Daiz
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daiz.moe
Daiz
@daiz.moe
1.6K followers 390 following 2.6K posts
🔞 Digital media expert & UX designer/developer @ JP-EN media localization
Talks #lightnovels / #anime / #manga / #games / #translation | pro-fiction | Finnish 🇫🇮 but posting primarily in English | opinions firmly my own | he/they

Website ★ daiz.moe ★
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daiz.moe
And it was unironically better the old way
An image with text that reads "Bad diegetic signposting is always worse than non-diegetic signposting." The "Bad diegetic signposting" text is splattered with yellow paint.
November 18, 2025 at 11:00 AM
daiz.moe
I wrote up a quick template script that you can use as a base for calling your EU representatives about #ChatControl

fightchatcontrol.eu for the numbers, script in the image as well as at the link - translate to your own language for maximum impact: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
A template script to use for calling the MEPs of your country about #ChatControl. Phone numbers can be found at fightchatcontrol.eu — translate this message to your own language for maximum effect! It requires a bit of effort to track down the correct translated names and terms in your language, but it should maximize the impact with your representatives. Hello, [name] here. I am trying to reach [representative] regarding an urgent and important matter. (Yesterday,) on the 12th of November, the Law Enforcement Working Party of the Council of European Union approved the revised Chat Control legislation brought forward by the Danish Presidency, despite vocal disapproval from the European populace across the board. This legislation essentially forces internet service providers to spy on all digital communications of all European citizens, including encrypted communications like Whatsapp chats for example. The same legislation also denies people their right to privacy on the internet by forcing them to identify via age verification before accessing services on the internet, endangering the work and life of several groups of professionals as well as people in general. This catastrophically bad legislation most likely violates the EU’s own GDPR, as well as the constitution of [our country]. (note: check to make sure this is accurate with your country) As such, I would like to make it clear that [our country]’s representatives must do everything they can do to stop this privacy-destroying “Big Brother is watching” legislation. The rights of all EU citizens are in danger, and now is the time to act.
November 13, 2025 at 10:26 AM
daiz.moe
It's got a diameter of 150cm (just shy of 5ft in burger units)! A photo doesn't really do it justice so have a size chart instead
A silhouette of a human and a photo of a paper star lantern side by side. The human is ~183cm tall, or about ~6ft. The star is 150cm in diameter, or just shy of 5ft. It is big.
November 11, 2025 at 9:29 PM
daiz.moe
They gave a vague "respecting original JP" reply, but not long after there was a significant change for the better in the quality of EN titles that Yen Press came up with. Even the most oddly titled license of that panel got renamed to "May These Leaden Battlegrounds Leave No Trace" for release! 4/5
Cover for May These Leaden Battlegrounds Leave No Trace: Bullet Magic and Ghost Programs light novel volume 1, in English from Yen Press. This is what the previously mentioned license was renamed to before the first volume came out.
November 10, 2025 at 8:00 AM
daiz.moe
During the panel in question, one of the LN licenses announced by Yen Press was "The Penetrated Battlefield Should Disappear There: Bullet Witchcraft & Ghost Program", with words along the lines of "we know the title is kind of weird but that's just how it is in the original Japanese too!" or so 2/5
Yen Press license announcement slide for the light novel "The Penetrated Battlefied Should Disappear There: Bullet Witchcraft & Ghost Program" from 2019
November 10, 2025 at 8:00 AM
daiz.moe
Gotta say, it is rather frustrating to see a Japanese person with at least some grasp of English say "EN-JP machine #translation is total trash" but then in the same sentence go "but JP-EN MTL is totally fine most of the time". How do you not realize how obviously mirrored something like this is!
Post from another site from a Japanese person: Machine translation from English to Japanese is almost always poor, while translation from Japanese to English is usually acceptable. Most Japanese people can instantly tell whether the Japanese text was machine-translated. It’s generally good enough to grasp the overall meaning, but often you still cannot understand what the writer actually wants to say.
