Today 14 July 2023, The official Instagram handle of Crunchyroll posted a Posted a post announcing partnership with Tiger Shroff as their new brand ambassador to promote anime in India which made whole Indian anime community to fall in anger. In this blog I am gonna cover the whole news, the detailed analysis and what is our opinion on this move. So yes lets begin…
Crunchyroll Collaboration With Tiger Shroff: The Update
The official Instagram handle of crunchyroll announced that they are gonna collaborate with a well-known bollywood actor Tiger Shroff. This collaboration is meant for the promotion of anime in india. The insta post:
Rahul Purini expressed the enthusiasm about this collaboration: “We are delighted to welcome Tiger Shroff to the Crunchyroll family. As passionate fans ourselves, we share a love and respect for anime, its captivating characters, extraordinary artistry, and compelling storylines that resonate with audiences worldwide. Partnering with Tiger, we are eager to share these powerful stories and promote the anime experience to millions more across India and beyond, solidifying Crunchyroll as the ultimate home for anime fans“
In reply, Tiger Shroff expressed his honor for being the part of this collaboration: “Crunchyroll has played a pivotal role in cultivating and nurturing the growth of anime globally. As an anime fan myself, I am humbled to work with Crunchyroll in expanding the anime community in India. I deeply value their mission to create a sense of belonging for everyone. Anime has the power to inspire, educate, and entertain, and together with Crunchyroll, I am excited to bring fans closer to the vast and captivating world of possibilities, further strengthening the anime culture in our country“
But regardless of appriciation, the indian anime fans started criticising this move by crunchyroll, but we will this next section…
Crunchyroll Collaboration With Tiger Shroff: The Analysis
So before understanding the problems of fans, lets understand the history of Crunchyroll in India. After being merged with Funimation, Crunchyroll is the largest anime library in the world and CEO of Crunchyroll named Mr. Rahul Purini belongs to India. In India, There are so many anime available on Crunchyroll which are available for free with Ad-Support and some have it’s own subscription plan. According to the Indian market, the subscription cost of Crunchyroll plans are cheap and affordable starting with just Rs. 79.
Even with not all anime, Crunchyroll introduced a big library in India which had more anime then Netflix. After some time, Crunchyroll introduced anime in Hindi dub for the Indian audience. They started Hindi dubbing anime with 2 popular anime titles: “My Dress-up Darling” and “Ranking of Kings”. The real problem starts from here.
The dub quality became the major issue for the fans. But as first time, it was forgivable but according to fans, the dub quality never increased and this same problem persists. Only two dubs were praised by the Indian anime fans which are “Ranking Of Kings” and “Fire Force” and rest all dubs have been facing the same issue.
Anime fans of India are criticizing this collaboration and saying to invest money on fixing the dubs of anime. Recently, the demon slayer dub was strongly criticized by the fans so they changed all the voice actors of demon slayer for it’s new season “Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc”. But instead of improving, fans disliked this version of dub more then the previous one.In social media platforms, fans are criticising this move my crunchyroll. Some of them are as follows:
Crunchyroll Collaboration With Tiger Shroff: The Opinion
So according to our team, the criticism of fans for this partnership is valid. There are so many strange titles introduced by Crunchyroll to the Indian fans which we have never heard of or this anime titles doesn’t meet majority of fan’s interests. What we think is, the marketing done by Crunchyroll also fell short of our expectation and it reaches less audience then expected. The majority of Hindi dubs by Crunchyroll are average and some are even below average. One of the main reason for this can be scriptwriters and translators.
According to us, first of all Crunchyroll should focus on hiring experienced scriptwriters and translators, For example in the anime Demon Slayer one of the most important and crucial lines are the one telling about the breathing style and there form however in the Hindi dub version of Demon Slayer Anime, Kyojuro Rengoku says “Agni Shakti se Milegi Mukti” which is an inaccurate and improper translation of the actual line “Flame Breathing 2nd form”.
It was acceptable if it was not an important factor, but the breathing techniques are the major part of the demon slayer’s plot. This script writing issues are also seen in other anime which are dubbed/subbed in and which are heavily criticized too. Now we know that scripting is hard, but I have also work as a scriptwriter in past and as script writer we can make few changes, but we can’t change the things (especially dialogues) that plays a major role in an overall experience of a particular scene or an anime.
Second issue is the Voice Actors. In some shows, the voice given by the Voice Actors to the characters just doesn’t fit the character’s personaility, characteristics or aura. For example, Simran Kaur who has given voice to Nobita Nobi from Doraemon one of the most famous anime out there was chosen to voice Marin Kitagawa from My Dress Up Darling which doesn’t fit right with the fans. Don’t get us wrong we love Mrs. Simran Kaur and her past works which are great, but the voice does not suits for Marin Kitagawa’s Character or personality. This is just only 1 example, there are so many other examples of this.
This kind of dubbing has lead fans to become unsatisfied and angry which makes sense. To fan it seems like Crunchyroll just wanted to make anime popular in India, But me as a fan, I am happy that anime has finally came to India, but we also want quality.
It doesn’t means that India don’t have good voice actors, we have multiple Indian Voice Actors that have nailed the Hindi voice of popular anime like, Kochikame, Ninja Hattori, Shinchan, Doraemon, Kitretsu , etc. Even Detective Conan’s Hindi dub released by Hungama is of such a good quality, Sir Wajahat Hassan did a great job voicing Shinichi Kudo. And regarding the partnership of Crunchyroll and Tiger Shroff for promoting anime in India is not a bad thing, it’s a great thing but Crunchyroll should focus on the actual problems that Indian fans are facing and try to solve them and we give you guarantee that Crunchyroll won’t even need Brand Ambassador for promoting anime in India.
If India will have quality dub, off course everyone will promote it and support it and it will be much easier for new audience to join us and enjoy multiple anime shows without any language barrier and they will also know and understand the hidden meanings and teachings that anime provide us.
According to us, if Crunchyroll wants to conquer Indian market, they need to improve dub quality and more over they need to interact with the Indian audience and take their feedback and we will surely help Crunchyroll with this and If they do it, we fans will definitely support them. No doubt, in upcoming years anime will become a mainstream in India, but without a quality dubs ,this day seems far away.
Comment you opinions what you guys think, this is internet and we all have to share and respect each-others’ opinions. What you guys think? feel free to comment down. And for those who read this blog till now if you guys find it informative then please share with your nakamas, you all guys have our special thanks. We will meet you again with our next blog.
Signing Off,
Jay Patel (Otaku Mantra)
