After beginning to launch artificial intelligence-aided dubbing for select movies and shows offered on its Prime streaming service earlier this year, Amazon has added AI dubs in English and Spanish to Banana Fish. Despite the show’s enduring popularity and quality since its original premiere in 2018, no official English dub was ever released for the series. In the absence of an official English dub, Amazon opted to leverage AI to generate one rather than making use of human actors to dub the series. This feature from Amazon comes alongside platforms like YouTube releasing features that allows content creators to translate their videos into multiple languages using AI and Meta testing AI tools that will automatically translate voices in Reels.
Objectively speaking, the quality is incredibly poor. Spoken words don’t match the included subtitles, voices sound overly robotic and soulless, and there is absolutely zero consistent cadence to any of the lines delivered. Many of the voices, from the few minutes I could stand to watch, sound remarkably similar to one another as well. I can’t comment on the quality of the Spanish in terms of translation, but the same issues when it comes to overall sound and timbre are present in both of the AI-generated audio languages, labelled as “AI Beta” within the Prime Video menu.
After users initially began posting on Bluesky about the AI English dub, voice actors began to weigh in on X (formerly Twitter) including voice actor Daman Mills, who expressed frustration toward Amazon and Prime Video for their decision to use AI generated dubs rather than pay to have one created.
And I must say, this is deeply saddening and disconcerting. Dub actors are some of the hardest working and most passionate people in the anime industry. From sound engineers to directors to writers to voice actors, countless individuals pour their hearts and souls into a project to make sure it’s available in languages outside of the original Japanese. Especially for a show that has one of the best depictions of a queer relationship in anime, Banana Fish deserves a dub where real people have the opportunity to put real work into it like they do with many other projects. Amazon has more than enough money to back a proper English dub and anime deserve them.
© 吉田秋生・小学館／Project BANANA FISH
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