Everyone has rushed a job before, but rush an anime dub and the fans will descend on you faster than you can say “sub or dub."
If you ever want to see a fandom unite instantly, just give them a bad anime dub. Amazon managed exactly that with its AI-generated English track for Banana Fish.
We Finally Know Which Anime Has The Worst Dub
There are many reasons why a dub for an anime could be considered bad. Bad translation, a performance that does not suit the character, or voice acting that lacks natural emotion and believable delivery. Now imagine a dub that checks all three boxes at the same time and you get the AI-generated English dub of Banana Fish. Amazon removed it without any comment after only a week filled with memes, widespread mockery, and an overwhelming wave of fan outrage.
Amazon launched the hilariously bad dub as part of an "AI Beta". However, a company worth trillions of dollars should easily be able to afford professional talent. With results like this, it feels less like an experiment and more like they simply did not care.
Voice Actors Are Still Irreplaceable
The situation around the Banana Fish anime opened the wider discussion about AI replacing voice actors once again. More and more performers are worried about losing their jobs to automated systems. The recent controversy surrounding Arc Raiders, which used generative AI for its voices and received heavy backlash for it, further illustrates the growing distaste for replacing human talent with synthetic audio. Some argue that companies can save time and resources, while others point out that the emotional core of voice acting has always been its most important element.
Cases like Banana Fish perfectly show why these concerns exist. Generative AI may have its uses, but this is certainly not one of them. It is one thing to implement scattered AI voice lines in a video game, but generating the complete dub of an entire anime series with artificial voices is excessive. After all, it is the voice actors who give our favorite characters their emotional depth and human presence. That is something technology cannot replicate, and it is something that will not change in the near future.
What do you think? Have you seen the Banana Fish dub? Let us know in the comments!
