Man, how is it the year 2024 and native Japanese films and TV shows still don't default to including any sort of captions for home releases? It's such a crap shoot and even if my listening is a lot better than it used to be, if I wanna watch something with a little jargon, captions are helpful so my non-native brain, y 'know, isn't having to decipher homophones in the middle of plot stuff happening.
I used to think it was mostly just an anime thing since I've always had a bear of a time finding Blu-ray and DVD releases with captions for anything that doesn't have a big, international following, but it's true even for massively acclaimed live action stuff, too. Gozilla -1.0 is streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime here, which I got mostly for streaming because the price is so much cheaper than the US service. (The shipping perks aren't nearly as enticing when you already live relatively close to the geographic center of the country and even regular old postal mail can get to you in two days from just about anywhere else on the main island.) The Japanese Blu-ray release only has closed captions, which, that's better than nothing, but is more than I need and I would appreciate having regular ones, too. But the streaming version has nothing because??? And this is a movie that they're heavily promoting as, "The big Japanese movie what got the Oscars! The world likes it, so you should watch it!"
It just sucks and is kinda deflating, dude. I'll probably soldier on and try to watch eventually anyway, but it's a reminder of just how weirdly behind Japanese entertainment often is on even the most basic accessibility stuff. But I know I won't be able to just relax and enjoy it as much knowing that I'm going to have focus on listening harder since I'm sure there's at least some scientific and political jargon thrown into that script. My only other option short of paying 5000 yen for that flawed Blu-ray release would, I guess, be to rent it, but the only place in town I can think of that even still does that in 2024 is like a solid 20 minute bike ride away and my work schedule being what it is, I just don't bother since I can't guarantee that I'd ever have anything returned in time. 🤷
First world problems in the end for sure, but you'd think people would be a lot more on the ball with this sort of stuff considering that, y'know, the old folks here are only getting more plentiful in time. 😩
