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
Arakawa Under the Bridge*2
Letter Bee REVERSE
Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt
Shinryaku! Ika Musume
To Aru Majutsu no Index II
The World God Only Knows
Yumeiro Patissiere SP Professional
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Arakawa Under the Bridge*2 [Nutbladder]
[Nutbladder]
• No honorifics.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP is soft-subbed with English translation only.
• Video is 576p but looks like it's just a 480p upscale.
[Ruri]
• Includes honorifics. Writes Kou's nickname as "Riku." (Seriously?)
• Dialogue styling isn't too great. It uses a serif font with too bright and thick a border. (Apparently this was changed in the v2 of ep1, but I haven't seen it.)
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video has edge noise along the bottom, but isn't over-cropped on the other sides like Nutbladder's. Looks like it's been sharpened a lot. There's very strong halos around the line art that aren't present in Nutbladder's at all.
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Letter Bee REVERSE [Deep]
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight CR rip, just with restyled subs.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video has some edge noise on the left and right sides, and color banding.
[Deep]
• Uses CR subs styled the same as Commie's releases of the first series. The scene timing has also been fixed up some.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji simple fill karaoke. (From ep2 onward.)
• Video retains a tiny bit more detail and more grain than CR's encode, but also has more noise around the line art. Has color banding.
[SleazySubs]
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video had its color saturation screwed with, so everything is way over-saturated. Instant fail.
[WhyNot]
• Released a v2 patch for ep1 that adds OP/ED subs.
• Uses restyled CR subs. Their styling isn't very good, though.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with Enlgish translation, romaji simple karaoke.
• Video doesn't have as much noise as Deep's, but has worse color banding and doesn't retain grain as well.
• No chapters.
[Baaka]
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video was left undecimated at 29.97 fps. Instant fail.
• No chapters.
[Tamashii]
• Released a v2 of ep1 that I'm using to compare.
• Video is 29.97 fps with blending on two of every five frames, like it wasn't even IVTC'd. (Also, lol at them failing at trimming the bit of commercial off the start.) Instant fail.
[Ruri]
• No honorifics.
• Editing isn't bad, but I prefer CR's subs.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with Enlgish translation, romaji, kanji. (Apparently, they're going to release a v2 with karaoke effects at some point.)
• Video retains a bit less detail than Deep's and has color banding just as bad.
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Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai [Mazui]
[Himatsubushi]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "onii-chan" untranslated.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses notes for some text. Translates a bit more than Mazui.
• Video looks like it's just a crappy Share/PD raw. It's a lot worse than Mazui's.
[Mazui]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "onii-chan" and "eroge" untranslated.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji.
• Video has a bit of color banding, but not too bad.
[Doki]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "onii-chan" and "eroge" untranslated.
• Secondary dialogue style is at the top of the screen instead of just above the primary styled line.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Translates a little more than Mazui.
• Video retains less detail than Mazui's, and the blocking and color banding is a little worse.
[SS]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "onii-chan" untranslated.
• Dialogue styling has practically no horizontal margin.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed and translates a little more than Mazui.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video retains less detail and is cropped more than Mazui's. Color banding is about the same.
Comments: I usually like SS's subs, but this time, their choice of words on some lines sounded really awkward or out of character. Do you really think Kirino, a middle school girl, would use the phrase "once in a blue moon"?
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Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt [Underwater]
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight CR rip, just with restyled subs.
• 720p version is an upscale, but the 480p version is encoded even more crappily, so the 720p still looks better.
[CMS]
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• Video is better than CR's due to not being quite as starved for bitrate.
[Underwater]
• Uses restyled CR subs. Styling is better than CMS's, and the scene timing has also been fixed up some.
• ED is soft-subbed.
• Video is a 576p upscale. Looks like it's been temporally smoothened and had static grain added in place of the grain from the source, but that's better than it turning into a blocky soup like in CMS's.
[TMD-m.3.3.w]
• Translation is much more literal than CR's.
• Dialogue styling really needs a thicker and darker outline, and also more horizontal margin.
• ED is soft-subbed.
• 720p version is an upscale, but the 480p version is borked and displays upside-down unless I select YV12 output in ffdshow instead of RGB32. The grain gets blocky in some parts, but not as bad as CMS's. On the other hand, scenes without a noticeable amount of grain are cleaner than Underwater's since no extra grain was added. Looks like it's been sharpened.
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Shinryaku! Ika Musume [Underwater]
[EMO]
• Translation/editing is awkward and there's lots of grammar errors.
• Dialogue styling has a stupidly large and bright shadow, and the font size is too small.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation only.
• Video is 29.97 fps with blending on two of every five frames, so it seems it wasn't even IVTC'd. It also has tons of blocking and color banding as well as edge noise.
• No chapters.
Comments: This is so bad that I couldn't even watch the whole thing. I'll wait for some other release.
[FFFpeeps]
• No honorifics.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji simple karaoke.
• Video has edge noise and a bit of color banding.
[Commie]
• Translation, editing, and timing all seem pretty half-assed. No honorifics.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji.
