My thoughts and comparisons of groups subbing the anime I'm watching this season. Note that most of this is based on only the first one or two episodes so group quality may change throughout the season.
The tag listed next to each title is my current group of choice for that anime.
You can also find screen shot comparisons for a lot of current anime on ji-hi.net.
Comparisons Available
Angel Beats!
Arakawa Under the Bridge
B Gata H Kei
Hakuouki
Hetalia: World Series
Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri
Kaichou wa Maid-sama!
K-ON!!
Senkou no Night Raid
Shin Koihime Musou ~Otome Tairan~
Working!!
Yutori-chan
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Angel Beats! [SS]
[Mazui]
• Released a v2 of ep1, which I'm using to compare.
• Includes honorifics.
• Editing suffers from a lack of commas on some lines.
• Dialogue styling doesn't have much margin.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji; no karaoke.
• Insert song is soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is 720p. Banding in color gradients is about the same as Tortoise-Commie. Has a lot of improper decimation, with duplicate frames at the start of steady motion (such as camera pans) immediately after stretches with no motion. ED is left at 29.97 fps so the scrolling credits are smooth but the background animation is jerky. Station logo is left in.
• No chapters.
[SS]
• Includes honorifics.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Translates the most text.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Insert song is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) Has a tiny bit worse banding in color gradients than Tortoise-Commie. There's a faint, one-pixel row of edge noise along the top in ep1, but it's gone in ep2. Station logo is left in.
[GX_ST]
• Includes honorifics.
• Timing is full of scene bleeds.
• Dialogue styling is the default white with black border and shadow, and uses a tiny font size.
• No typesetting. Uses notes for on-screen text.
• Insert song isn't subbed.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. There's a lot of blending, like field matching wasn't even done before decimation. Retains less detail than SS and Tortoise-Commie, and has much worse banding and blocking in color gradients. There's black borders and/or edge noise on all sides. Station logo was removed.
• No chapters.
[Mochi-SFW] Dropped
• Includes honorifics.
• Dialogue styling uses a small font size and doesn't have much margin.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji; no karaoke.
• Insert song is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji; no karaoke.
• Video is 720p. It's sharpened a lot, causing halos and some aliasing. Banding in color gradients is about the same as SS. There's black borders and/or edge noise on all sides. There's blending on the spinning badge during the ED, like field matching wasn't done on it before decimation. Station logo is left in.
[ℵ₀]
• Released a v2 of ep1 720p, which I'm using to compare.
• Includes honorifics.
• Scene timing is off by a frame and also has lots of other errors.
• Dialogue styling is the default white with black border and shadow and has very little margin.
• Typesetting uses the same default style.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji simple karaoke.
• Insert song is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji simple karaoke.
• Releases both 720p and 1080p versions.
• • I can't even tell if the 1080p version is an upscale or not because it's been smoothened and sharpened all to hell. Either way, it's eyecancer, so the rest of the info is based on the 720p version unless otherwise specified. Station logo is left in.
• • The 720p version didn't suffer the same fate and looks better, though still overall worse than SS and Tortoise-Commie. ED is improperly decimated and is horribly jerky. There's black borders and/or edge noise on all sides. Station logo was removed.
• 1080p doesn't have chapters.
Comments: According to their website, ep2 v2 is encoded from .ts source instead of just being a crappy raw from Share/PD.
[Tortoise-Commie]
• Includes honorifics.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses an obnoxiously styled note for one bit of text.
• Timing has a lot of lines starting only a few frames after a scene change. Needs better keyframe snapping.
• Dialogue styling doesn't have much margin.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji; no karaoke.
• Insert song isn't subbed.
• Video is 720p. ED is improperly decimated, with both the background animation and the scrolling credits being jerky. Station logo is left in.
• Chapters have two editions. The first has seek points for the start, ED, and preview. The second has a point for the start and then ones labeled Part A and Part B, but they actually seek to part B and the preview. WTF?
[CoalGuys]
Comments: Troll sub lol.
General Comments: No OP in ep1.
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Arakawa Under the Bridge [Formula]
[Nutbladder]
• Translation differs from Formula's and KRAFT's in places. Uses more idioms.
• No honorifics. Reverses name order to given first, family second.
• Dialogue styling doesn't have much vertical margin.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• Video is upscaled 720p. There's a black border and edge noise along the top. Station logo is left in.
[Formula]
• Released a v2 patch for ep1 that looks to fix various little translation mistakes.
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second.
• Editing is awkward on some lines.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji; no karaoke.
• Video is 480p. Looks like a dehalo filter was used. Compared to Nutbladder and KRAFT, the colors look off and there's a lot more mosquito noise. (--psy-rd 1.00:1.00, really?) Station logo is left in.
