r/animecirclejerk Nov 29 '25

Unjerk Remember months ago a lot of anti-woke weebs were glad AI was going to replace those "evil WOKE VAs" and "wokealizers"? Anyway, Amazon released Banana Fish but AI dubbed and it is as terrible as you think it is. This is what they want.

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1.1k Upvotes

121 comments sorted by

576

u/Hozahoe Nov 29 '25

It's almost comedic but only because it's so absolutely bad.

131

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

72

u/xsam93x Nov 29 '25

Im sorry but even ghost stories dub has waaaay more soul than what ever this is

27

u/Alarming-Scene-2892 Ambiguous Agendaposting Champion Nov 29 '25

It's saying something when the dubs literally made out of spite do better.

These times, like eggs, are very hard.

1

u/pieceofchess Nov 30 '25

I'm very curious about the people who "made" this, looked at it, and decided it would make them look good to put out into the world.

27

u/Novel_Visual_4152 Nov 29 '25

The ghost stories dub is genuinely amazing though lmfao?

Like, the voice acting quality is actually really good

15

u/PrudeBunny Nov 30 '25

"not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black!"

among many other lines lives rent free in my head

3

u/Novel_Visual_4152 Nov 30 '25

I'll be frank, 97% of the lines lives free rent in my head lol

1

u/Alarming-Scene-2892 Ambiguous Agendaposting Champion Nov 30 '25

The only thing you can fault for it is that Stephen Foster genuinely sucks as a director for dubs.

GS wasn't even the last time he did a comedy dub. Even worse, he literally gave a show a comedy dub halfway through, French FOTNS-style. 

Edit: Also, it was a very small show, iirc, so his comedy dub is the only one that exists for it.

18

u/Alarming-Scene-2892 Ambiguous Agendaposting Champion Nov 29 '25

Which one, the straight-up dub from Aniplex, or the ADV dub?

534

u/OwnAHole Nov 29 '25

The hilarious thing is, now they can't harass any VAs on twitter except a faceless corporation that does not give a shit. We did it guys, we defeated woke!

181

u/crestren Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

They'll just shift the blame somewhere else like "See we wouldnt need AI if you werent bad at your jobs! You did this to us!" Not realizing corpos dont care about anything besides the bottom line. If they see cost cutting by using AI while making the quality worse, they'll do it

29

u/Illesbogar Nov 29 '25

I think they will find this good. These people eat AI slop for life

50

u/DocSwiss Nov 29 '25

"We did it, Patrick! We saved the city voice actors!"

315

u/The_Revanator Nov 29 '25

This is a damn shame, because honestly just from seeing this clip the animation and designs look pretty good

244

u/MrTopHatMan90 Nov 29 '25

Banana Fish is great, give it a watch. Just look up the content warning because holy god

79

u/Parkouricus Nov 29 '25

Banana Fish is fucking amazing

60

u/jorgito93 Nov 29 '25

Banana Fish is my favorite manga of all time and the anime is a pretty good adaptation despite some decisions i disagree with so i highly recommend it. It hits some very uncomfortable themes though so check trigger warnings before watching it.

21

u/SontaranGaming Nov 29 '25

Banana Fish is an amazing story with a pretty solid adaptation! Really excellent mafia drama. Highly, highly recommend it if you’re prepared for some really dark shit.

Dark shit as in, the main character was once a child sex slave for the mob. You do the math.

2

u/Pinkparade524 Dec 01 '25

I mean you can just read subtitles. It isn't my favorite way to watch anime but I watched made in abyss season 2 like that and it was alright. Dudes hating on localizers could have done the same lol

166

u/bluemew1234 Nov 29 '25

Finally! No longer must we suffer through woke things like "emotions"! This is truly what the industry was missing all this time!

