English subtitles for Japanese shows on Prime

I tried watching Tokyo Vice on Prime the other day and just checked Godzilla Minus 1. Neither of them has subtitles in languages other than Japanese.

Does anyone know if Prime has a history of adding them down the road? I guess Tokyo Vice is already a couple of years old, so no hope there.

Yes, I’m learning Japanese. One day I will enjoy them without subtitles.

by golfball509

18 comments
  1. The subtitles situation on Prime is a mess. Some things have, some don’t, and no logic to what gets it and not.

    Most likely it’s just that they have what they have when they license it, and they don’t put resources into adding any from what I have seen.

  2. Yeah, they very rarely think about the fact that they may of non-Japanese people watching in Japan. The thing is, the subtitles are readily available for a multitude of other languages and I can’t imagine it costs much more, if anything, to make them available. They just don’t think about that segment of their viewership.

  3. If you are watching the things that made by Amazon they are higher chance to have eng-sub.

    Any other mostly no sub. Not even Japanese sub.

  4. Reminds me of watching The Boys with English subtitles because I sometimes watch at low volume and find it hard to catch everything. And when it got to the scene of Kimiko amd her brother speaking Japanese, the subtitles just stopped, presumably because they assumed everyone would understand Japanese and it wasn’t worth writing subtitles for them. I was both annoyed and bewildered, especially because the actor who played the brother had awful Japanese!

  5. It would be nice if they could be at least be bothered to make Japanese subtitles available for disabled viewers.

  6. Amazon Prime has very little English language support. Like Netflix and Hulu, only programs that were produced specifically for them tend to have English subtitles. Third-party programs rarely ever do.

  7. Sometime they do sometime it doesn’t, sometimes it’s split into different movies so you have to find the 字幕 one

  8. Of all the streaming services in Japan, Prime is just the worst with language/subtitle options. It frustrates me to no end. I’ll be glad when they get rid of free shipping so I can finally cancel Prime.

  9. For some stupid reason, Prime lines to display different versions of the movie as separate movies, instead of just giving one option, and giving the viewer subtitle/language options inside it.
    Despite the TV being set to English the prime app still mostly displays Japanese -_-

  10. Okay so… here is the BEST thing you can do…
    Get the half working plugin called “Subtitles for Language Learning (Prime Video)”

    [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/subtitles-for-language-le/hlofmmmlhfelbfhcpapoackkglljfcnb?hl=ja](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/subtitles-for-language-le/hlofmmmlhfelbfhcpapoackkglljfcnb?hl=ja)

    Then, go to places like [Kitsunekko.net](https://kitsunekko.net/) for anime or [https://www.opensubtitles.org/](https://www.opensubtitles.org/) for regular shows as well… and load them up from the plugin!

    Its a pain… but hey, it does work as long as you find the right subtitles…

  11. It’s all about the licensing, and often subtitles are not licensed together with the video content. There is very little demand for English subtitles in Japan (far more for Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Brazilian, etc) so it’s not likely that Amazon will pay extra for English subs. Not likely they’ll pay extra for *any* subs that aren’t Japanese. Not enough demand for any of it.

  12. Yeah, this sucks about Japanese Prime. I’ve even found some American content that is only available with the Japanese sub and no subtitles, while the same content on Australian or US Prime has multiple audio and subtitle languages available.

  13. We watched goji tonight! But i don’t think there were even jp subs which we usually prefer :p great watch though.

  14. Just watched Tokyo Vice as well, but on Netflix with the same issue. I enjoyed the show but definitely there were parts I didn’t get. Unfortunately not getting English subtitles is just how it is.

  15. Prime has always been a mess. To be honest selectable subs only started in the last couple years. Prior there were two versions of the movie. That was more mind blowing to me. Had to relive my visiting Tsutaya back in VHS days life.

  16. You can get subtitle translation plugins. I’ve used it before for Netflix. Should work for prime I guess. They use Google translate so not exactly the best. That also means you have to watch in your computer rather than phone etc.

  17. It’s the classic home country language issue. JP shows in Japan don’t have subs but do if you’re abroad or your VPN is set abroad. Same issue on most platforms and for other countries as well. Overseas Netflix also get all the Ghibli films as well.

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