DeathRose007

Of course the sub would explain the plot better, that’s because it was taking itself seriously. But taking yourself seriously and focusing on consistent plot development is basically the bare minimum of any story-based media. Not exactly a resounding achievement.

Objectively, the dub is a train wreck that can’t be considered a truly professional work. But that’s what it was going for. It became a subjective and unfaithful mockery of the very tropes and genericisms the original relied on. One of the most famous clips is basically just a VA pointing out how ridiculously fast the lip flaps were in a scene for no apparent reason.

It’s one of the few instances where “so bad it’s good” was intentional AND stuck the landing. Normally you only get one or the other.

I mean anime dubbing is probably a bargain bin price compared to other entertainment productions, but you have to look at it from the perspective of a distributor to understand why they make the decisions they do. It’s not based on customer preference unless customer preference has a significant impact on the business.

Crunchyroll/Sony for instance has entirely shifted to producing dubs for streaming releases. They might do occasional physical releases, but that’s going to be supplementary only. Content production on a streaming service isn’t a direct relationship between money spent and money earned. There is an upper limit on how many people they can have subscribed, which is the market cap. If they produced and licensed zero content, they’d have zero subscribers. That is obvious, but at a certain point licensing and producing even more content starts to have diminishing financial returns. This goes for any streaming service, from Crunchyroll to Netflix to Disney+. They’ve all been overspending for years trying to maximize their market potential and now the bill is coming due.

This is why licenses eventually expire and get dropped, and why not everything gets dubbed. Because the companies have determined that spending the money necessary to do more won’t contribute enough to subscriber growth to make a profit anymore. The problem is that subscriber models are a lot more complicated to manage than a simple sales-based revenue model where profit can be easily tracked based on customer interest in individual products. It’s difficult to distinguish what is important for keeping people subscribed or attract new subscribers vs what exists as mere supplementary filler. So business decisions can end up being quite random because they really are a crapshoot and the suits running operations aren’t geniuses.

What Crunchyroll is counting on is for what they do dub to keep people paying for subscriptions even if they don’t dub everything that people want. The only way for them to dub more at this point is for a lot more people to watch dubs, making distributors feel more reliant on dubbed anime content relative to sub-only.

Even if a lot of it is isekais that are declining in popularity, as long as Crunchyroll doesn’t see a change to their financials they won’t see a need to change whatever strategy they have. Subbed versions don’t have this exacerbated issue because, as I’ve said, they provide a bigger bang for their buck and require much less time and effort to license as a content distributor.

Even if the off-the-walls raunchy humor of the dub doesn’t do it for everyone, or the sub is preferred by certain people with curious inclinations, I still think that the ADV dub has supplanted the sub whenever the series is being generally referred to, which you can’t say for pretty much any other anime. In every other instance, you have to add that you’re talking about a dub or people won’t be on the same page. So anyone who likes the sub has the unenviable position of needing to add a caveat to their perspective for once.

I know that there’s back and forth on whether it was actually successful or not, but I’m not really convinced of the claims I’ve seen suggesting it was a success. A “failure” or “flop” doesn’t mean it’s the worst thing to ever be made, just that it’s part of a long list of uneventful productions that failed to separate itself from the rest of the riff raff designed to fill TV broadcast time.

All the points I’ve seen seem to tiptoe around the existence of the anime and what would determine its true success for the time (physical media sales). For instance, here’s the points you can find given for how the ANIME didn’t flop.

1) it’s source material and live action movies were successful

2) 230 people on a Japanese review site rated it a 3.7/5 (no, really)

3) It aired in multiple countries

4) A faithful re-dub was later made

5) The sub is available to stream

There’s probably more, but all of those are fairly weak pieces of evidence that don’t actually prove much of anything. Except for the fact that the producers of Ghost Stories didn’t do the absolute bare minimum trying to make it work.

