When the first episode of Necronomico no Cosmic Horror Show came out it was unwatchable. Because Crunchyroll disdains their audience, they thought that using unedited AI slop was acceptable for us. Below is an example of the level of quality they thought we should put up with:
01: No way! Seriously!?
02: Management cut labor costs again. So now there are fewer softies around.
03: Please, Manager, let me work shifts again.
04: This is the only place that’ll hire someone without a guarantor.
05: Wait, aren’t you a Miko-chan Vtuber?
06: Yeah, but streaming doesn’t make ends meet,
07: so I’m doing my best with this, too.
08: I am barely making any money
09: I heard there’s a curse that hits convenience store workers
10: if their subscriber count goes over 100,000.
11: That’s real Miko-chan. Better watch out.
12: Yeah, totally.
That’s from the very first scene in the episode, where the protagonist is fired from her parttime job. Here’s how an actual human translator rendered it, after Crunchyroll finally fixed it:
01: I’m being let go?
02: Orders from management. They told us to cut costs,
03: so we’re starting with those with the fewest shifts. You understand, right?
04: Y-You can’t do this, Boss!
05: This is the only place that’ll let me work without a guardian’s signature!
06: But aren’t you a livestreamer, Miko-chan?
07: You must make good money from that.
08: Now you can focus on it full-time!
09: Uh, I’m not exactly popular.
10: Oh, but they say there’s a curse that strikes streamers with over 100,000 subs, right?
11: Think it’s for real?
12: You’d better be careful!
13: Yeah, I guess I should…
Apart from anything else, notice how this actually makes sense as English, even before we get to things the AI just plain got wrong? Like, what the hell does “so now there are fewer softies around” mean? Worse is that the AI completely misunderstands who’s speaking when, as e.g. in the third line, when it’s clearly the manager speaking but the AI thinks it’s the protagonist Miko. It does the same in lines 6 & 7, where it has Miko complaining she doesn’t earn anything as a streamer but in reality it’s her manager insisting that she should and that she now can focus on doing so. In other words, the AI straight up hallucinates dialogue that’s not in the original and ignores dialogue that is.
It’s also just gets stuff wrong. Some of those are understandable, like thinking she’s a vtuber rather than a regular streamer, but some are just plain daft and would’ve never been made by a human, like thinking it’s a curse on convenience store workers rather than streamers. A human would know that convenience store workers don’t have subscription counts so are not the subject here, even if the context from the original Japanese was a bit unclear. It also misses that the manager is asking her if it’s true, rather than stating that it is.
The AI also fails completely to translate any onscreen text. The Youtube profile page screenshotted above is subtitled in the human version, but not in the AI one. If you don’t speak Japanese therefore you miss that Miko’s channel has barely 3000 subscribers, far too few to make a living from. This is important information, completely absent in the original subtitles, which is a problem in a show which introduces all its streamers with onscreen subscriber counts.
And the show doesn’t deserve this AI slop. Now that it’s actually understandable if you don’t speak Japanese, it’s actually quite a fun, clever little death game show. Miko, together with dozens of other streamers, big and small, gets invited to beta test a VR game, a game that looks like a knockoff version of Fall Guys. As she races to complete the first level, fun little challenges pop up and the competitors dwindle until only seven, including her, manage to finish it and discover the secret behind the game. There’s a fun little rivalry with the blond, twin tailed girl behind her, who she had a clash with during a streamers’ meetup and the rest of the supporting cast is fun too. Animation switches between 3-D in the game world and regular animation outside of it. The latter is decent if not spectacular.
Now that the subtitle situation is hopefully fixed, I will actually watch this, but be warned that another new anime also uses AI. Crunchyroll and the industry in general will continue to push this unless we have them suffer the consequences for it.
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