[KRAFT] Apparently they can't find a translator to continue.
• Released a v2 of ep1, which I'm using to compare.
• Includes honorifics. Reverses name order to given first, family second.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Doesn't translate quite as much as Nutbladder and Formula.
• Video is 480p. Has the least amount of blocking in color gradients. Station logo is left in.
[KSN]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second.
• Dialogue styling has barely any horizontal margin and not much vertical, either.
• Typesetting is a mix of soft- and hard-subbed.
• Video is upscaled 720p. There's black borders along the top and bottom, and edge noise along the left and right sides. Overall much lower quality than the other groups. Station logo was removed.
General Comments: No OP or ED in ep1. The video quality of every group is pretty bad due to the crappy broadcast source.
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B Gata H Kei [Doki]
[CoalGuys]
• No honorifics. Reverses name order to given first, family second.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses notes for some text.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is 720p. Has a lot of improper decimation, with duplicate frames at the start of steady motion (such as camera pans) immediately after stretches with no motion. Isn't as blocky in dark areas as Doki and UTW. Station logo is left in.
[Doki]
• Doesn't translate the little drug store background song in ep1.
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "onee-chan" untranslated.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Translates more than CoalGuys.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Station logo is left in.
[UTW]
• Released two v2's of ep1. The latest one has a CRC32 of A8E3E12B, which I'm using to compare.
• Includes honorifics. Reverses name order to given first, family second.
• Scene timing is a frame off a lot of the time.
• Dialogue styling has little margin. Also uses an italicized font, which is annoying.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Uses notes for some text. Translates a bit more overall than Doki.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji simple karaoke.
• Video is 720p. There's a bit of edge noise on the left and right sides. Station logo is left in.
General Comments: There's really terrible aliasing in some scenes. Anti-aliasing where?
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Hakuouki [Aoi-Wasurenai]
[KSN]
• Released a v2 of ep1, but I doubt it fixes the eyecancer video.
• Video is upscaled 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) It's smoothened and sharpened an absurd amount, to the point where there's no detail left and all the lines are aliased and have halos. The contrast is also jacked way up.
Comments: I don't even need to see any more. There's no way I could stand to watch this.
[ℵ₀] Dropped
• Released a v2 of ep1, which I'm using to compare.
• No honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second.
• Timing has a lot of scene bleeds and other little errors, like being off by one frame.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is upscaled 720p. Retains more detail than the other encodes. It's improperly decimated during the text crawl in ep1. Has black borders on the left and right sides, and on the top and bottom in some scenes.
• No chapters.
[Aoi-Anime] Continued as a joint with Wasurenai after ep1.
• Fully hard-subbed in an MP4 container.
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second.
• Timing is full of scene bleeds.
• Dialogue styling uses a small font size with very little vertical margin.
• OP/ED have English translation, romaji, kanji; no karaoke.
• Video is upscaled 720p. It's improperly decimated during the text crawl in ep1, though not as bad as ℵ₀. It looks smoothened, though not as bad as DB, and is also blocky. Has black borders on the top and bottom in some scenes, edge noise on the top throughout.
• No chapters.
[Aoi-Wasurenai]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "itadakimasu" and an instance of "onegaishimasu" untranslated.
• Timing has zero lead out on some lines, even when not cut off by a scene change.
• Dialogue styling uses a very thin font and has little margin.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• They can't seem to make up their minds about what resolution to use. Ep2 is 576p and ep3 is 720p, both upscaled. Retains more detail than DB and isn't as blocky. There's edge noise on the top, left, and right sides. Station logo was removed.
[DB]
• Fully hard-subbed in an AVI container.
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second.
• Editing is by far the best of the lot.
• Timing has some scene bleeds and is a frame off sometimes.
• Dialogue styling uses a small font size with an extreme amount of vertical margin.
• Typesetting tends to be a frame off.
• OP/ED have English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 480p H.264 in AVI. In ep1, there's a lot of broken IVTC that leaves combing on mouth flaps. Has less detail than ℵ₀ and Aoi-Anime. It's very blurry and blocky. AT-X station logo appears for a bit at times in ep1. Ep2 and ep3 look a little better and have the TVA logo left in, though.
[PHT]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second.
• Editing is very poor, with many lines worded awkwardly.
• No scene timing at all.
• Dialogue styling uses a small font size with very little vertical margin.
• OP is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke. ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke, kanji.
• Video is upscaled 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) It's improperly decimated during the text crawl in ep1, though not as bad as ℵ₀. Extremely blocky, even moreso than DB.
• No chapters.
