With part one of the live-action movie adaptation released for the first time outside Japan on Wednesday this week, fans of the hugely successful manga and anime series Attack on Titan were no doubt incredibly excited to see their favourite giant-slaying characters brought to life by living, breathing Japanese actors.
Little did then know, however, that when one of the English subtitles added to the movie for its North American release would appear on-screen, it would remain there—for a full 20 minutes—while the action continued behind it.
“I’ve been waiting for this day,” thousands of American Attack on Titan fans undoubtedly thought as they climbed of bed yesterday morning and double-checked that their cinema tickets were safely tucked away in their wallets. The movie adaptation of their favourite anime was finally coming out in their homeland—complete with subtitles rather than a jarring English dub, no less. For AoT fans, this was indeed a big day.
Sadly, the release of the film wouldn’t be the only thing they’d end up waiting for by the time the day was out.
As reported by our friends over at Anime News Network, during a number of screenings of the first part of the Attack on Titan live-action movie, the film’s English subtitles locked up completely following the appearance of the line “I’ve been waiting for this day!”. Tweets tell of cinemagoers slowly breaking into laughter as the film played on despite the subtitles never changing, leading some to shun the usual rules about cameras in theatres and reach for their phones to document the fail for all to see:
Although some viewers later commented that their screenings were completely unaffected, a number of people tweeted that the offending subtitle remained on their screens for as long as 20 minutes after appearing. Before long, the hashtag “#Waiting4ThisDay” began trending online.
There has yet to be an official explanation given for the cause of the screening hiccup, but hopefully FUNimation, the film’s North American distributor, is looking into the problem so that those of you planning on checking out the movie this week—despite its decidedly lacklustre reviews thus far—get to watch it without having to learn Japanese first.
Source: Twitter, Anime News Network
Featured image: Twitter/tiffako
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