Looking for help finding some Anime!
I specifically want to find anime in Japanese with either no subtitles, or Japanese subtitles. It seems like you can find almost any anime in spoken Japanese, but unfortunately a lot of sites and downloads have the English subs locked on.
This is a bummer when I’m trying to use the material for study. I find it difficult to avoid reading the English and focus on the spoken Japanese. I could close my eyes but might as well listen to a podcast then .
Netflix has a lot of good content that fits the criteria, but there a few very popular shows I’d love to watch that I can’t seem to find.
For example:
One Piece
Dragonball
My hero academia
Initial D
Dr Stone
Between Netflix, Hulu, Funimation, and Crunchyroll, you can find any of these shows, but none are available without English subs.
Does anyone have a source to watch these very popular shows in Japanese without English subs?
Perhaps I need to be looking for streaming services in Japanese. I’m open to purchasing digital downloads as well.
If anyone has found a good legal source for this content please do share!
I don’t know about the other ones but on Netflix and Crunchyroll you can disable the subtitles. If you use a VPN you can watch most of them with Japanese subs too.
Ah thank you! I think it was Hulu and Funimation that I tried didn’t have an option to turn off subs when listening to the Japanese voice over. I’ll try Crunchyroll!
To the original question, I’m subscribed to Windscribe VPN. For $2 per month you can get access to Japan VPN locations specifically designed for streaming. I’ve been using it for Netflix for the last few months and it works great. Pretty much all anime on Netflix Japan have Japanese subtitles, which was important to me. I didn’t want to jump directly from English subtitles to no subtitles at all, and this middle ground has made the transition easier.
I asked the same thing before I subscribed and I think some people provided links, but I didn’t bookmark any of them. You might be able to find those posts by searching around the forums or maybe someone else will remember and post a link here. That said, there are hundreds of anime available (my quick count comes out to over 400 shows), so I’m sure you’d find something to watch. And since Windscribe is paid monthly, it would only cost $2 to try it and see for yourself if you wanted.
You could always sign up for a free trial. I use Nord VPN (they’re great) and they offer a free 30-day trial. That gives you a month to check out Japanese Netflix, etc to decide whether or not to invest in the VPN service. Personally I think it’s a no-brainer if you can spare the couple bucks a month. Even aside from being able to stream region-locked shows, the peace of mind that your internet activity is a little bit more secure and private makes it worthwhile imo.
Except Nord is crazy expensive. I tried them first before finding Windscribe, and their streaming quality was awful too. Maybe I just had something configured wrong, but since I found a cheaper and better option I just got the refund and never looked back.
Not sure why you were getting bad streaming. I’ve never had an issue. And while Nord is slightly more expensive (I wouldn’t say crazy), they have way more servers, no tracking, no data retention. And Nord is headquartered in Panama while Windscribe is in Canada. Canada and the US share lots of intelligence. Panama not so much.
But be that as it may, Windscribe is fine too. Any VPN is really better than none. But Nord is the one I personally prefer.
I’ve been using Nord for streaming for a few years and I can tell you they improved quite a bit. I am pretty happy with their apps and with their customer service.
There was a period that Cloudflare was blocking vpns users on Crunchyroll and the tech support helped me find a working server.
And it’s not that expensive prr month. They just want you to pay upfront. 90 usd for 2 years, that’s 3.75 usd/month. Yes, it’s almost twice as expensive as the one you’re using but it is just a 1.75 usd difference we’re talking about, per month. Of course, if you’re happy with the one you’re using there’s no reason to switch to a more expensive one.
I think you can always turn off those English sub, no?
I’m using Netflix with proxy to get access to those anime with Japanese subtitles.
I’m not sure if you have an access to bilibili. BiliBili seems to have every anime available and they are legal. However, I don’t like their business medel. I think they made a contract like this “If you are not sign up this shitty contract with us, forget about having an access to the mainland China”. It’s what they’ve been doing recently with many online video games as well.
I only tried it out a few months ago. It might have just been an issue with their Fire TV app, for all I know. I think it worked better in the browser, but I don’t watch anime on my laptop so that wasn’t good enough.
I’m not too worried about the U.S. government finding out what anime I watch, so
Personally I think the privacy gains from using a VPN are overstated, and it’s not a concern of mine. But if it’s important to you, looking out for those things may make sense.
Yeah, it’s more the upfront cost I don’t like. It would really suck if there were suddenly steaming quality issues with a year and a half left on your two year subscription and nothing to do about it. Or maybe I’ll run out of things to watch and decide I want to cancel for a while. It’s nice to have the option, though granted at $2/month I probably wouldn’t cancel even if I took a break from watching anime Netflix Japan.
Anyway, as you both said, there are plenty of options out there for those interested. Regardless of which VPN OP picks, I think it’s valuable for being able to watch anime with Japanese subs.
If you’re in the US, VRV (a platform run by crunchyroll which has a larger library including most HiDive shows) also allows you to disable subs. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed by “if you’re in the US”, you can’t get it unless you live there.
I’m very glad that vrv and crunchyroll updated their players to allow disabling subs, I use it all the time. Failing that, you could also try setting the subtitles to a language you can’t read (especially one with a script you can’t read) and just ignoring them.
If anyone comes to this thread because I specifically mentioned My Hero Academia in the top post, you can watch with Japanese voice over and no english subs on Crunchy roll. With a VPN, you can watch it on Netflix with Japanese voice over and japanese subs!
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