November 8, 2025 at 8:12 AM
daiz.moe
Incidentally, Crunchyroll seems to have just updated the subtitles on a couple more Fall series. As a reminder though, these "updated" subtitles are what CR's subtitling staff made for these shows to begin with, Crunchyroll was just deliberately serving us low quality conversions of them until now!
Screenshot from This Monster Wants to Eat Me 01, showing a grumpy dude on screen with a bunch of text around his head that isn't translated. Screenshot from This Monster Wants to Eat Me 01, showing the same scene as in the previous screenshot, but this time with translations for the text around his head included alongside the dialogue translation.
November 4, 2025 at 8:41 PM
daiz.moe
Update on this: per suggestion by the ANN bsky account I sent a message to moderation asking why my posts got deleted. I was told I broke the rule of "Self-promotion is only allowed if it has value, is relevant, and creates discussion for this forum" despite my posts easily clearing those conditions
Screenshot of a direct message from me to an Anime News Network forum moderator. Subject: Tried posting relevant information to two talkback threads, both posts got deleted. Hello. I was directed by the ANN Bluesky account to try to contact a moderator here. For most of the month, I was working on a deep dive into the recent Crunchyroll subtitle issues. Based on this extensive research, I wrote and released an article about it earlier this week, which can be found here. On Thursday, I tried to make posts in this This Week in Anime talkback thread, as well as this Answerman talkback thread. Both columns were about this exact Crunchyroll subtitle situation, and my article contains a lot of new and relevant information about it, so I believe my posts where I link my article would have been highly relevant to the talkback threads in question. However, my posts in both threads automatically went into a moderation queue, requiring manual approval from a moderator - approval that never came. Instead, they were rejected, never to see the light of the day. So if I may ask: why exactly did these rejections happen? Screenshot of the Anime News Network moderator's response to me: Hi Daiz Please read "Teh Rules", in particular #7 and follow the link there to discussion about self-promotion. Your posts do nothing more than try to re-direct eyeballs from ANN to your blog. Your posts - not just the link - need to contribute to the discussion. Regards Screenshot of my reply back to the moderator sent just now, unanswered as of now: Quote from "Teh rules", Rule 7: Self-promotion is only allowed if it has value, is relevant, and creates discussion for this forum I am aware of the rules, and I do believe me linking to my article would have checked all three boxes here: - Has value: Clearly so, considering how much new information the article provides for the subject at hand - Is relevant: Also extremely clear, since my article is about the exact subject of the columns in question - Creates discussion for the forum: I believe it would have done exactly that for the above reasons. Am I wrong? Screenshot from the thread the moderator mentioned about Rule 7. Dessa writes: Not staff, but from my observances, what it usually comes down to is if it's type A or type B. Type A: Hey, check out my podcast [link]! Type B: I've got a podcast ([link]), and this week we discussed [topic]. What are your opinions on [topic] and how we presented it? A usually gets locked, B is more often okay. I usually see it come down to if it's encouraging discussion on ANN, vs just linking something or encouraging discussion off ANN. This post was responded to by Zac, the former executive editor of ANN: Dessa's response is correct - you can promote your show if you want but the thread needs to have some value and relevance to the forum beyond that. The posts I made about my article were very much more closely aligned with Type B, as I explained my reasons for linking with my article being highly relevant to the subjects at hand, which it very much was.
November 3, 2025 at 7:36 AM
daiz.moe
Alright, guess I'll do just that then! Here's my inquiry for the record, just so that we can all be on the same page here.
Screenshot of a private message about to be sent to a moderator on the Anime News Network forums, with the subject "Tried posting relevant information to two talkback threads, both posts got deleted." The post reads: Hello. I was directed by the ANN Bluesky account to try to contact a moderator here. For most of the month, I was working on a deep dive into the recent Crunchyroll subtitle issues. Based on this extensive research, I wrote and released an article about it earlier this week, which can be found here [link to my article]. After release, I tried to make posts in a This Week in Anime talkback thread, as well as an Answerman talkback thread. Both columns were about this exact Crunchyroll subtitle situation, and my article contains a lot of new and relevant information about it, so I believe my posts where I link my article would have been highly relevant to the talkback threads in question. However, my posts in both threads automatically went into a moderation queue, requiring manual approval from a moderator - approval that never came. Instead, they were rejected, never to see the light of the day. So if I may ask: why exactly did these rejections happen?