General Comments: There's really no good choice here. It's just a matter of trying to pick the one that sucks the least.
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Hetalia: World Series [Rumbel]
[Rumbel]
• No honorifics.
• Dialogue styling uses a small font size with very little margin.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed except for ep1.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji; no karaoke.
• Video is from a crappy web stream, like the previous series.
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Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri [Chihiro]
[Chihiro]
• Includes honorifics.
• Dialogue styling uses a thin font.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke. Kanji is part of the OP/ED themselves.
• Insert song is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji; no karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) Station logo is left in.
• Uses ordered chapters to link in the OP and ED.
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Kaichou wa Maid-sama! [Eclipse]
[Eclipse]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second.
• Dialogue styling is a bit hard to read against some backgrounds. Needs a thicker outline.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) Station logo is left in.
[GX_ST]
• Dialogue styling is the default white with black border and shadow.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Their IVTC is complete fail. There's a crapton of blending, like field matching wasn't even done before decimation. Station logo was removed.
• No chapters.
Comments: There's probably even more stuff wrong with this release, but there's no way I'm wasting time going over the whole thing.
[FFFpeeps]
• Released a v2 of ep1, which I'm using to compare.
• No honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second.
• Grammar errors are abundant.
• Timing has scene bleeds and other scene timing is also often a bit off for both dialogue and typesetting.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is 720p. It's much lower quality than Eclipse and there's black borders on the left and right sides. Station logo was removed.
• Audio is AC3 why? At least use Vorbis or AAC if you're going to re-encode it.
• No chapters.
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K-ON!! [Chihiro]
[Frostii]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" and "sensei" untranslated. Uses a note to explain the pun at 13:45 in ep1.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Translates more than CoalGuys and Chihiro.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Station logo is left in.
[CoalGuys]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" untranslated. Completely rewrites the pun at 13:45 in ep1.
• Scene timing could be a bit better. Some lines appear only a few frames after scene changes.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses notes for some text.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is 720p. Has banding and blocking in color gradients, and less detail in some backgrounds than Frostii. Looks like the bit of grain in the show either wasn't given enough bitrate or was smoothed out. Station logo is left in.
• No chapters.
[UTSF]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" untranslated.
• Editing needs work. Many lines read awkwardly and there's quite a few little grammar errors.
• Dialogue styling has hardly any margin.
• Scene timing is non-existent.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. The timing on one sign was off.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Has black borders and edge noise along the sides. Overall much lower quality than both Frostii and CoalGuys. Station logo was removed.
• No chapters.
[SHiN-gx]
• Has two subtitle tracks. The first is without honorifics and reverses name order. The second includes honorifics and keeps name order unchanged. Both leave the band name untranslated and also misspell it as "Houkagou" instead of "Houkago."
• Dialogue styling uses terrible color choices of bright red font color, beige outline, and black shadow.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Apparently they matched colors using BT.601 YV12 conversion instead of BT.709 like they should have, because the episode title overlay is off color unless you manually set your H.264 decoder to use BT.601 instead.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji simple karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) Has banding and blocking in color gradients, and less detail in some backgrounds than Frostii. Has a bit of edge noise along the left and right sides. Looks like sharpening and line darkening filters were used and the saturation increased slightly. Station logo is left in.
[Chihiro]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" and "sensei" untranslated. Uses a note to explain the pun at 13:45 in ep1.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Uses notes for some text.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke, kanji.
• Video is 1080p. (Also releases 720p and 480p.) This isn't an upscale; the show has fine enough detail to warrant 1080p. Looks like it was sharpened slightly. Station logo is left in.
• Uses ordered chapters to link in the OP and ED.
General Comments: Frostii and Chihiro are very similar for the 720p versions, so it's basically up to small stylistic preferences. If you've got a 1080p screen, however, I'd recommend Chihiro as the 1080p version is noticeably sharper.
Chihiro 1080p, Chihiro 720p->1080p, Frostii 720p->1080p
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Senkou no Night Raid [Animanda]
[Commie]
• Translation differs from Rumbel's and Animanda's in a few places.
• Timing leaves small gaps between lines rather than making them adjacent, and there's a three-liner at 9:42 in ep1. Scene timing also has some errors.
• Dialogue styling uses a small, thin font with an excessive amount of vertical margin.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• ED isn't subbed.
• Video is 720p. Retains fine dithering in color gradients a little better than Animanda. Station logo is left in.
[Rumbel]
• Released a v3 of ep1, while I used the v2 to compare. Not sure what the v3 fixed, but its video looks just as terrible.
• Dialogue styling has barely any margin.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Translates a bit more than Animanda.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p Xvid.) Has really terrible banding and blocking in color gradients. Station logo is left in.
