I think something that gets forgotten about in anime discourse is the innate ableism when it comes to the lack of closed captioning for anime dubs. As someone that prefers dubs for anime, and as someone that also struggles with auditory processing, it’s especially frustrating when I want to just watch anime in my preferred method, but all methods of watching anime only have literal subtitles for the original japanese dub.
That in of itself is not an issue by any means, and I think it’s important for watching media in its native language to have subtitling that closest hits the literal translation and intent of the dialogue. However dubs change dialogue to make the literal text flow more naturally, while still carrying access the original intent, while still making sure to match the preexisting mouth movements and keep with the pacing and scenes and whatnot hence why both translation and localization are both necessary, and both can be done good and bad (this is in part why I prefer dubs, I think an outstanding dub can be a superior experience to trying to keep up with reading subs, Gundam is a series that for me personally the dub is just the perfect way to watch the series, and even when the dubs aren’t the best they’re still enjoyable to me (on that side note SUNRISE RELEASE THE MOVIE TRILOGY AND ZZ DUB FROM THE VAULTS YOUVE KEPT THEM TRAPPED IN FOR DECADES BASTARDS).
And yet when I want to watch anime I have to choose between dub or sub, and rather than this being a decision of cast/performances as it should be, I’m forced to chose between a preference of not being forced to keep up with reading subtitles, or watching a dub with no subtitles and suffer through my auditory processing difficulties making words sometimes mush together or completely slip through my brain, god forbid if it’s during more important scenes and I better pray the audio mixing is doing its absolute best to not make it more of a challenge.
It really shows how little dubs are respected or at the very least localizing studios have never considered being accessible to people with disabilities that in the multiple decades of anime’s existence to western audiences that closed captions never became a standard as far as I’m aware, you’re lucky if a home release has captions, movies are more likely to get it but shows are basically a crapshoot, and it sucks. It’s already been a massive issue imo that subtitles in general are given the bare minimum by these studios, I remember a time at least when studios like Funimation would translate openings and endings and signs written in Japanese in shows and it was great, hell even for dubs they used to be more consistent about dubbing songs if they were made specifically for the anime (a character singing in episode for example). But Funimation is dead and has been dead and crunchyroll on top of being notorious for treating translators like shit and paying them fuck all have forgone any of these translation efforts, at best if you’re watching the anime subbed they might actually still translate signage if it’s deemed “relevant” to know, but if you’re watching dubs they’re just, gone! Not there! Even if they’ve already done the work!! For no reason!!!
It’s so frustrating and I hate crunchyroll with a passion for so many reasons, not the least of which is that while some animes that got carried over from the Funimation buyout retained their closed captions (in the rare instances where the dubs actually got closed captions), newer anime’s DO get closed captions, that is to say, they get an AI to try and close caption their dubs and its about as efficient as YouTube automatic closed captioning that is to say it’s BAD and a far cry from actual closed captioning efforts by people who put the actual time and effort in to make accessible captions. And that’s considered the *better* option, as in the only option because most other streaming services only offer the literal translated subs for the Japanese dub.
It’s really telling how fansubs and torrents still continue to offer a better service than all these mega million corporations with actually still subtitling openings and endings and nearly all Japanese signage/text in a show, but even they lack closed captioning for anime dubs. And my only compromise between dubs with no subtitles and subs where I have to keep track of reading text rapidly is to listen with the dub and use the Japanese subs, which just means my ears are hearing things that the text is not saying and my brain wants to set fire to the screen at that point. And it sucks cause the answer to his problem shouldn’t be to have individuals who already go through the trouble of producing fansubs to do closed captioning, it should be on these million dollar companies who have monopolized anime licensing and made it impossible for anyone better to step up to bat to actually pay people to caption their dubs and make anime accessible to larger audiences (and on that note treat their translators better and pay them an actual livable wage, and not outsource their jobs to AI), all this is to say FUCK CRUNCHYROLL
