The Big Problems With Crunchyroll: How it Hurts Anime Subbing

so all that time back at the end of my funimation video i said if it did well i might make a video on crunchyroll but honestly at the time of saying such a thing as i do there wasn't much thought behind the statement when it comes to companies like funny that i've talked about in the past and others i plan to discuss in the future most of them have some kind of major connection to me the funny video in particular was built up over a long time of me consuming what they produced and gradually seeing change their standards of theirs i didn't like until it all came rushing out into video and in retrospect i don't think that was the smartest move looking back on my funny video there's a lot i like and a lot i dislike of course there are small mistakes here and there which i addressed in my comment below but also i felt i could be a bit too quick to rage in a few areas it's a call out video of why i and others don't like the company of course but some of my lesser points got a little bit muddied by anger or just weren't worded the way i'd have liked them conveyed mostly in the vic section where one of my assumptions about one of the accusations could come off as somewhat potential victim blamey and starting with the disney video i've been trying to be more concise and in control when speaking about stuff like that the main reason for me saying all this is just to point out i want to stay fair in my criticism of companies obviously not shying away from the worst subjects involved and being able to call them out for it but also staying concise in my wording and not trying to make the whole thing look like a hit piece for the sake of drama i personally don't think my original funimation video gave off that vibe but some did so i'm working on it anyway among companies i could be discussing crunchyroll isn't exactly one i had that much of a bone to pick with in the beginning there's plenty i'd like to say about them and many practices now that i'd like to bring to light that i didn't know about before which i find detrimental to the industry but this will generally be a little bit more chill than my last videos on companies having said that these are my problems with crunchyroll and why i think they're not quite as bad as funimation but could still be harmful to the medium they work in usually this would be the part of the video where i discussed the creation of crunchyroll as a company and how they got to be where they are today but that actually leads me to my first issue with the company as a whole to explain crunchyou was originally made in 2006 during a high time of anime piracy and fan subbing for the community these measures were necessary back in the day due to the sheer lack of access to anime uncensored in the west at the time that is other than dvd box sets but those could be hard to find in stores and were pretty expensive for that reason there was a tight-knit community of dedicated fan suburbs ready to help others experience anime without charging money because they didn't want to monopolize such an experience while being unlicensed you might think crunchyroll was one of the first official sites to stream anime in the west but they were pretty much like any other fansubbing site around except for one thing they allowed you to pay money to them for the subbing now anyone can have a moral debate about piracy and certain types of media and legitimacy of fan subbing in particular but if you want to ask me i see it in a similar fashion of fan games it's done by and for the consumers of said media usually out of passion for getting others invested in the same property but when you start asking for money to do it as a non-licensed by the official studio project that's when i really start seeing it as unethical and wrong the fact crunchyroll came from this upbringing as one of the least ethical among fan sites yet it was the one to gain serious deals with real anime companies and so on in of itself kinda makes me angry for just how much of an ingenuine place it came from and furthermore from that point it also kind of irks me how people believe crunchyroll directly contributes to the anime industry when in reality it is and always has been a for-profit company even when it was legally unethical to do so the money to produce those crunchyroll original series don't exactly grow on trees or something in reality only a fraction of the money you spend on a crunchyroll account will ever be seen by the animation studio or staff of the show you like if at all this is because it has to go from you to the streaming service to the distributors to the studio to the employees if they ever even make it that far the majority of the cash goes to the streaming services and distributors so it isn't as much helping directly support the industry as it does support the distribution of that media to other places specifically to streaming sites like crunchyroll thus you can see how it's still beneficial to them in the fees they pay to the distributors whether those distributors pay the animation studio part of those profits is unlikely as animation studios aren't exactly paid royalties for a show after it's created as far as my own knowledge goes they're paid for the commission of animating whatever project is given to them nothing more nothing less if the project is successful that could lead to them getting a higher budget for their next production so in a way it can kinda help but it's highly circumstantial depending on the success relative to the series and how the company operates to give a western example it's like how steven universe is a popular show for cartoon network they make a lot of money off the series but basically none of the profit they generate for the media after the fact goes back into the south korean animation studio they got to produce it in cases like star vs the forces of evil they may even cut your budget despite the success the animation studio provides a service commissioned by a distribution company or rights holder they aren't the direct beneficiaries of money being sent to the rights holders by any standard my main point in saying all this is that while crunchyroll has touted itself in the past as the most morally ethical site to stream anime and that it directly helps the industry the layers of complexity make it entirely up to chance whether the money actually helps the creators or studio behind the series whatsoever and a majority of it goes directly back to crunchyroll themselves they're free to be a for-profit business as almost all companies are but that doesn't mitigate that i think that sort of moral grandstanding they use over pirating in that regard is greatly exaggerated it's like saying your full price ticket to the natural history museum helps with stem cell research but they only donate half a penny per ticket your 8 subscription is not going to satiate the overabundance of underpaid animators in the japanese anime industry and i dislike that crunchyroll might lead people to get a completely