[Animanda]
• Typesetting is hard-subbed. Translates more than Commie.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation and romaji; no karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Has a one-pixel row of faint edge noise along the bottom. Station logo is left in.
[PHT-KAW]
• Dialogue styling is the default white with black outline and shadow and small margins.
• Group logo is hard-subbed, but I don't think there's any other typesetting.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. It wasn't decimated so it's 29.97 fps with a duplicate for every fifth frame. This makes any motion that's supposed to be steady, like camera pans, very jerky instead. Doesn't retain grain and dithering as well as Animanda but still much better than Rumbel. Station logo is left in.
• No chapters.
Comments: Because the undecimated frame rate is such a crippling flaw, I didn't bother looking this one over very thoroughly.
[KnKF-Conclave]
• Released a v2 of ep1 without marking it as v2. Its CRC is A45DDB23. It increased the video bitrate but there's still color banding.
• Not all of the fonts it uses are attached in the MKV.
• Dialogue styling uses too light of an outline.
• Typesetting is a mix of soft- and hard-subbed. Translates as much as Animanda.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 400p.) Has banding and blocking in color gradients, though not as bad as Rumbel. Looks like sharpening and line darkening filters were used. Has edge noise on all sides but the right. Station logo is left in.
• Audio is MP3 why? Needs moar AAC imo.
[Pretentious]
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Translates as much as Animanda.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation.
• Video is 720p. Retains fine dithering in color gradients a little better than Animanda. Station logo is left in.
Comments: I like their editing better than Animanda's, but they stalled, so I switched back.
[SFW]
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Doesn't translate as much as Animanda and Pretentious.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation and romaji; no karaoke.
• Video is 720p. Has really terrible banding and blocking in color gradients. Station logo was removed.
General Comments: No OP in ep1.
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Shin Koihime Musou ~Otome Tairan~ [Commie]
[Commie]
• Ep1 is from a pre-airing, so the below info is based on ep2 and later. The pre-airing translation kind of fails in a few places. Hopefully they'll redo it with CR subs later.
• Translation is from Crunchyroll. (Pretty sure, anyway. Can't actually check until ep2 goes public.)
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "sensei" untranslated.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED aren't subbed.
• Video is 480p. Station logo is left in.
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Working!! [YuS-m.3.3.w]
[Himatsubushi]
• Released a v2 of ep1, which I'm using to compare.
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "sempai" untranslated. Writes ぽぷら's name as Poplar.
• No typesetting. Uses notes for on-screen text.
• OP is soft-subbed with romaji.
• Video is downscaled 400p. There's tons of jaggies from IVTC post-processing deinterlacing. Has some edge noise along the top and left sides and banding in color gradients. Station logo is left in.
• No chapters.
[Chihiro]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" and "onii-chan" untranslated. Writes ぽぷら's name as Popura.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 480p. There's a lot of jaggies from IVTC post-processing deinterlacing. Has some banding in color gradients. Station logo is left in.
[SHiN-gx]
• Has two subtitle tracks. The first is without honorifics and reverses name order. The second includes honorifics and keeps name order unchanged. Writes ぽぷら's name as Poplar.
• Timing has a few little errors.
• Dialogue styling uses a thin font with too light an outline.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke. This will lag the video horribly if you don't at least have a decent dual core CPU.
• Video is 480p. Uses blend deinterlacing for IVTC post-processing instead of interpolation, so all the deinterlacing artifacts aren't quite as noticeable. Looks like sharpening and line darkening filters were used. Has banding in color gradients. Station logo is left in.
[YuS-m.3.3.w]
• Includes honorifics. Keeps name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" and "onii-chan" untranslated. Writes ぽぷら's name as Popura Poplar from ep4 on.
• Timing has a few little errors.
• Typesetting is a mix of soft- and hard-subbed.
• OP is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 480p. There's a lot of jaggies from IVTC post-processing deinterlacing. Looks like it's been warpsharpened. Banding in color gradients isn't as bad as the other groups, but there's also a lot more grain added in those areas. Station logo is left in.
General Comments:
1) I'm not including any of the pre-airing subs. These are all from the regular broadcast.
2) The OP was used in place of the ED for ep1.
3) Encoders, seriously, learn to use the cthresh parameter in TFM() to avoid all the deinterlacing jaggies.
4) I list YuS-m.3.3.w as my group of choice because I like their subs the best, but I've taken to extracting their scripts and watching my own encodes with them.
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Yutori-chan [Yuurisan-Subs]
[Yuurisan-Subs]
• Includes honorifics.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke, kanji.
• Video is from crappy web streams, which is apparently the only source available thus far.
