Crunchyroll has made yet another controversial move in 2025, but this time, anime fans cannot forgive it and finally cancelled the streaming site.

Recent reports have announced that Crunchyroll, the largest anime streaming service, will be replacing Aegisub with Israeli Software, OOONA, to produce subtitles more efficiently. Anime fans across the world are disappointed with this collaboration due to Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians (via a report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry).

Crunchyroll is also ignoring the needs of groups who require Closed Captions to understand the scenes better. They are isolating a large chunk of their audience in favor of AI-based subtitling, which defeats the point of a streaming service. Overall, this hasn’t been a great year for Crunchyroll, and this won’t be the end of it.

  • Erik L. Midtsveen 🏴🌈@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    513·
    21 hours ago

    The whole “calling out Israel for genocide means you’re antisemitic” line is so worn out and honestly just exhausting. Israel has spent like 4+ decades trying desperately to associate criticism of israel with antisemitism.

    I’ve been boycotting Crunchyroll for years, and I’m not stopping anytime soon.

    “Piracy is a human right, collective ownership of the seas, comrades!” — Erik L. Midtsveen

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.worldEnglish
      36·
      13 hours ago

      Maybe instead of everyone calling it isreal and palestine, they should say the isreali government and innocent people.

      They should say Netanyahu is committing genocide.

      Saying israel instead of directly naming the culprits is sort of like when people say antifa. In the case of antifa it makes bad actors able to demonise the word and make it seem like a bad thing, so it can be used to twist peoples minds and make them think its a bad thing.

      In the case of this genocide, it dehumanises the people committing the atrocities and diverts blame to the word instead of the people. Which has the effect of people like Netanyahu being able to reassociate the word with the israeli people and the jews.

      So it absolutely isnt antisemitic to say israel is committing genocide, but it is unhelpful to divert the blame from the real asshats in charge.