How do you add furigana to anime with burned-in subtitles?
YuzuLingo · Nov 1, 2026
You cannot edit the video file to add furigana, but you can overlay furigana on top of the burned-in text while you watch. Browser extensions that run OCR on the subtitle region can recognize the kanji and generate hiragana or katakana readings above each word in real time.
Why burned-in subs are different
A soft subtitle is a text track the player can expose to the page. A burned-in (hardcoded) subtitle is part of the video image. There is no text file to parse or modify. The glyphs are just colored pixels baked into each frame.
How overlay furigana works
An OCR extension crops the subtitle region, runs text recognition on the device, and draws the result as real text on top of the video. Once the kanji are recognized, a morphological analyzer like Kuromoji segments the sentence and looks up each word in a reading dictionary. The readings become ruby annotations above the base text.
Hiragana vs katakana furigana
Hiragana furigana is the default for most learners. Katakana furigana helps when you want to practice reading katakana or when the content uses a lot of loanwords. Some tools let you switch between them per zone or per session.
Romaji as an alternative
Absolute beginners sometimes prefer romaji (Hepburn or Kunrei) so they can follow along before learning kana. Most learners move to hiragana furigana quickly because romaji hides the script they need to internalize.
Limitations to expect
Stylized fonts, text with outlines or shadows, and fast-scrolling dialogue can reduce OCR accuracy. Names and rare readings may get the wrong furigana because the analyzer guesses based on context. Editing the recognized line or checking a dictionary helps when something looks off.
