REPORT: Crunchyroll Appears to Use AI-Generated Closed Captioning in Fall 2025 Anime The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest

Per a report from Daiz (developer at FAKKU, previously J-Novel Club), the closed captioning file for The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest Episode 6 indicated that it was generated by the localization platform Ollang, self-described as “effortlessly localiz[ing] your text, video, and audio content at scale with flexible agentic AI workflows.” This comes amid concerns over declines in Crunchyroll’s subtitling quality, as well as rife typesetting issues, which have seen large amounts of on-screen text and overlapping speech left untranslated for viewers and poorer presentation than previous seasons. Daiz’s X (formerly Twitter) post is below; a link to their extensive coverage on Crunchyroll’s typesetting changes is provided.

An example of Crunchyroll’s frequent absence of typesetting for on-screen text is below:

This joins concerns about the lateness of Crunchyroll’s recent releases (The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest Episode 6, too, was delayed). Crunchyroll told Anime News Network in October that these delays were caused by “internal system problems” that had “now been fully resolved.” While it specifically denied that changes in its subtitling methods, vendors, or AI use were linked to delays, it crucially didn’t actually confirm whether it had changed subtitling methods, was using new vendors, or was employing AI.

Crunchyroll’s use of third-party subtitling vendors previously implicated it in an AI controversy. Crunchyroll told Anime Corner in July that it had opened an investigation following outrage at Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show Episode 1. Rife with errors, the episode notoriously had the subtitles “ChatGPT said:” in the German script. No update was issued; however, a spokesperson did say that the use of AI-generated subtitles violated its agreement with the vendor.

What *IS* Crunchyroll’s Stance on AI?

But does the term “implicates” actually hold for Crunchyroll? Its inconsistent messaging on the topic makes it unclear whether it personally embraces AI in its titles. It told The Verge in February 2024:
“AI is definitely something that we think about at a lot of different workflows within the organization. Right now, one of the areas we are very focused on testing is our subtitling and closed captioning, where we go from speech to text, and, how do we improve and optimize our processes where we can get the subtitles done in various languages across the world faster so that we can launch as close to the Japanese release as possible? So that’s definitely an area where we are focused on.

Dubbing, not so much yet for a couple of reasons. Our dubs tend to be adapted dubs; they’re not direct translations. So it’s a creative process.“

However, it told Forbes in April 2025:
“We are not considering AI in the creative process, including our voice actors. We consider them to be creators because they are contributing to the story and plot with their voice.“

It’s unclear whether the apparent use of AI-generated closed captions for The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest suggests that either Crunchyroll has adopted a new perspective within the last few months, or it doesn’t see localizing as part of the creative process, which may come as a surprise, first and foremost to its localizers.

Daiz is a veteran digital producer, UX designer, and UX developer from Finland. His work includes web design and development for English light novel publisher J-Novel Club and overseeing the streaming rollout and typesetting of titles on FAKKU, among other roles. You can read his full About section via his website.

Anime Corner has contacted Crunchyroll regarding its past, present, and future use of AI and Ollang in The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest and its anime generally. We also sought to resolve apparent inconsistencies in its stance on AI and its typesetting plans. An update will be published if Crunchyroll responds.

Source: Daiz