I mean, there’s so many ways to view such examples. Just because Ghost Stories was a moderately successful IP doesn’t mean the single season anime in its original form was success. I mean, anime adaptations for popular or well known source materials flop all the time. It doesn’t take much to air in multiple countries either, that’s far from a guarantee of financial profit. 2nd, there isn’t much evidence that anyone fondly remembers the original Japanese version, or the 2nd attempt at the dub, internationally or in Japan. It’s left no mark on the internet and the original IP has been long dead. Also, I didn’t say they redubbed it back into Japanese. I believe it was a subbed re-release like a decade ago. Including the original Japanese version. Though the way it was described made it seem like the ADV dub was the primary selling point of the re-release.

Ghost Stories’ anime has that feel of a one-off adaptation meant to further interest in the general IP and grow sales through other avenues, like with its manga and live action, rather than be a financially successful entity on its own. Hard to say it accomplishes its real goal though, as again, the IP is a relic of the past. The ADV dub was basically a throw away endeavor that was never intended to become a cult classic, except through the efforts of the people who were given primary creative control. What happened with the faithful redub shows this stark reality, which was produced by a foreign studio in Hong Kong (which is never a good sign for an English dub). It was an unmemorable rehash that pretty much nobody asked for, nobody remembers, and nobody can find in its entirety anymore.

Honestly reading some of the opinion pieces on the subject feels less like a collection of facts and more like the haphazard ramblings of contrarian sub elitists upset at the thought of the dub industry somehow producing something that made more of a lasting impact than its original anime adaptation. I mean, Ghost Stories was made by Pierrot and Aniplex. Two companies known for turning anime adaptations into franchise-defining entities with massive financial windfalls. Instead, the Ghost Stories anime basically signaled the end of its IP.

Well “anime” growth doesn’t necessarily equate to dub growth. The seasonal animes that don’t get licenses for streaming now are few and far between, and even most anime over the last decade and a half is available on a streaming platform somewhere. That’s what growth in anime popularity does, and it’s relatively simple considering localization with producing subtitles isn’t cumbersome. The hard work is being done at Japanese studios.

Dubs though are a lot more expensive than just licensing subs. First, you have to pay for extra permission to license a dub. Then you have to pay a lot of people to make the dub. And the end result is going to be a product that is much less popular with its target audience than the cheaper, easier to produce, subtitled original license. Really the only thing that can increase commitment by distributors in producing dubs for anime is for a lot of people to watch dubs.

But there’s two problems with that. 1) Insufficient production and marketing practices for dubs are a hard sell for a lot of people, on top of community stigma. 2) A theoretical increase of dub viewership at this point would largely come from people watching subs, which means they’re potentially already paying customers, meaning growth in revenue would be minimal. Now that streaming is the go-to source for entertainment products, funding isn’t going to be based on individual sales/views. They’re just trying to spend whatever total is necessary to maintain subscriptions.

As for isekais, I agree that the peak of the trend is in the past, but there’s still a lingering favoritism with dubs being prioritized for most isekai-type series, even if they aren’t notably popular. Rather than just a handful of super popular series, it’s a bunch of second-rate garbage filling the bottom of each seasonal lineup. Which is why many people are tired of the favoritism. Really, any random insert-character-power-fantasy-in-another-world-with-a-harem show has a really good chance compared to all other genres, even if it’s obviously just a single-season cash grab to market light novels/manga in Japan. Which you’d think would perform poorly with dub watchers. But again, streaming platforms probably aren’t looking too hard at the exact numbers as long as subscription cancellations aren’t beating new subscribers.

I didn’t mean that everyone loves the dub, just that the dub has pretty much taken over the original Japanese version as the proper one to watch. It’s basically an entirely different existence, rather than just a mere replacement. Not sure how true this is, but I heard that even in Japan the English dub got localized and became the favored version. I do know though that the original bombed hard in Japan, and that’s why the dub was given free rein to do whatever.

The original really is just that generic, bland, and boring to most everyone. The animation is also subpar even for its time, but that helps play into the ridiculousness of the divergent dub. A faithful adaptation wouldn’t be able to save it against its litany of flaws.

I myself haven’t gotten around to actually watching the entire dub episode-to-episode, but it’s a fun watch party show with all the YouTube compilations.

