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.
EDIT: Link was taken down thanks to someone in the comments here’s the archive for the page https://web.archive.org/web/20251004184506/https://fandomwire.com/crunchyroll-faces-cancelation-why-anime-fans-are-choosing-piracy-after-latest-update/
https://bsky.app/profile/lamhfada.bsky.social/post/3m2c3udxnjc2u
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
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.
What makes you think that relabelling Palestinians as ‘innocent people’ to prevent Netanyahu and his fascists from their Doublethink redirection of genocide to only be relevant to Jews but not Palestinians would work? They would immediately reframe ‘innocent people’ as Hamas-embedded terrorist supporters - they already do it. The better action is to call out the truth (Israel is committing genocide) and say it loudly as much as possible, one of many benefits is that businesses and artists and people don’t actually want to be associated with a genocide and we’re seeing that impact daily.
When people say “Israel is committing genocide” they mean the government of Israel, it is implied. It is silly to extrapolate it to blame for every man woman and child in Israel. Just as it would be silly to pin it down to only Netanyahu when he is the PM of far-right government with thousands of people directly supporting and enabling his actions, and is Israel’s longest serving prime minister - voted in multiple times by clear majority in elections, so while only he and his government are accountable to their actions, a large swathe of Israel is responsible for him being there.
Just as when people say “the USA has just bombed Iran unprovoked” they clearly mean the current government of the USA has taken this action - not just Trump, and also not some kid playing basketball in Philadelphia.
Thats a fine argument, and i agree with you. But I’m not talking about people who understand the implication behind naming the country and not the individuals. I am specifically saying that there are swathes of people who hear the word israel and its not a government, its not a country, its a terrorist, its a more abstract scary monster thing and for those people, it shifts blame from the government, to the country as a whole. Just like what happened with antifa. Antifa doesnt mean anti fascist to idiots. It means terrorist.
Genocide is wildly popular in Israel right now
"Dubbed the “Sderot cinema” by Israelis online, watching Israel’s bombardment has become a popular pastime; people take turns looking through tower viewers. Some bring popcorn and snacks, and some snap selfies as the thud of airstrikes echo in the distance.
“When I look at Gaza from here and see buildings still standing, it makes me upset. … I want Israel to continue until it’s all flattened,” Rafael Hemo, an onlooker told CNN."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/global-outrage-has-grown-after-two-years-of-bombardment-in-gaza-in-israel-it-is-a-different-story/ar-AA1NSQWj?pc=U531&ei=10
Appalling.
P. S. When I tried to open your link, it failed and sent me to the MSN front page, i removed some variables/identifiers at the end of URL and that seems to work:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/global-outrage-has-grown-after-two-years-of-bombardment-in-gaza-in-israel-it-is-a-different-story/ar-AA1NSQWj
Ok, but fascism is wildly popular in the USA right now. Would you make the same argument there?
Or, like me, are you more inclined towards believing that more likely a few terrible people in power have sway with a vast number of easily led racists and that mischaracterises the whole country?
Yes, we’re a fascist country now.
But more to the point, brining up a country that was founded on Genocide of Native Americans to argue that we shouldn’t speak ill of a country founded on Genocide of Palestinians is wild.
This describes both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Again, weird take unless you’re pushing for us to drop the Nazi label from 1933-1945 Germany.
Are you a fascist?
No, I’m a Leftist.
Ok, so, you are not a fascist country, you are a country run by fascists with fascists in it. But this doesn’t represent the values of the entire population. Especially when trump rigged the election (by his own admission) that means that not even the majority are fascists. And then you have to exclude all those who voted for trump because they were duped by his campaign who aren’t fascist and are just more republican and 4ight leaning than left.
I feel the same way about israel and palestine. We are quick to speak to the separation of hamas and palestine as a whole, but when it comes to israel, the same voices are shouting its the whole country and not just a genocidal organisation and their followers.
I think its an important distinction.
I mean… yeah? It’s not really much of a mischaracterization if it’s true. At one point you have to accept that the we’re the baddies as a US citizen.
What do you think should be done to you?
Yes, Netanyahu!