My Deer Friend Nokotan fans convinced “dreadful” subtitles are AI – but they’re wrong

My Deer Friend Nokotan has premiered, and fans are a little disappointed by the absurdist comedy. Not with the show itself, but the localization.

My Deer Friend Nokotan built considerable anticipation thanks to marketing that spotlighted how weird it is. Following a popular high school girl and her new friend, a girl who’s part deer, the anime show is more offbeat than most of what’s ongoing at the minute.

Viewers were disappointed by the opening episode on HIDIVE, due to some lackluster subtitling. Translations can be hit or miss, and My Deer Friend Nokotan’s is pretty ropey. Fans believe it’s because AI translations were used, but they’re actually wrong.

In an exhaustive thread on Reddit, user vytah translates a number of lines and compares them to the subs to discern if AI was incorporated. They consistently find the real culprit is just regular human error.

The top example demonstrates the differences:

Subtitle: “Once again, today, the maidens who gather in the gardens of the wisdom king cross the Tama river with smiles as pure as those of the Shinsengumi troopers.”

Japanese through machine translation: “The maidens who gather in the garden of Fudo Myoo-sama cross the Tamagawa stream with innocent smiles like Shinsengumi troopers today.”

The AI version defaults to formal titling, such as “Fuco Myoo-sama” and “Tamagawa” rather than local abbreviations, and wouldn’t typo on a capital letter like the first translation. Many of the errors across the script come down to small discrepancies a machine would avoid.

Subtitle: “Should I call the police? a doctor? Detective Co… No, Hajimeeeee!”

AI tools don’t include conversational direction like elongated vowels, nor would it recognize a half-reference, like Detective Conan being cut off here. If the machine spotted this was a nod to Conan, the full name would be there.

The thread goes through several other examples, involving misspelled words, converted temperatures, and other small details that wouldn’t be part of machine translations. These are likely the signals of human work, as the Reddit thread points out, from translators and subtitlers who are working to tight deadlines.

Anime translations are a crucial part of the medium, yet those involved often don’t get a lot of runway for any individual release. Hopefully, future episodes of My Deer Friend Nokotan get improved subtitles as the team is given more room to breathe and edit their work.

Check out our guides to Oshi no Ko Season 2, Tower of God Season 2, and Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest for the other big shows at the moment.