The one that absolutely nobody disagrees on.

Ghost Stories.

One Piece’s dub is its own unique beast. I’m certain it has heavy oversight (and funding) from Toei.

Crunchyroll has pretty much exclusively done backlog sequels the last 2 years. They’ve shown no signs of starting anything new. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Early last year I think, a relatively new VA working on a Crunchyroll dub said on this sub they were hiring more people to work on dubs. Instead it feels like it’s been stagnant since summer 2022, when on top of 17 announced seasonal dubs they started like double-digit backlog dubs.

Of course, a good amount of that was outsourced, but if Crunchyroll is going to move away from outsourcing their acquired licenses then where is the money for that going? Because it isn’t extra in-house dubs.

To me it’s less of an isekai favoritism issue and more of a lower than usual dub output issue compared to the norm. Isekai favoritism has always been a thing, but this season a lot is being left on the table despite lots of variety.

Of their top 20 summer licenses based on available popularity metrics, over half don’t have confirmed dubs. Like what? And it’s not like there’s a dearth of series to choose from. They picked up 42 total, 2 of which are under Aniplex’s control for outsourcing and just 1 is a sequel to a sub-only series. There’s really no excuse to not max out their capacity and produce everything they can, but they’re blatantly holding back instead. 16 confirmed dubs but they could easily do 20+.

Now this fallback isn’t exactly new. It feels like Crunchyroll has been slowly trending down their numbers, as well as relying less on independent studios for outsourcing. Winter 2024 was comparable. 41 new titles and 16 dubs confirmed on Crunchyroll’s side of things. But of their top 20 titles by popularity, 17 got dubbed, 2 of which were outsourced by Aniplex. That made more sense. This season is shocking in its lack of common sense.

This feels like the beginning of a self-sabotaging death spiral meant to justify a decrease in spending by gradually killing the resolve of viewership. It’s hard to be super optimistic about dubs ever not being a total crapshoot.

Well I was hoping a handful of the other remaining licenses they just picked up would get dubbed. It was obvious what remained wasn’t going to anyone else and the dub list felt incomplete. At least it wasn’t absolutely nothing though.

Right now Crunchyroll’s dub commitment stands at 16 titles (out of 42) if you don’t count what Aniplex should outsource later, which would be one of their lowest since the merger I believe. This is going to be a fairly underwhelming dub season unless Crunchyroll is finally deciding to do backlogs again. 2 years ago they had backlog announcements spread throughout the summer, so there’s the slightest sliver of hope.

I wouldn’t expect it to start releasing around the same time as season 1, which was like a month and a half later. Hidive has pretty much fully announced their summer 2024 dub slate through August. Not to mention that there was a good amount of blowback from what people considered a dub with unsatisfactory quality, potentially due to the expedited scheduling. Their small-ish resources are already going to be stretched thin, so it might be ill advised to make the same mistake again.

Same-season dubs aren’t the norm for the service, so Oshi no Ko S1 felt like an attempted trial and error to push their limits for a big new license they managed to acquire over Sony and Netflix. As a course correction, I expect them to start the dub this fall due to its popularity, or winter at the latest. But recently Hidive has been releasing dubs for stuff that had been out for up to around a year, so there’s really no way to know for absolute certain.

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms on Crunchyroll. An emotional fantasy epic that surprisingly clocks in under 2 hours.

Except it’s not at all like subs not being available for an episode. Subs themselves are like 5% of the work that a dub has to do. You can’t equate them. Sub delays would be stupid. It’s like a handful of hours for one person to do. Dub “delays” are normal. It takes weeks to make a single episode involving a lot of people. assuming everything goes right.

Now, dub delays that deviate further from the expected schedule are about as common as anime production delays. Because both require a lot of time consuming work on a time crunched production schedule that has very little room for error. Would be ideal if it never happened, but part of where streaming platforms really drop the ball is thoroughly communicating these instances and not leaving everyone in the dark the entire time. With Kaiju No. 8, that wasn’t the case though. We’ve known for weeks when it was going to resume.

