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Answerman - Why Aren't Opening And Ending Themes Subtitled?

It's not so much a matter of the labor involved as the logistics.

translating songs in Japanese (or worse, some bizarre combination of Japanese and Engrish) can be exceedingly challenging even WITH a written copy of the lyrics.

Those written lyrics often don't end up becoming available until the song is released as a single

The (sometimes ridiculous) karaoke effects that fansubs have are not really possible with streaming video.

Doesn't sound as bloody and fiery as the debate over how Alucard should be spelled.

Lord Oink wrote:

Aw, next you'll say you don't like the text dancing, flashing, spinning around to the music.. Those were always fun to sing along to

FFF's karaoke subs for Maware! Setsugetsukan (Unbreakable Machine-Doll) were pretty awesome, at least

FFF's karaoke subs for Maware! Setsugetsukan (Unbreakable Machine-Doll) were pretty awesome, at least

I for one I very grateful that songs aren't translated. ESPECIALLY insert songs. It gets in the way of the animation. And don't remind me of that crap fansubs used to do where they'd have one line for the romaji one for the karaoke and one for the English. THREE lines of text obstructing the picture. Hardsubbed, of course. The epitome of stupidity.

The version I have is this:

May be wrong as well.

Surely a single English translation line isn't any more obtrusive to the OP/ED animation than dialogue subs are in the main body of the episode. I always figure that the Japanese audiences are intended to understand those lyrics, so why shouldn't we? After all, many shows for younger audiences have hardcoded kanji/furigana lyrics placed there by the studios, who apparently aren't concerned about them getting in the way of the animation. Insert songs may be a different matter, of course. I recall some scenes in the AnimeONE&Anime-Kingdom version of Genesis of Aquarion that had eight lines of subtitles: 3 lines of kanji/kana/English for insert song lyrics, 3 more lines for "overlapping" song lyrics, dialogue, and overlapping dialogue. That was maybe a bit much.

Having watched Re:Creators yesterday I realized that Amazon's practice in this area is not consistent. The lyrics for the songs in Made in Abyss appear in subtitles, but there is no translation for the songs in Re:Creators. I have a sense that the committee for Made in Abyss may have a stronger interest in foreign markets. The music was written by a Brit and recorded by orchestras in Vienna and Boston. It's being streamed in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

myskaros wrote:

FFF's karaoke subs for Maware! Setsugetsukan (Unbreakable Machine-Doll) were pretty awesome, at least

I don't know what would drive anyone to bother doing that but I'm grateful for it. It was a true work of art.

Now I really want to see this.......

And then there are the songs that are in very heavily accented English, like the opening for Dragon Ball Super. As I've been watching the dub through Toonami (and thus would watch it with no subtitles), I didn't realize it was even in English until I turned on closed captions at one time (as they sometimes provide translations or transliterations for the openings and endings). I have to wonder how well Japanese listeners would've recognized and understood what he was saying.

Speaking of which, for the record, shows on Toonami do not have any captions besides possibly a "[man/woman singing in foreign language]" tag during opening and ending sequences until several episodes in, after which they'll have something there for the rest of the show's duration. (Blue Exorcist had that, then the title of the song and its artists, then full lyrics.) Not sure if this is any sort of clue to the processes behind having subtitles for the songs when streaming though.

The karaoke and subtitles kept CONSTANTLY adapting to match whatever was going on in the background down to the styling, coloring, surroundings and effects (pounding, rotating, sliding, blinking...) for what was basically a fast-paced, energetic, permanently mutating composition.
They weren't as readable as they blended with the background, which just matches the song's own lyrics being used as decoration. The ED by itself was already highly enjoyable and these subs just compounded on that.
http://imgur.com/a/aa5aZ
If you want to watch by yourself, it's probably a quick google search away.

Yuvelir wrote:

The karaoke and subtitles kept CONSTANTLY adapting to match whatever was going on in the background down to the styling, coloring, surroundings and effects (pounding, rotating, sliding, blinking...) for what was basically a fast-paced, energetic, permanently mutating composition. They weren't as readable as they blended with the background, which just matches the song's own lyrics being used as decoration. The ED by itself was already highly enjoyable and these subs just compounded on that. http://imgur.com/a/aa5aZ If you want to watch by yourself, it's probably a quick google search away.

Holy moly. That's impressive. Not exactly sensible, but impressive


I tried to search on YT but didn't find anything. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place....

[I was surprised to see captions for Jojo's "Walk Like an Egyptian" show up in the last episode I watched. It's been my experience that, at least on home video releases, high-profile Western songs are rarely if ever subtitled, I'm assuming because of some nonsense like the lyrics rights being prohibitively expensive. Even when a song's in natively-sung English, there's usually at least one ambiguous line in there that'd be nice to know without resorting to Google. Or, in the case of "Paranoid Android," every damn line in the song.