Better external player Android TV (Xiaomi TV Stick 4K) for SSA/ASS subtitles
The title is more or less self-explanatory, but to give better context: While for most non-anime related content, I find default ExoPlayer just fine, I find myself really struggling when it comes to anime. Even setting aside basic stuff like having two different subs up at the same time (like having a sign appear on-screen while a character talks causing them to either cut out or overlay each other), if a show has more animated or stylized subtitles (like, say, Apothecary Diaries OPs and EDs showing lyrics and whatnot on screen), pretty much every player I've tried just crashes and burns.
ExoPlayer just completely gives up the ghost and doesn't even try (using the experimental Libass support just makes stuff crash more often than not). LibVLC tries but shits itself, leading stuff to animate out of sync or not correctly (say if a subtitle is supposed to fade on-screen, it'll just pop it up at a low opacity and stay static like that without moving, making it unreadable).
I tried some of the recommended external players like standalone VLC (needed to download an older APK of it because the most recent one on the playstore just crashes when trying to open an episode), Just Player doesn't even try, MX Player has similar issues, so does NOVA Player.
The only one that I tried so far that flawlessly plays those kinds of animated subtitles is Kodi. Problem is, Kodi sucks in terms of seamless integration. It loads a long splash screen every time you try to pop in an episode, it doesn't track watched episodes (so I'll finish an episode and it'll mark as never having been started), if I press the back key to go back to Stremio it freaks out and hops me onto the Kodi menu while still playing the video in the background and then if I press back again it pauses it and opens the video again, looping over and over which really freaks out my muscle memory.
Is there literally ANY alternative to Kodi here that might actually work with SSA subtitles without going completely insane? I was hoping for more seamless integration when I watch stuff on my TV, but none of the players I've seen people recommend work for this use-case very well and the only one that does is a bit of a usability nightmare. Sure, I could probably power through and get used to the annoyance, but my less technically-minded boyfriend gave up after flailing with the Kodi UI for five minutes when he tried watching something while I wasn't around.