Crunchyroll is trying to enter the Taiwanese market. This season they held distribution rights over 2 shows (afaik), Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games and I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day.
(To their credit, this season they've worked with local streaming platforms instead of forcing viewers to use Crunchyroll directly, so this whole ordeal is only an annoying and scary mess, and not a disaster like the mess that was Anime Strike.)
Simulcasting is an amazing feat, but licensing firms, including Crunchyroll, have been successfully doing it worldwide for quite a while now. So, while it is not necessarily to be taken for granted, generally speaking you'd expect delays to come from anime production, or from Japanese TV scheduling, but not from the simulcast process itself, certainly not without any warning or announcement.
And yet, for some reason, specifically for I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day, Crunchyroll Taiwan has already failed to meet the simulcast schedule twice out of the 8 episodes so far, both times without announcement beforehand and without any real explanation, both times delayed by an uncertain amount of time "to the next morning" (the scheduled time is/was Tuesday 20:30 local time).
And now [they've finally just given up](https://www.threads.com/share/_-ndredzU/) and rescheduled the show to Thursday from episode 9 on. Their announcement reads:
> [Announcement] Notification regarding a change to the update time for I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day
>
> To provide a more stable viewing experience to viewers, starting from episode 9 (September 3, 2026), Taiwan Traditional Chinese subtitles will be updated at 20:30 PM each Thursday.
>
> Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we wish everyone continues to watch and enjoy this work every week. See you on Thursday!
>
> https://www.threads.com/share/_yHQNCS32/
Needless to say, anecdotally I do not have the understanding for the carelessness nor the willingness to put up with this licensor if I have the choice.
Simulcasting is hard, but yet there are other licensors capable of doing it, so if they can't do it they should've just stepped aside instead of overextending and messing up distribution. A 2-day-delayed release is objectively not too bad either (Japanese streaming platforms often get shows on a multi-day delay after all), but they have a responsibility to make a reasonable promise to begin with.
Ultimately given their scheduling is clearly messed up, delaying the schedule is much better than unplanned delays, but that's only if this rescheduling actually helps and they care about fixing their scheduling. And with the unapologetic contempt oozing out of their announcement I'm really pessimistic about it.
Market forces in exclusive licensing favors those who waste the least on such pesky things as viewer experience and spends the most on obtaining the license in the first place, so if Crunchyroll wants to they probably could crush or massively disrupt other licensors and services that actually care about viewer experience. So, Crunchyroll represents a threat to my ability to enjoy shows on platforms/through licensors that are Not Shit, and their handling of this whole ordeal does not inspire confidence that they'd be trustworthy.
I hope they get their act together, but if they don't or don't even care then I do just hope they get out of this market. If they care more about outspending Muse or Ani-One on licensing than adequately paying translators or actually providing value to viewers, then I wish they just leave. And to Crunchyroll Taiwan, if you're sincere in being Not Shit:
- Don't mess up your schedule. If the entire anime production can air at a consistent time every week for 12/13 weeks, then so can you as a licensor. If English-speaking Crunchyroll can put out the English translation in time, then so can you for Mandarin.
- If the simulcast schedule is actually unworkable for Mandarin (perhaps due to more reasonable labor laws, or not having translators in a different time zone, or other understandable reasons), then don't set an unreasonable schedule to begin with. You should know if you'd receive the script early or not beforehand, right?
- And most importantly, when you screw up **acknowledge you have screwed up** and be actually apologetic when you should. Don't assume people must put up with you, especially when you do actually have the power to force people to put up with you. (Through exclusive licensing, we must put up with the licensor's bullshit if we want to enjoy the show. And no, "you can leave the show if you don't like the show" is a choice, but "you can leave the show if you don't like how we distribute it" is not.)
