I watch quite a bit of anime and a lot of subtitles seem to be in a format that includes advanced features such as stretching/shrinking text, rotation, karaoke effects and what have you. I think the sub format is actually called .ass or .ssa, but don’t quote me on that.

Anywho, I tried watching some random anime a few years back and was using VLC at the time. VLC detected the subtitles, but couldn’t do anything outside of just displaying them. It couldn’t do the advanced effects. So, I switched to MPV which just worked and have been using it ever since. As I said, this was a few years back and VLC probably can do advanced subtitles at this point, but eh. I’m too used to MPV now.