A 12 year old kid at a con told me I was reading my subs wrong

I was at a small anime convention in Omaha last Saturday and this kid next to me in a screening room pointed out I was looking at the bottom of the screen instead of the center. He said you miss half the facial expressions if you fixate on the subs. I tried his way during a fight scene and honestly caught way more detail. Anyone else ever get a basic tip that changed how you watch?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark43615d ago

Omaha, Nebraska is exactly where I'd expect some kid to be a backseat driver during a subbed anime. Honestly, I disagree with the whole "center of the screen" thing. I've been reading subs for over 15 years and if I'm not staring at the bottom of the screen I literally miss half the dialogue. You get used to catching facial expressions in your peripheral vision anyway. Tbh, that kid probably just got lucky during one fight scene. Ngl, I tried watching an episode of Attack on Titan with my eyes in the middle and I kept having to rewind because I missed key plot points. I'll stick with my bottom-of-screen method.

karen_sanchez4915d ago

That 12 year old was onto something... I notice the same thing happens in real life when people stare at their GPS instead of reading the road signs ahead.

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the_claire11d agoMost Upvoted

Actually, that's a pretty good analogy but there's a subtle difference. GPS is constantly updating and re-routing based on real-time data, while road signs are static and can be misleading if you're not paying attention to the whole picture. With subs, your eyes kind of learn to scan between the faces and the text at the bottom without getting stuck in one spot. I've been watching subs since the fansub VHS days (yeah, I'm old) and I've noticed that if you anchor your gaze on the center of the screen while keeping the bottom in your peripheral vision, you actually catch more of the emotional beats. But yeah, the GPS thing definitely happens with people who rely on turn-by-turn directions too much instead of building a mental map of where they're going.