different image based on their ignorance of the topic along with how they come from a similar if not less ethical route beyond all of that however how does the site itself actually function well it'd be easy for me to point out the decade old desktop version they have and all its terrible features how the episodes are all in a corner to the side next to the massive advertisements and unrelated news no one really cares about how they still have advertisements despite it being a paid subscription and whatnot but those main issues with the site's interface are actually finally going away with the introduction of their new beta recently crunchyroll has announced they're going to be overhauling the entire site to be more user-friendly and i do have to say it's a major improvement from the original horrible stuck in the past design we've had for so long there's more variation in genre to allow for easier access to more obscure anime it allows for playlists and overall the site has gotten a much cleaner professional look all around now there are still things about the new design i'm still not in love with such as the large amounts of space on either side once used for ads that now just don't really have anything there at all and the shoe horning of their news is still there but i can't deny it's a major improvement crunchyroll has become just a bit more bearable and on the functions of the site there isn't really much i can complain about other than some occasional lag and the site having trouble keeping up when new episodes for really big shows come out and a lot of people come to watch it which is still definitely an issue the main functions of the site are perfectly fine however that's all the positives i can say for it even after the beta transformation it's serviceable gets the job done has reached a level where the bare minimum expected of them has been reached don't get me wrong i appreciate the update i'm sure there was a lot of thought put into it but other than getting rid of the bad [ __ ] the site shouldn't have had in the first place as a paid streaming service what have they really added in terms of uses for the site that make it better than piracy well let's see the main new features advertised are that you can make lists now it's easier to find stuff because its search bar now has basic features that you'd think would be a no-brainer and you can actually find what you are already watching more easily the thing is all of what crunchyroll offers and then some is available on popular pirating sites do you ever think about why among all mediums anime is one of the most widely pirated of them it's because pirating sites give similar and even better benefits and rewards to doing so with a paid subscription like crunchyroll among paid anime streaming services which ones have you heard the most of besides crunchyroll daisuki maybe well that's shut down high dive very small in comparison look up any top 25 for anime streaming and there will almost always be free pirating sites around the same spot or above crunchyroll because the two are interchangeable when it comes to layout features general ease of which to watch anime pirating sites have it just as good if not better than crunchyroll and with just how long they've been around to come up with features and so on to make it more appealing it's both an eye-opener to how complacency can lead to companies at the top not taking the time to grow or expand their medium to evolve and it's a sad reminder that they don't want to change if they don't have to i just mentioned some of the positives with the new crunchyroll that mostly are just getting it up to a similar standard of other streaming sites right well here are still several features off the top of my head that other services have which crunchyroll still doesn't despite putting more effort into their search bar it's still no easier to look for anime movies and furthermore on that point despite their abundance of anime their movie catalog for the same medium is incredibly lacking that's actually something crunchyroll could get a massive leg up on if they implemented it because there's already a lot of difficulty finding many anime movies on other big streaming platforms like netflix or hulu and if even they don't have it what will pirating sites that would think of it as a no-brainer decision you still can't share a crunchyroll account among multiple separate spaces for different people a seemingly small aspect that makes a big difference as time goes on also something most streaming services have implemented for a long time now i already mentioned how it doesn't take full advantage of the screen size it has when other services try their best to pack the entirety of the screen with content and besides all those missing things they don't have almost anything to make what they offer especially unique or worth buying to the consumer like i mentioned briefly before they have their crunchyroll originals but they're few and highly varied in quality most are just okay and others are exam one of the worst things i've ever seen in anime besides that they don't seem to have many exclusives either on a pure quantity level netflix has them beat for original anime and much more since their appeal to more audiences allows easier access to funds which they can then use to fund original projects i guess crunchyroll also has manga you can look at but that's almost non-existent and no one buys the service for that purpose this provides a much easier better experience in that regard for much cheaper ultimately it comes down to innovation or deterioration and unique name asaurus has a great video discussing this overall idea in further detail when it comes to anime streaming sites as a whole so check that out if you want to have a deeper opinion in that regard the last real issue i have with crunchyroll as a site and company comes down to a factor not too many people think about as an average anime fan but is necessary for anime and most international media to reach a broader audience subtitles you may not often think about it but for you to understand what's going on in an anime off of dialogue and text as a non-japanese speaker subtitles are a necessity that should always be expected and for those subtitles to be made someone else has to translate them it isn't as simple as hitting a google translate button and sending it off to the studio either you need to take a considerable amount of time not only to translate what's being said but to do so in a way that carries the same meaning and weight as the original speaker for example if someone says a phrase in japanese as simple as height that can mean yes indeed yes sir i got it and so on depending on the situation it's being used in and how formal the speaker is with his or her pronunciation it's completely up to the translator how that should be read for the audience that can't completely grasp what's being stated and it's integral to crunchyroll's entire anime subbing business mainly speaking there are two ways to get subs from