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This Week in Anime
The Crunchyroll Sub Flub

by Lucas DeRuyter & Coop Bicknell,

Coop and Lucas look into the Crunchyroll subtitle situation that set social media ablaze and culminated in a scathing YouTube video by Mother's Basement. Are the technical issues fixed now?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Crunchyroll streams Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider, May I Ask for One Final Thing?, Solo Leveling, Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, and Spy×Family.
Hulu streams My Hero Academia and Spy×Family.
Let's Anime's YouTube channel streams Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray and Tougen Anki.

@RiderStrike @BWProwl @LucasDeRuyter @vestenet

Coop
Have you ever opened up Crunchyroll at the top of a brand new anime season to discover late simulcasts, missing subtitles, or webpages that shouldn't be visible to the public? Well, it seems to me that eagle-eyed viewers (critics, casuals, and professionals alike) are looking at the company's recent executive decisions and saying...



[image or embed]

— Coop (@riderstrike.bsky.social) Oct 13, 2025 at 4:08 AM

I'd bet we've both said that within the last week or so, Lucas.

Lucas
Coop, as seasoned anime professionals, we know better than anyone that this community can be quick to pass judgment and has a penchant for being overly critical at times. But when pretty much every voice that carries any weight in this space is shouting, "Yo, WTF!??" in response to Crunchyroll's botched Fall 2025 rollout and subtitle changes, it's safe to call what transpired at the top of the month a genuine scandal.

We were already committed to talking about this debacle as it was unfolding before our eyes, but then CR dropped this nothingburger of a public statement blaming "Internal System Problems" for at least some of these issues, and it became a guarantee that we'd dedicate a TWIA to this mess.

Crunchyroll's statement didn't address these issues meaningfully. I understand that system issues happen, but when a recurring problem arises, further questions tend to follow—especially after the company took a hatchet to its workforce in August.
image-2
© 鳳ナナ・アルファポリス／最ひと製作委員会
While the subtitles from the initial premiere of May I Ask for One Final Thing? look rough, it's best to step back and ensure that any criticism is pointed in the right direction—the C-suite. I'd imagine that the folks on the ground floor—the people who are actually responsible for getting your anime to you—are simply working with the cards they've been dealt from on high. For example, Final Thing episode one had its subtitles adjusted after the fact. That skinny, hard-to-read font is out... or at least modified so viewers can read it more comfortably.
image-3.png
© 鳳ナナ・アルファポリス／最ひと製作委員会
I'm not casting any shade at the (largely freelance and famously underpaid) localization and subtitling team working on Crunchyroll's anime. Word on the street is that Crunchyroll likely changed its tools and standards for subtitling this quarter. The subtitling team suddenly having to use new software in the lead up to one of their busiest weeks of the year would explain why there were so many perplexing issues, like only some lines of internal monologue being italicized in Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider.
lucas_01
© 柴田ヨクサル／ヒーローズ・Tojima Rider Project ©石森プロ・東映
This also adds a kernel of truth to Crunchyoll's statement on the matter. Staff being undertrained on new, mandatory software would be an internal systems issue, but — and I say this as someone with a background in this peculiar overlap of entertainment and technology — it cannot be stressed enough how much of an unforced error this is. Going beyond what these more limited subtitles imply for the value proposition of a Crunchyroll subscription, a well-managed company would have given people who work on its product ample time to train on a new system or software before mandating the change, to ensure enduring quality for its patrons.
And let's say this is simply a mandated workflow change for how CR subtitles its product. After all, the additional overhead from the specificity of this work adds up as Justin Sevakis has pointed out. Given the lack of skilled hands around, I can understand the need to rework the process or make changes to suit their current circumstances. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that the pre-established baseline for quality should suffer as a result. As the White Box crew explained in their aforementioned article on the subject, the CR subtitles team established what most viewers expect from their subtitled anime.

But there's another element that's been on my mind as well: will newer viewers care about the quality drop? From looking at Solo Leveling's sweep of the Anime Awards to Miles Atherton's look into the silent majority that powers isekai's popularity, I'm left with a sinking feeling. One that tells me, "as long as the wider audience still gets their product and it's halfway legible, who cares?" And man, Lucas, that's way more cynical than I like to feel about any issue regarding my Japanese cartoons.

All bets are off in our late-stage capitalism hellscape, Coop. I very much doubt Crunchyroll will pivot back to the caliber of subtitling expected of anime in this day and age, not with platforms like Netflix trying to shoot beyond this lowered standard. However, I'm going to push back on the idea that Crunchyroll won't face any consequences for this fuster cluck, as the wider audience didn't get their product in this case! Or at least they didn't get it on the promised timetable or before they could have gotten it elsewhere.

Crunchyroll being late to release the season premieres of foundational titles like My Hero Academia and Spy×Family feels like a moment that will be referenced as a shift in this industry and community years down the road. I'm still a little flabbergasted that the website that's supposed to be the number one place for anime on the internet would make such a mistake at a time when there's more competition in the space than ever, and piracy is an ever-present issue.

lucas_02
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Toei Animation
Even if Crunchyroll now appears to be going back and addressing some of the subtitling issues after the fact, I'm engaging with this material on a professional capacity. If I can't get the best version of these releases right away from Crunchyroll, I'm heavily incentivized to start looking anywhere else for a higher quality release.
And nine times out of ten, those pirated subs are what's already on Crunchyroll, too.
Sure, ripping CR subs is the norm right now, but that wasn't always the case. Especially if pirate sites set up a tip jar or a cheaper subscription using harder-to-regulate cryptocurrencies, we could be on the precipice of fan subs popping up again if people can't get the best version of an anime from Crunchyroll anymore.

