I finally realized I was pausing anime to read subtitles wrong for 6 years

Had a moment last Tuesday where my buddy asked why I was reading top to bottom, and I froze. Turns out I was scanning the whole subtitle block before the line even aired, so I always missed the punchlines, then had to rewind like 3 times per episode. Anyone else habitually read ahead and ruin the timing for themselves?

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1 Comment

jakef6619h ago

wait, actually you might be doing it right in a weird way. i used to do the same thing and the fix wasnt reading slower, it was reading the subtitles as they appear and NOT looking at the whole block. like, the text pops in all at once, but your eyes should still follow the left to right line order per line, not jump to the bottom line first. once i started treating each line like its own sentence instead of a wall of text, my timing got way better and i stopped rewinding during action scenes. also, turning off the "full subtitle block" setting in your player helps a ton, if you arent on a streaming site that hides it.