October 31, 2025 at 9:45 PM
daiz.moe
How many layers of weeb are you on?
A surreal 4-panel comic. In panel 1, a janky looking 3D head is flying through purple space, asking "how many layers of weeb are you on". In panel 2, a cartoony figure with a smug looking face and a lower body that is melting into a spaghetti'd mess replies with "like,, maybe 5, or 6 right now. my dude". In panel 3, the janky 3D head's eyes have started glowing, as it responds "you are like a little baby" "watch this". In panel 4, the janky 3D head has gotten all deep fried looking, and is saying in glowing cyan text: "Gāruzu Bando Kurai (Girls Band Cry)". The comic is an edit of the "How many layers of irony are you on" meme comic.
October 30, 2025 at 5:17 PM
daiz.moe
Tapping the sign
An image with text that reads "Bad diegetic signposting is always worse than non-diegetic signposting." The "Bad diegetic signposting" text is splattered with yellow paint.
October 29, 2025 at 11:13 PM
daiz.moe
Soon
It's a text editor minimap showing a map with a lot of text. Like a lot lot of text.
October 28, 2025 at 8:11 PM
daiz.moe
So this basically happened to my wife (minus the collapsing on the street bit). She was diagnosed with autoimmune thyroiditis and started using thyroid medication and we're both amazed at how immediately and massively such a little pill has improved basically her entire existence. Wild stuff
A post on tumblr by user cordeliaflyte: My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency
October 24, 2025 at 7:05 PM
daiz.moe
Free game design cheat sheet to post on the office wall
An image with text that reads "Bad diegetic signposting is always worse than non-diegetic signposting." The "Bad diegetic signposting" text is splattered with yellow paint.
October 23, 2025 at 6:27 AM
daiz.moe
Cackling at the latest Asumi-chan #manga plot development being literally just this
A manga-style panel featuring two girls in lingerie sitting distressed and and awkward on a bed, with a narration panel in the middle saying "And so... THEY WERE BOTH BOTTOMS"
October 11, 2025 at 5:37 PM
daiz.moe
Indeed... anime fans of the world deserve to see typesetting on this level and beyond outside the realm of fansubs, especially considering how dead fansubbing is today
October 3, 2025 at 1:56 PM
daiz.moe
Honestly, this isn't even particularly outlandish of an ask - plenty of fansubbers have done frame by frame typesetting work in the past (below is something from me for an official release). The reason it's not a really thing with CR is that it's sadly not really feasible perf-wise with web softsubs
October 3, 2025 at 1:44 PM
daiz.moe
Managed to get this one figured out too with some help! Apparently it's a program called Telestream CaptionMaker (or MacCaption), which was once mentioned in a job listing of the then-parent group of Funimation, G1200 Media. It's ancient & no longer updated, but CR is still using it for BDs!
Screenshot from https://web.archive.org/web/20150212023331/http://group1200.hirecentric.com/jobs/77638.html It's a page showing a job listing for Subtitler at G1200 Media from 2015, the parent company of Funimation at the time. In the listing, core responsibilities of the job include "Create and modify subtitles using MacCaption closed captioning and subtitling program"
October 1, 2025 at 5:58 PM
daiz.moe
Okay, think I managed to figure out CR's new software. That's my main question solved, though it made me curious about something else, which I'll just ask publicly: Does anyone know what subtitling software Funimation used to use for their old web streams? I suspect it's EZTitles, but I'm not sure.
Screenshot from an old Funimation online stream featuring hardsubbed subtitles. On top, there's translation for some on-screen text, while dialogue subtitles are being shown simultaneously on the bottom. All of the text is using the same kind of plain white fill, black outline style.