Before folks sound off in the comments, I'm fully aware that we're a ways off from fan subbing possibly getting big again. Still, my larger point is that Crunchyroll only ever became big enough to be acquired by companies like AT&T and later Sony by offering anime at a quality and timetable that was better than free. I've got to believe in consequences for failing to meet that standard, especially as we hedge closer to an economic recession, when folks need to be more choosy with their subscriptions, and when an increasing number of great anime streams are on other platforms.

lucas_03
© 1998 Sunrise
Crunchyroll won't get out of this scot-free, that's for sure. What I was referring to is that the baseline outside the platform is so hit-or-miss that newer viewers might not realize what they've lost out on. Less to do with the platform itself and more with the environment that viewers have been conditioned to.
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© K, S, I/S, UCP © Cygames, Inc
However, this gives other licensors and platforms the chance to futz around a little. The subtitles available on REMOW's It's Anime YouTube channel vary from simple closed captions to properly styled subs. In their newer shows, like Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray 2nd Cour and Tougen Anki, YouTube's subtitle system has shown untapped potential. There are plenty of AMVs out there that've been futzing with these features for a while. If the subtitle code has a chance of being cracked on a free and LEGAL platform like YouTube, I think this is how the game actually changes.

YouTube isn't free of its own issues for sure, but I could see certain licensors cutting out the middleman and pushing the technology further with the right talent alongside them. I hear there are plenty of stellar professionals out there looking for a new job.

We don't use AI for subtitles. Every line is carefully timed and translated by real people (who cry during finales and debate Best Girls, just like you).

— HIDIVE (@hidive.com) October 10, 2025 at 1:37 AM

And let's not forget that any bad press for CR is an opportunity for its competition.

A niche industry on the rise means people with niche skill sets and knowledge bases are in higher demand than ever! Sure, it might be at the expense of one boat sinking, but that's gonna raise the tide for every other ship in this pond.
lucas_04
© Yana Toboso/SQUARE ENIX
To dial back some of the purple in my prose, how do you feel about working in anime right now, man? From my vantage point, it seems like there are more opportunities in most aspects of this space than ever, and just about everyone is benefiting from CR fumbling the bag like this. Which is weird to say, since for a long time it felt like the entirety of the US anime industry was built on CR's shoulders, though I'll be the first to admit this particular analysis might be a bit short-sighted.
I believe that CR's competition is following the same playbook they used back when the company went legit. Its founders saw an opportunity in the aftermath of the mid-aughts DVD market implosion and jumped on it. However, the difference here is that most of the competition has lived through and learned from that industry-wide crisis—I doubt that's true of the current CR C-suite lineup. We're at another inflection point; it's just a matter of seeing how much more damage is done before others step in to seize their own opportunities.
image-5
© Tsuburaya Productions ©Ultraman Z Production Consortium・TV Tokyo
As for working in the industry? I'd say I've been lucky to work with and get to know some amazing people over the years who've treated me fairly well. However, I keep hearing stories of people burning themselves out at both ends and just struggling to make ends meet. The low pay and iffy working conditions, maybe (and I mean a big MAYBE), made a degree of sense back when anime was a skunkworks sort of industry... but that was going on thirty years ago now. Passionate professionals are always going to go the extra mile when they can, but that extra passion doesn't exactly translate into more food on the table. It's honestly why many pursue anime (and manga) as a side gig.
That's a pretty fair analysis of this space, as someone else who has quite a bit, personally and professionally, tied up in it. Though I have to wonder how much longer some of those more exploitative practices will endure in this space as Crunchyroll's vice grip weakens? CR can get away with refusing to work with union talent, but platforms like Netflix are more inclined to honor agreements and standards with those orgs thanks to how much of their revenue comes from more traditional Hollywood productions. Again, people aren't going to get paid what they deserve overnight, but it feels like traditional markers of stability and high(er) wages are about to flip in this space.
On that note, I sure as heck hope that the cast of Demon Slayer and their many talented colleagues (union or not) slam this news down on the negotiating table come contract time.
To your point about Crunchyroll's C-suite, certified intrepid reporter Kalai Chick gave me a heads up before the call that Crunchyroll's senior vice president of marketing, Markus Gerdemann, announced his (potentially forced) departure from the company amidst this seasonal premiere scandal. If that name is familiar to anyone reading this, it's likely because Gerdmann was called out by name in Bloomberg's earlier reporting on Crunchyroll's floundering as a particular source of toxicity and culture issues.

And regardless of how accurately I'm reading the tea leaves, it's clear that things are a-changing in the US anime industry, and I'm hopeful that the people working in it can use these circumstances to create a more equitable and approachable space.

lucas_05
© LUCKY LAND COMMUNICATIONS/SHUEISHA,JOJO’s Animation GW Project
Absolutely! For all of my earlier cynicism, I firmly believe that the industry's best days are still ahead—for localization teams, deal makers, animators, producers, critics, and the average viewer, too. It's going to take more missteps, some time, and the right people working their way up ladders, but we'll get there eventually. Crunchyroll's subtitles apparently returning to their prior quality is a sign of that ‘slowly but surely’ progress we're scratching at.
We'll be here week after week to chime in on that progress! (and talk about plenty of other fun stuff in between)
Until next time, may your subtitles be plentiful, legible, and include a signs and songs track... I hope...
image-6
© Tsuburaya Productions ©Ultraman Z Production Consortium・TV Tokyo
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