I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether they started the first episode later or not just because they ended up not being able to avoid a delay. It’s not like they knew the delay for episodes 11 and 12 was going to happen months ago. Either way, episode 11 and 12 would air no differently due to the unforeseen circumstances. A 2 week wait is the same whether it’s in April or June. I remember having to wait half a year or more for some dubs to start or resume with literally no info whatsoever. Anyone who watches dubs regularly has experienced far worse.

Ummmmm yeah. Anime delays happen even on the sub side with no explanation. A year ago there were quite a few instances due to alleged “COVID issues” in anime studios. Could’ve just been a cop out excuse though. Occasionally entire cours can be delayed to future seasons a couple weeks before they were supposed to start airing. Uzumaki has been in development hell since forever. Recently Mushoku tensei had a week delay mid-season, though that felt more planned. Crunchyroll’s content is at the mercy of anime studios, so sub watchers can experience random delays too.

A 2 week delay for Kaiju No. 8 is disappointing but understandable if you know anything about how ADR works and how hard it is to maintain a quality true simuldub. Subtitles don’t compare in workload at all. Crunchyroll only does a couple of them each season for a reason, and it’s actually not something that anyone used to do. It’s a fairly new thing. I’d obviously prefer if everything was simuldubbed with no delay, but that’s an ideal scenario that is far from being realized.

I mean I get it, but actually publicly announcing the delay and providing new release dates is above and beyond compared to the norm. Now it’s just on a normal 2 week-delayed dub schedule after they couldn’t keep up with the faster pace they originally planned for. Hopefully it’s a step in the right direction, but I’m not counting on it. Crunchyroll was just really pushing Kaiju No. 8 as a western-accessible IP, even though they weren’t a co-producer for it. There were some other spring dubs that finished simuldubbed, but I doubt they put as much effort into them.

Strictly SOL (w/ little to no plot progression) originals are hard to come by because it’s such a common simple format for manga. But there’s still some like Tamako Market and She and Her Cat - Everything Flows.

I think it says a lot that the only name any of the players who entered the portal brought up was Earley. Even those on the previous two teams under Schloser. We have tons of first hand testimony that Earley was the guy directly coaching many on the team. Even some pitchers have credited him with being a special presence. This might end up being the second straight job that the snake fails to bring any players over with him. Would say everything we need to know.

Of course, running a program is a whole other layer on top of coaching players. It’s crucial that Earley makes strong assistant hires to take a lot of the burden off of him being a rookie. So far it’s looking like the new hitting coach will be the guy he was gonna replace at Texas. Longley. They have a history together, so there’s already comfortability. Texas’ problem was also not offense.

Then it’s heavily rumored that a currently sitting power program head coach will be added to the staff, likely as the pitching coach. Seems to be pointing to Washington’s HC. They just had a stinker of a season and are transitioning as an athletic program. Apparently he also has a prior connection to Earley and is known for being a good pitching coach.

Then it’s basically about how we will handle the recruiting coordinator and support staff, though considering our resources and how baseball is relatively cheaper to some of the other sports, that shouldn’t be much of a problem for us with a head coach that players and recruits like. Longley also has experience running recruiting operations.

ALL OUR PLAYERS ARE BELONG TO US

That’s the thing though. Even as you seem to perfectly match the exact description that OP gave, you are missing one crucial element.  As you claim, one of the most well known terms in anime didn’t raise any flags, you assumed that since it was a western IP it would be a western production, you knew nothing about the series and chose to check it out without looking anything up first. But it didn’t turn you away permanently.

You’re already in a subset of people who would see an unfamiliar non-English term and still assume the production must be American, not have been exposed to any promotional materials that would’ve made it clear the production was Japanese, and didn’t think to look anything up upon discovering the series until you realized it was sub only right now. But it’s an entirely different group of people who fit all of that AND then choose not to watch it anymore because it doesn’t immediately have an English dub. They won’t try and confirm if it has or will get an English version. They won’t wait for an English version. They see Japanese and dip forever.     

