From spying on its users to injecting politicized humor and buzzwords into the localization of anime for Western audiences, the monopolistic streaming service Crunchyroll has given users yet another reason to hate them.
In a recent post on its support page, Crunchyroll announced it has disabled the comment sections for anime episodes and news posts, they’ve also removed the ability to write reviews. The company claimed this decision was made to promote a safe and respectful community.
However, this explanation is highly dubious. By removing the ability to comment or like posts, corporations can more easily control the narrative and manipulate their userbase without opposition where depriving users of critical engagement features ensures corporate messages go unchallenged.
Similarly, Elon Musk made a significant change to Twitter by setting all users’ “Likes” to private by default. This change prevents users from seeing each other’s likes, reducing the potential for accountability and scrutiny. Twitter has long struggled with botting by activists who artificially promote certain agendas, and this move only exacerbates the issue.
These posts are easy to identify as they typically come from individuals promoting a pro-gay, pro-trans agenda. Users opposing these views often face suspension. Bottled posts are also known for pushing specific narratives, particularly regarding Japanese animation and the controversial topic of “lolicons,” which some argue are equivalent to real-life children and therefore pedophilic.
Botted posts on Twitter are easy to spot. They usually come from obscure accounts with minimal followings, often in the triple digits or less. Despite this, these accounts somehow manage to ratio much larger users by quote tweeting, even without paying for Twitter Blue to boost their visibility.
Their posts consistently have a disproportionate number of likes, views, and retweets compared to the actual engagement and comments beneath them.
Botted posts become visible to unsuspecting individuals who engage with them. How else could a random account accumulate 2.1 million views on a pro-gay post with 14,300 likes? It seems superficial because it is.
It’s a massive coincidence how these suspected botted posts always revolve around the same agenda: anti-anime, anti-lolicon, pro-censorship, or anything that promotes a globalist agenda.
Since Twitter removed visible likes, user interaction has surged. People can now like posts without fear of being called out for liking controversial or offensive content. This change also prevents users from exposing the hypocrisy of those who publicly condemn lolicon while liking similar content. The removal of visible likes has also exacerbated the botting problem, something Elon Musk seems indifferent to, as it boosts engagement on the platform, both from real users and bots.
YouTube removed the ability to see like-to-dislike ratios on videos in 2021, claiming it was to support small creators. However, the real reason is likely to protect corporations from public backlash, as only the video’s uploader can see the ratio.
Never mind that novice users can install a plugin to bring back the like and dislike figures. YouTube’s decision to remove these figures by default was orchestrated to protect corporations, preventing the general public from seeing overwhelmingly negative feedback on a company or product, much like the heavily disliked trailers for Assassin’s Creed Shadows or any other benign woke pile of shit product.
Now, Crunchyroll, owned by Sony, known for their censorship of Japanese content is taking a similar approach to deter negative feedback as YouTube. This move likely foreshadows future censored broadcasts of Japanese anime on the platform or deliberately altered translations with cringe-worthy Western slang and humor inserted into the scripts.
Keep in mind that Crunchyroll settled a U.S. privacy invasion lawsuit out of court by offering customers a $30 cashback, essentially paying them off to continue using their services.
Despite being the main streaming option for anime outside of Japan, true fans of Japanese animation would be better off pirating instead. Use that money to support your favorite shows by buying Blu-ray volumes or, better yet, buy some fucking merchandise. Buy a figure. Buy a keychain. Stop paying for Crunchyroll, stop being a cunt and buy something that actually benefits the franchise instead.
Crunchyroll has now joined the long list of mainstream websites that have purged user feedback under the guise of protecting the end user. In reality, they are stifling negative feedback about their efforts to colonize Japanese media.
By limiting visibility of comments, users can no longer freely criticize Crunchyroll for altering content. They want obedient consumers, not users who start to notice and point out what the rest of the audience hasn’t yet seen.
Crunchyroll has a notorious track record of modifying source material for their own agenda. Their dedicated staffers and outsourced localizing agents, like Katrina Leonoudakis, frequently inject buzzwords and slang that cater only to Western audiences, ultimately subverting the whole point of “translating” a product if the end result simply deviates entirely off script because they feel the need to “skibidi yeet sus bazinga” all over it.
Moreover, Crunchyroll has a history of censoring anime broadcasts, such as in the case of the second season of Mushoku Tensei, where they removed scenes deemed problematic to make them more palatable for Western viewers.
And of course, we can’t overlook how Crunchyroll and similar entities have deliberately veered off script to inject politicized dialogue into numerous anime dubs. One of the most notorious examples is the insertion of “patriarchal societal demands” into Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.
During a convention Q&A session, Jamie Marchi, a script writer for the dub and also the English voice of Lucoa in the series, responded to criticism of the politicized dub script by asserting her gender and stating, “women are here” and “there’s nothing you can do about it.” She further dismissed critics by suggesting they “get over it” because they’re “not getting laid.”
Goddamn bitch.
To further bring the point home Crunchyroll eliminated gendered language from their English broadcast of Oniichan wa Oshimai. This move highlights why figures like Katrina are deeply apprehensive about advancements in machine learning and AI translations, such as those pioneered by Orange Inc.
Katrina and her colleagues are currently expressing outrage on social media over the English translation of My Deer Friend Nokotan, the season’s meme show. This backlash stems from the translation allegedly being done machine learning, void of Western slang or euphemisms, which they absolutely despise given how the show itself is being hailed by fans for being great to watch alongside being absent of any “rub-a-dub-dubs.”
With the removal of their longstanding comment section, Crunchyroll assured fans that the site’s rating system will remain intact despite the removal of actual user made reviews. However, this assurance means very little.
By removing the comment section, Crunchyroll appears to be preemptively avoiding backlash from consumers who might notice how their monthly subscription fees are being used to alter and ruin Japanese anime from within. This can also be summarized as Crunchyroll finally beginning to lose subscribers due to this, removing the ability for users to comment more or less is a last ditch effort to stop the hemorrhaging from spreading amongst users.
With this change, it’s reasonable to anticipate that upcoming English productions of anime in future seasons will revert to their usual practices of abrupt censorship and the insertion of Western slang.