subbing companies or from freelancers and while firms for subtitling anime may be more efficient freelancers are more easily interchangeable and generally cheaper so that's what crunchyroll usually goes for taking a step back for a moment here after all i've said about crunchyroll and the amount of money they make how a majority of the subscription goes to them the massive deals they've been offered in the past before being bought out by sony and the original anime they've been commissioned from high quality studios like mappa not to mention the award show and convention they hold you'd think the company would be fully willing to pay a good wage to their translators i mean without the translators it's impossible for the average joe schmo to know a hint of what's going on beyond visuals and a very limited knowledge of words like baka and itadakimasu on an industry standard 9 to 5 type of job translators make around 50 grand a year but freelancing will instead generally go by word count for their measure if we're going to go on a purely word to word freelance translation job the average is usually around 10 to 20 cents per word or if we're going to take into account simulcast subs which air really shortly after japan airs it that could be between 15 to 25 cents per word for what's called a rush job going for the most basic average possible a single episode of anime filling up a time slot of 24 minutes without ops and ed's would be 21 minutes going by the average of 100 words per minute that's 2100 words total for a simulcast episode that'd be around 420 average and for a regular episode it'd still be about 315 dollars by the average translator standard that's not taking into account potential editing and revisions requested which are usually paid by the hour and keep in mind these are the averages when all languages are put together as japanese is one of the hardest second languages for a native english speaker to understand it has one of the highest rates on average at 25 cents per word for a regular job so with all that explained how much do you think a translation job for crunchyroll is for the average freelancer eighty dollars did i stutter not 420 not 315 80 per episode and from what i know that number doesn't change depending on the anime genre or anything of that nature you know that 2100 word average i just came up with basically throw that out the door it doesn't matter anymore you could be subbing death note or it might be one punch man doesn't matter could be the most complex show of the most needing research type of concept to translate correctly or maybe it's just one piece according to crunchyroll they're interchangeable and that standard is blocking down the rest of the industry along with it those wages are absurd and could make it so a professional translator is only just barely scraping by some subtitling jobs can take days at a time a person could have the possibility of making less than one thousand dollars a month off this [ __ ] and crunchyroll has been offering this similar rate for the past decade without change as far as we know fast food workers are paid more on average than that it's comparable to young japanese animators and that's probably not the aspect of japan you want to reflect in your subbing putting any jokes that can be made aside it truly is horrifying what this signals for the anime subbing community as a whole thanks to the standard crunchyroll has been presenting as of recent even on other low-paying jobs for this type of work they at least get paid triple what crunchyroll is paying which leads me to believe only newbies that are scared about disclosing their paychecks take these deals they don't know the standard so after they get their first job in the business under such a big name they think it'll be something fair and worth your while but it isn't on these types of matters we really need to put down our feet and say we're not okay with that if workers are given these kinds of salaries they constantly have the looming threat of homelessness or welfare when they give work effort deserving of so much more than that in the greater industry if you truly want to get mad at crunchyroll for any particular reason that's what i'd say is worth advocating for changing the most out of anything stated here in the end most of my qualms of crunchyroll don't come to exactly the same heights as my funimation video and even then like in this i've tried to structure my complaints in a way that rises in seriousness as it goes so hopefully that's conveyed in this as well i know i didn't have nearly as much to talk about in the case of crunchyroll compared to funimation and that may just have to do with the fact that i haven't used crunchyroll services nearly as much as i have for something like funimation or maybe it's just that crunchyroll is able to keep itself out of slightly less trouble nonetheless with how they underpay a group of people so integral to their workforce in favor of creating original shows and so on undermining an entire industry with their continued unfairness and lack of innovation for their site in any major regard i still find it difficult to say i'd like to support them in any way in the end their not-so-legal contemporaries are in most cases able to rise above them in streaming features and services to the point that paying for crunchyroll only feels like an obligation from a potential moral perspective and like i've said before even then their contributions to the actual industry are greatly exaggerated and much less helpful than something like say animator dormitory where you can directly contribute to helping the overworked underpaid staff if anything contributing to crunchyroll only really helps them perpetuate the standard which is way below the minimum that should be given either way i know you guys have been waiting for this for a while so i'd like to thank everyone for watching and hearing what i have to say in regards to my opinion of another brand out there on the ether if you like these company videos make sure to tell me and i'll try to continue doing them in the future last thing i can say to end this on is that to inspire change in an industry you need to know the company at the top isn't safe from losing out to other potentially better contemporaries even if they aren't the same moral standard as yours the people choose based on the best possible option given to them and respect is gained by knowing a company can treat its employees well the staff deserves better and the viewer deserves better so try to set a standard for your entertainment these have been my problems with crunchyroll and i'll see you all in the next one thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Just Stop

Views: 218,342

Keywords: Crunchyroll Review, Crunchyroll Rant, Funimation Rant, Just Stop Rant, Just Stop Company, Just Stop Company Rant, Just Stop Disney, Just Stop Crunchyroll Rant, Crunchyroll Originals, Crunchyroll Expo, Crunchyroll Anime Awards

Id: u5TYE38VvqM

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021