October 1, 2025 at 4:08 PM
daiz.moe
To give another perspective of how bad this is: Back in 2009 when Crunchyroll went from pirates to a legit streamer, they built the first version of their Flash player. It was super bare-bones, but it supported some positioning and overlaps! You have new subs in 2025 being worse than subs from 2009!
Screenshot from the first episode of Saki season 1 from 2009, one of the first seasonal shows Crunchyroll streamed as a legitimate platform, with the most bare-bones version of their Flash player and subtitle renderer. It didn't support exact positioning as of yet, but it did at least support having multiple time-wise overlapping lines on-screen in different positions (corners of the screen) at the same time. This screenshot is from the next episode preview, which features the texts "Next Episode Preview" in the top left corner, "Battle", the title of the next episode in the bottom right corner, as well as a line of dialogue in bottom center. This bare-bones feature set from 2009 is, as a matter of fact, a richer set of subtitling capabilities than what Crunchyroll's new Closed Caption Converter pipeline can handle in 2025.
September 29, 2025 at 7:53 PM
daiz.moe
Now how we can tell that this is Crunchyroll directly rather than yet another inept 3rd party subtitle vendor? Well, people have spotted known CR freelancers in the subtitle credits and CCC's website lists Crunchyroll as a user.

(Btw, CCC also advertises "built-in integrations with AI services"...)
Screenshot from Closed Caption Converter homepage, notably featuring Crunchyroll's logo as one of the ten big companies using its product. Scrolling down on the CCC homepage, they advertise "Seamless workflow integration" - "Connect your entire caption workflow with built-in integrations for media asset management, cloud storage, AI services, and edit tools." Underneath, a logo for DeepL is included, which means that yes, CCC has built-in integrations for AI machine translation services. Now, whether Crunchyroll actually makes use of those or not is another matter, but if they are making a larger switch to CCC for their subtitling pipeline, having AI machine translation this close at hand is a worrying development.
September 28, 2025 at 7:24 AM
daiz.moe
Some details: It seems that for at least two new in-house subtitle releases (A Wild Last Boss Appeared 01, Kaiju No8 23), rather than the usual Aegisub the subtitles were created in "Closed Caption Converter", which cannot do styled on-screen text at all. CR work with Aegisub on left, CCC on right.
Screenshot from Ruri Rocks episode 1 from Crunchyroll, showing a screen full of styled on-screen text with multiple placements and styles for the show's Mineralogical Footnotes. Screenshot from A Wild Last Boss Appeared episode 1 from Crunchyroll, featuring a single on-screen text to translate at the top of the screen, with white text in a black box. Crunchyroll's usual work could basically replicate this box very accurately for immersive results, but with Closed Caption Converter we instead get regular subtitles reading "WAR SYSTEM [linebreak] - Different nations engaged in PvP combat." with zero styling involved. They're even placed right on top of the sign, resulting in just a total mess in terms of general readability.
September 28, 2025 at 7:21 AM
daiz.moe
Google killing the blob emoji is still one of their biggest crimes against design to date
😐 Neutral Face on Google Noto Color Emoji Android 4.4 - the blob is far more powerful than whatever emoji set you are probably using right now
September 20, 2025 at 2:22 PM
daiz.moe
Finally got around to reading Mage Society Sure is Fucked Up vol 13, also known as Reign of the Seven Spellblades sometimes. And boy that mage society sure is mighty fucked up! Can't even have sex, gay sex, group sex, or other kinds of nasty wizard sex without sadness and fraught fucking it all up
Cover for Reign of the Seven Spellblades light novel volume 13, featuring our main sextet looking all sad and fraught
September 13, 2025 at 9:52 PM
daiz.moe
The Metroid Bike actually reminded me that Environmental Station Alpha (a fantastic Metroidvania you should play) has a secret upgrade... which is literally just a bicycle. It's faster than walking but kind of awkward to control in the usual kind of narrow corridors, but that just makes it funnier
Screenshot from Environmental Station Alpha, with the player character mid-air on a bicycle
September 13, 2025 at 9:49 AM