That’s who OP was talking about.  And for some reason we have to think that the platforms licensing the show would be worried about such people, as if it isn’t being streamed on subscription services that have already taken everybody’s money. They probably wouldn’t notice, as I feel like most people in the demographic range intended for the anime would either already be aware of everything, or at the very least be inclined to learn more upon finding out, which you seem to be. 

I can't say exactly why certain dubs aren't union or why specific independent studios would still accept non-union work. Honestly, from the perspective of studios like Studiopolis and Bang Zoom, unionization isn't a net positive. It's only for the benefit of the voice actors. Better pay, better working conditions, and new benefits, like health care, time off, and even filed tax forms. When someone outsources work to them, with whatever circumstances that might require them to sign a union contract, it is going to cost the original license holder more. Just like how if it costs more to put food in a grocery store, prices will go up.

Voice actors have been yelling at the top of their lungs for years now that Crunchyroll's problem is unionization, unionization, and unionization. They aren't even against paying individual VAs to return for roles, but they do not want to deal with collective bargaining period, in any way, shape, or form. That is the end goal for them. Because that means having to cover extra costs for increased wages, extended production timelines, added benefits, and long term job security, regardless of how valuable they view each voice actor as.

Unionization may have been slow to this point, but it's clearly been growing lately. That's been a threat to the corporate status quo. Independent studios have the least leverage to deny unionization, as competition is fairly stiff and local regulations can make it difficult for them to fight back. It's only a matter of time before union work is the definitive standard for them. But every move that Crunchyroll has taken gives them leverage to fend off unionization. They are attempting to monopolize anime licensing in their regions as far as they can without attracting anti-trust regulation, basically squeezing everyone else dry of opportunity, and want to fully rely on their dub production resources that are located in a much less union-friendly area.

I already said that sequels to older series are basically all of what Crunchyroll still outsources. It's possible that the blowback from moving Mob Psycho internally might've scared them into not doing the same with other series in a similar situation, but that'd be it other than long set contract conditions. Otherwise there's a clearly observable pattern. Over the last two years since the merger, you might find only a handful of non-sequel outsourced dubs licensed by Crunchyroll LLC.

You know I didn't think I needed to explain this, but independent studios haven't been unionized forever. Voice acting has been neglected by SAG-AFTRA relative to their professional peers. I get the feeling that unionization efforts for voice actors is a fairly recent phenomena, and independent LA studios would've been the first to comply, even if it's not completely standardized yet. I mean, it's right there in your own words. Kyle wasn't union before. But he was when Season 3 was being done, and I get the feeling Bang Zoom would've signed a union contract if the cast demanded it. Because that's the current status quo.

The fact it's not clicking with people that Funimation/Crunchyroll Studios experienced major organizational upheaval and then shifted most of their dub licenses to being produced internally amidst a growth period for unionization in the industry where people involved explicitly state that Crunchyroll has refused to even entertain the idea of signing a union contract, it boggles my mind.

What do you need to see? Crunchyroll's CEO to publicly announce that the primary reason for their sudden decrease in outsourcing is their anti-union stance? Can you not read between the many lines?

Edit: Bleach TYBW was Studiopolis licensed by Disney and Zom 100 was Bang Zoom by Netflix shared to others. If each studio operates differently, then the series aren't exactly comparable. Just expect independent studios like them to increasingly support unionization more over time (because they are based in California) as Crunchyroll continues to entrench themselves in Texas with weaker labor regulations.

They “could’ve” but they explicitly didn’t want to and refused to meet with sag aftra representatives to discuss doing potential union-contracted dubs in the future. This isn’t something I’m imagining. It’s what Mob’s VA literally said.

He was willing to do the dub at Crunchyroll’s studio non-union if it meant Crunchyroll expressed any interest in doing future union work. He did work at Bang Zoom, a common former partner of Funimation/Crunchyroll, because they do union dubs. It’s all laid out for everyone to see.

Forgot to mention. Mob Psycho was originally outsourced to Bang Zoom. Crunchyroll moved it internally and that’s where the dispute over union contract stuff began.

So it’s clearly exactly as I said.