Crunchyroll fails to meet industry standards for Closed Captioning
Despite having a near-complete monopoly on the anime streaming industry in 2024, Crunchyroll does not offer closed captioning for the majority of its English dubs.
Despite having a near-complete monopoly on the anime streaming industry in 2024, Crunchyroll does not offer closed captioning for the majority of its English dubs.
Identity is a complicated subject; the ways we can reflect, parse, and better try to know ourselves are nearly infinite, while the ways we can convey that to others effectively are not. Usually, we are limited in how we present by the economic and social pressures of our society. The cyborg challenges its fans to ask themselves: if what makes us people isn’t as concrete as flesh and blood, then what other unshakable, unchangeable truths about ourselves have we been wrong about?
Shy’s embrace of a Double Empathy Problem framing reveals larger tensions in the struggle for autistic self-determination, both allowing a deeper understanding of the process of Stardust’s self-conception and also revealing the limits of the mainstream culture’s understanding of “empathy.”
By watching how Record of Ragnarok told the origins of Kojirō Sasaki, I reminisced about my time wrestling. The samurai would lose his matches; but Kojirō uses his defeats to study and learn the way of the sword, playing the matches and possible outcomes in his mind, analyzing how adversaries move and think.
We were able to sit down with Aiba for a gregarious and sadly brief conversation to discuss writing relationship dynamics, greater awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, and her latest work.
In a season about environmentalism and illness, Nodoka is in remission from a years-long infection and doesn’t want anyone to suffer the way she did. While she’s not quite depicted as disabled or chronically ill in the show itself, her arc focuses on recovery from a chronic illness in ways that can be similar to managing one.
Hotaru’s story represents the tension between our desire for comforting narratives of disabled people healing and the reality of disabled life as shaped by capitalism and the limits of our bodies.
No amount of blood splattering across the screen or sudden, emotional character deaths hit me quite as hard as the post-credits scene of the finale. It took just fifty seconds to make me squeal out loud and cement Akiba Maid War as one of the most impactful shows of 2022.
Thoughts on name changes, transition, and how Shirono Honami’s I Want To Be a Wall is a reminder that we can shape our own barriers and boundaries.
The Day I Became a God, while not featuring representation of a specific, real-world disability, features a lot of insidious ableism in its last few episodes. This final arc of the show perpetuates a lot of harmful ideas around how those who are disabled should be treated, and the agency that they often do not have, serving as a painfully apt example of the clichés and stereotypes narratives about disability often fall into.
When manga author Monzusu realized how poorly the general population understood neurodivergence, she sought out the stories of ordinary people with experiences similar to her own, eventually turning some of them into a memoir manga. In doing so, she offered neurodivergent people like her a rare chance to tell their own stories in their own words.
Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish, a 2020 adaptation of a 1987 story of the same name, is certainly an uplifting and inspirational film, but its treatment of its central character usurps this concept. Instead of being saintly, Josee is a rounded character who works to achieve her dream of living as an artist.
Miscommunication as narrative conflict is often linked with contrivance and bad writing—and no genre faces this criticism more than romance. That’s what makes Yuri is My Job! so refreshing. In the process of building a will-they-won’t-they story, it explores the gendered, neurotypical, and heteronormative expectations that are built into social interaction.
The Duke of Death and His Maid takes what could be a cheap device for titillation and, intentionally or not, transforms it into something far more emotionally powerful. When looking at the show as a story with metaphors about disability and navigating disability in that space, it becomes difficult to remove the fanservice without making the story weaker.
The Orbital Children rejects the ecofascist idea that humans need to be controlled and culled in the name of someone’s idea of “humanity” and demands we imagine a better future that everyone gets to be a part of.
Many criticisms of moe characteristics stem from the idea that these girl characters are created to be appealing to male viewers, and therefore cannot be relatable to any real woman in the audience. However, so-called moe series have yielded several characters that are extremely relatable to the neurodiverse female experience.
ADHD is often maligned as strictly a lack of the willpower necessary to concentrate, or a simple inability to ignore distractions. But through her investigations, Chitanda exhibits behaviors characteristic of ADHD that contribute to, rather than hamper, her ability to lead herself and others.
Using its “magical school” premise, Witch Hat Atelier explores diversity among students and argues for the importance of accessibility throughout society, but especially in education. With supportive mentors and a focus on individual accommodation, anyone really can wield their own kind of magic.
As a long-time reader of manga, I always found the medium to be a means of escape to fantastical worlds. Yet, there remained a disconnect between me and the stories I was reading. Discovering I Hear the Sunspot filled that absence with its portrayal of the specific reality of being both gay and Deaf.
Mainstream media tends to over-dramatize or romanticise disability to make the intended able-bodied audience feel pity or inspiration. While I can’t say Perfect World completely escapes these tropes, Aruga still strives to make a narrative that incorporates experiences from the disabled community.