• WTF is with the video? Parts of it look better than FFFpeeps's, but most looks like it's been spliced in from a crappy, over-sharpened Share/PD raw, complete with the filtered out station logo.
Comments: Apparently the Elitist Fags transport stream was corrupt, and that's why the crappy raw was spliced in for most of the episode. The other groups must have another source for the .ts since they were fine.
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight CR rip, just with restyled subs.
Comments: Not much point in checking this when Underwater is also releasing it.
[Underwater]
• Released a v2 patch for ep1 that adds ED subs and other minor fixes.
• Uses restyled CR subs. The translation is pretty squid-tastic.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji.
• Video is the best of the lot.
[WhyNot]
• The script seems to be a mix of CR's dialogue and FFFpeeps's OP/ED with different styling.
• Video has the same edge noise as FFFpeeps's and a little worse color banding.
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To Aru Majutsu no Index II [UTW]
[Ayako]
• Includes honorifics. Uses eastern name order.
• Timing is a bit late on some lines, and one line ends well before the dialogue finishes.
• Dialogue styling sucks, mostly because of the terrible font choice.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses notes to translate some text.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video has bad color banding and a bit of edge noise along the top.
[gg-UTW] Joint dropped, continued by UTW alone
• No honorifics. Uses western name order.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji.
• Video looks better than Ayako's and at a lower file size.
Comments: Apparently all the raging weaboo leechers got to them.
[EA]
• A re-release of gg-UTW's version with edited subs. (The scripts are also available by themselves.)
• Adds honorifics and uses eastern name order.
• Removes rainbow styling from the ED subs.
Comments: Some of the edits are good, others not. The edit of Touma's line at 8:48 in ep1, for example, makes no sense. And what's up with all the needless italics?
[Hatsuyuki]
• They're up to v3 for ep1 due to font issues.
• Includes honorifics. Uses eastern name order.
• Translation is overly literal and awkward in places.
• Timing has a few small errors and the scene timing is a frame off in places.
• Dialogue styling could use more vertical margin, but is otherwise good.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is pretty much the same quality as gg-UTW's except for a bit of edge noise along the top and bottom, but the file size is significantly larger.
[UTW-Mazui]
• There's a patch on UTW's site to convert the gg-UTW version of ep1 to the UTW version.
• Includes honorifics. Uses eastern name order.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji. No rainbow styling on the ED subs.
• Video looks better than Ayako's and at a lower file size. (Same encode that was used for the gg-UTW version.)
Comments: Joint with Mazui from ep6 on.
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The World God Only Knows [Chihiro]
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight CR rip, just with restyled subs.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video has terribad blocking and color banding.
[Chihiro]
• Uses edited, retimed, and restyled CR subs.
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "kami-sama" and "senpai" untranslated.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed, but doesn't include some of the notes that are in the CR subs. Some of it's off by a frame too.
• OP is hard-subbed with English karaoke, ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video has a bit worse blocking and color banding than Deep's but is also significantly smaller.
[Deep]
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video has less blocking and color banding than Chihiro's, but the file size is kind of bloated.
Comments: Okay, seriously people, stop disabling mbtree. Raising qcomp and/or lowering crf is pretty much always more efficient for preserving grain and dithering than disabling mbtree entirely.
[TZM]
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• Video is 29.97 fps with blending on two of every five frames, like it wasn't even IVTC'd. Instant fail.
[WhyNot]
• Released a v2 patch for ep1 that adds OP/ED subs.
• Uses restyled CR subs.
• Video has bad color banding and flickering edge noise along the top and bottom that is really annoying. More fail.
[Commie]
• Uses edited and restyled CR subs.
• Their editor needs to learn that you don't begin lines with capital letters when continuing a sentence from the previous line.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Translates the most text.
• OP is soft-subbed with English. ED song isn't subbed.
• Video is the best of the lot for ep1, but according to the screens on ji-hi, it seems to have gotten worse than Chihiro's for ep2.
[CMS]
• Uses restyled and slightly edited CR subs.
• No honorifics. Leaves "kami-sama" and "otamegane" untranslated. (Otamegane is an insult made from combining the words "otaku" and "megane," the latter meaning "glasses.")
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video is worse than Chihiro's but not as bad as HorribleSubs's.
[ExSSubs]
• No honorifics. Leaves "otamegane" untranslated.
• Editing is sloppy. There's lots of typos and grammar errors.
• Timing is also sloppy with mistimed lines and no scene timing at all.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video is worse than Chihiro's.
[SubDesu]
• Uses restyled and edited CR subs.
• No honorifics. Leaves "otamegane" and "senpai" untranslated.
• Looks like their editing actually introduced more errors into the CR subs.
• Dialogue styling needs bigger margins.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. The timing on a lot of it is a frame off.
• No OP/ED subs.
• Video is about the same as Chihiro's but at a larger file size.
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Yumeiro Patissiere SP Professional [HorribleSubs]
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight CR rip, just with restyled subs.
• 720p version is an upscale.
