Oh bro, you’re preaching to the choir here. I absolutely hate subtitles. Even with foreign content it’s a shitty requirement to engage with the media, although preferable to dubbed content for me in most situations. I have an Apple TV, and tvOS allows you to set subtitle size, color, border type, background type, and brightness, which really help make them much more bearable in these unavoidable situations.
That said, I’m not hating them as much as I thought I would in Shogun, probably because they’re edited in to the master by the producers and they actually look decent compared to that harsh sterile blinding typical white type of subtitle that most included forced subs use.
Yeah, sometimes they’re unavoidable, Shogun is ok, but I still think everything would be better without them. I wonder if there’s a version of Shogun without subtitles for people (not me) who understand both English and Japanese.
On the subject of Shogun, one thing that’s hilarious: the English is supposedly Portuguese. It took me a while to figure that one out. Like, when they’re speaking Japanese it’s Japanese, but when they’re speaking English, it’s supposed to be Portuguese. At least, I think? Although there were some scenes early on that I think where they were speaking English. I guess there’s no way you could get away with a TV show where the two actual spoken languages were Portuguese and Japanese, with everything subtitled for English speakers. But, the way they did it is really weird. Like, the actual Portuguese speakers sometimes speak English with a Portuguese accent, and the Spanish speakers speak Spanish-accented English, which is maybe supposed to be Spanish-accented Portuguese, but the main character speaks a variant of British English, but it’s supposed to be accentless(?) Portuguese?
Yeah, the whole Portuguese but spoken in English thing is kind of ridiculous I guess. I did read an interview about that though and they wouldn’t have been able to find enough actors who spoke both Japanese and Portuguese to the level they would need.
And I’m not sure about the subtitles for people who can understand both languages. I do know that the subtitles aren’t “forced”, they’re mastered in to the video. I pirate my shit, if they were forced subs my player would use my system settings for size, positioning, color, opacity, etc. I would assume that the English portions are subbed the same way for the show in the Japanese market, but idk.
