Am I the only one who thinks Crunchyroll's subs are getting worse?

Last week I visited my buddy's place in Austin and we watched episode 4 of that new mecha show on both Crunchyroll and a fansub group. The Crunchyroll version had a line translated as 'I will defeat you' while the fansub had 'I'm gonna take you down' and it just felt more real. Now I'm torn between supporting the official release and getting better quality from fans. What do you guys think is more important, accurate subs or natural sounding ones?

2 comments

2 Comments

harperg761mo ago

Buddy of mine swears the fansub fixed a bad joke in episode 7.

lucasschmidt1mo ago

Episode 7's joke about the translator device glitching and calling the main character a "mid-tier sandwich" is actually pretty clever in the original Japanese, it's a play on how the word for "reliable" sounds like "BLT on rye" if you mumble it. The official dub just had him say "you're a regular ham sandwich" which was flat and weird. But the fansub I saw changed it to "you're a soggy meatball sub" which loses that original wordplay completely and just feels like the subber thought they were funnier than the writer. I get why your buddy prefers it, because the official version does fall flat, but I don't think the fansub really "fixed" anything, it just swapped a mediocre joke for a different mediocre joke.