoring credits.

But what they do have is ALL the credits for the Japanese production translated. An entire screen packed with dozens of names of the key animators, another screen for the 3DCG animators, every cast member down to Foot Soldier, everybody. Normally you're lucky to get the main cast and staff on the Japanese side, especially with Funimation dubs.

I've always wondered why they bothered, but this article suggests two things to me: it wasn't nearly as much effort as I had imagined them going to, if the licensor provides the credits already (it would still be a nightmare to type them all in during encoding, I think?), and since it wasn't as labor intensive as I had assumed, it was probably done to distract from the mysterious lack of credits for the English dub. Really, it's like Funimation did everything they could to avoid outing anyone involved with the dub (and the sub is the default, as if they hoped no one would notice it even has a dub).

Fwiw, Justin Cook was credited as producer in microscopic font on the DVD case, but his Encyclopedia credit has since been deleted. That raises a whole new set of questions!

These fans complain that by getting credits that they can actually read, they're not getting the full Japanese experience.

Kingdom is a bit of an oddity all around. My impression is that it was something Funimation was forced to dub, and given how quietly they pushed it out the door, forced to take as part of a licensing package. The lack of credits probably was done so it wouldn't be as obvious that they did as little as possible and outsourced it. At least my take is that it ended up being a bad deal for Funimation, and they wanted to fulfill a contract as cheaply as possible without ruffling feathers with the licensors.

Wonder why Indonesian and Vietnamese are left off, I guess their credits tend to be in English anyway.

A few years ago I went back and watched the ED for Pokemon, and i was surprised to learn that they only credited the English staff and then at the end gave a single staff credit to the director and OLM.

Since credits are the topic here, I have to bring up Kingdom for the umpteenth time (sorry). I've never seen any other release done like this. There are no English dub credits. No cast, no ADR director, no scriptwriter, just the translation and DVD authoring credits.

Fwiw, Justin Cook was credited as producer in microscopic font on the DVD case, but his Encyclopedia credit has since been deleted. That raises a whole new set of questions!

I don't know if this has stopped or not, but there were certain companies that would credit absolutely every one of their employees that may have looked in the direction of the anime.... and if there was a little room left, maybe credit one or two Japanese people.

It seems to vary so much. Railgun's (and probably Index's too) end credits are basically just the Funimation staff, with a few cursory Japanese credits at the end. Bad Funimation, slap on wrist!

I fully respect the localizers and dub actors for their work, but especially with Funi, it's always irked me how much more importance they seem to place on themselves in their credits, extras, and PR.

There are innumerable ways that integrated English credits can and have impacted the video over the years, as Zalis previously said. Just a handful of examples that immediately spring to mind: For shows where there are variations in the opening or closing credits, like Trigun or VanDread, the localization companies only bothered to provide a single version, because doing them all was too much work (or they weren't even aware of the changes). Or, sometimes companies just freeze-frame footage to make their credits work. Then you have the instances where there's artistic flair atop film credits, I think 5 Centimeters Per Second is one example. Little bits of tiny artwork accompanying the scrolling credits, entirely absent on the versions of that film that only offered translated credits.

Honestly, wouldn't running that same text over the clean ED with music be preferable to just the black second credits? It shouldn't be that hard to go one step further.

The worse ones, the absolute worse ones are the releases that run English credits randomly "at the end". Is the last episode now, what episodes are which again? If you going to be that lazy about credits, why not just make it a separate yet findable feature for the whole work?