I’ve watched anime for decades at this point, but nope. I can pick out words here and there, but it would severely limit my enjoyment of anime. Subtitles allow my brain to skip most of the hard work when it comes to learning a language, I don’t believe it will get better even if this goes on for another decade.

I also feel if I suffered through a couple of months of non-subtitled watching and put in the effort to process, understand and memorize what I’m hearing, it might eventually get better. But as long as I have access to subtitles, I don’t do any of that…