While having a new batch of seasonal anime is typically an exciting for everyone within the community, some fans have recently voiced concerns with the handling of the subtitles and translations in one of the new series currently streaming on Crunchyroll, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons. The anime adaptation of the popular shojo manga by Shizuki Fujisawa began regularly broadcasting on October 5, which is when many anime fans picking up the series noticed something strange about the quality of the subtitles, and took to X – formerly Twitter – to voice their concerns.

In a post by Yami ReiRei (@LossThief on X), the creator discussed the poor quality subtitles, outlining through a series of screenshots a distinct lack of punctuation and an overly literal translation. The post garnered enough attention to then open up a discussion alleging that the episode may have been machine translated. While there is no official confirmation on whether this is true, the inherent lack of quality is alarming, to say the least.

The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons' Poor Sub Quality Raises Bigger Questions

Once fans became vocal with the quality of the episode's subtitles, Crunchyroll swiftly removed the episode from their streaming service, and later re-uploaded it a few hours later. As of Thursday, Crunchyroll has also removed the series from their "Fall 2023 Anime Season Lineup" and "Newly Added Anime" pages. Unfortunately, the new upload used the exact same translation and subtitles as before, which the community quickly noticed. The incident remains unresolved, and has opened up a multitude of questions and concerns from the anime community on the quality assurance of the series' translation, and whether this was a one-time incident, or the sign of a much more alarming issue taking root.

Additionally, while there has still been no official confirmation from Crunchyroll regarding whether they used machine translations when subbing the first episode of The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons, the allegation has been enough to strengthen the ongoing debate on the ethics of using AI in creative fields. As of Thursday, October 5, the issue is still unresolved on Crunchyroll, however, an anime streaming company in Southeast Asia called Ani-One Asia has also licensed the series, with episode 1 being available with their own English subtitles that contain fewer errors.

Source:: @LossThief on X.