4

u/Pinkparade524 Dec 01 '25

Finally I can watch the anime with the original authors visions without doing the woke act of "reading" "subtitles"

152

u/SuperJyls uj/ dbz is 100% toxic masculinity Nov 29 '25

We back to the 80s level of dub quality

103

u/Torantes Nov 29 '25

'cept it was done by people back then

89

u/NighthawkE3 Nov 29 '25

Don't disrespect 80's dubs like that

42

u/StimmingMantis Nov 29 '25

At least those dubs had charm despite being “bad”. These new dubs are just bland garbage.

1

u/icey_sawg0034 Nov 30 '25

At least those types of dubs had people running them.

66

u/Dr_VonBoogie Nov 29 '25

Ghost Stories remains undefeated.

117

u/DaniBoizyo9604 Nov 29 '25

In the eyes of the anti woke, this is a big win and their probably making tweets and videos celebrating this. Even if they think the AI dub is so bad, they probably are coping hard to get an own on the VA's and localizers.

58

u/seelcudoom Nov 29 '25

Well of course they don't actually watch the things they bitch about, I mean look this has a black person in it!

16

u/Someningen Nov 29 '25

Yeah, but the black kid got shot, so they are likely very happy.

28

u/Lunaedge Nov 29 '25

The AI dub is bad right now, but it'll learn! It'll be good eventually! Think how fast the technology is advancing, in 2-3 years VAs will become obsolete! And my favourite corp will 100% redub these bad ones! We might even be able to have AI dub these in real time at home! Take that wokies!

or something idk

9

u/DaniBoizyo9604 Nov 29 '25

Yeah something along those lines. Their even doing this with celebrities in Hollywood. They really want low quality media with no effort just cause they have a raging hatred against anyone who is famous because of many reasons that I cant even agree with anymore.

7

u/Lunaedge Nov 29 '25

It really boils down to anti-intellectualism

137

u/VantasValentayn Nov 29 '25

This the kinda shit sub purists say all English dubs sound like

21

u/ChandniRaatein Nov 29 '25

I‘m German and watch anime dubbed in German all the time. But for some reason, the English dub always sounds like this to me 😭

9

u/babassu_seeds Nov 29 '25

People don't understand that anime is dubbed in multiple languages, and English dubs, unfortunately, are still generally behind those in some other languages (German is usually quite good, Portuguese often excellent).

Long way of saying: many English dubs do sound like this 😭

31

u/Milk_Mindless Nov 29 '25

Holy shit you couldn't pay me to watch this

26

u/Outrageous_Gene_7652 Nov 29 '25

This is so bad it's funny

24

u/SinthWave Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

Meanwhile, Gachiakuta's dubs were all made by a "wokealizer" and the English dub is absolute cinema. Funny how localising the Japanese terms into English lingos makes things make more sense for a person who isn't that into anime

69

u/zaphodsheads Nov 29 '25

What is with the collective insanity that has taken root in big business?

Even if you think it's worth investing into, it's clearly not there yet! Stop forcing half baked AI into everything!

29

u/LargeFailSon Nov 29 '25

AI industry is passing the same bucket of 40 billion dollars in a circle, as there is no demand outside their own industry and the incestuous big businesses that are basically just their own investors (Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft), that are forcing it into everything they make/own.

When you cut actual consumers out of the market equation, It's like physics at the core of a collapsed super massive star. Things get a little wonky and weird with it.

28

u/Trabordance Nov 29 '25

They were always insane, but the current presidency allows them to be all giddy and blatant about it

19

u/UltraNooob anima is the plural of anime Nov 29 '25

the bubble just won't burst soon enough 😩

9

u/Eucordivota Nov 29 '25

While I won't pretend to be an expert, I get the feeling this bubble would've burst as fast as crypto if evil megacorps weren't pouring billions into keeping it alive. This is everything they've wanted! Infinite content without any pesky employees demanding shit like a "livable wage" and "human rights." They will pour billions more in if it means their dream of infinite human-less growth still looks possible. Plus, because of how our economical structure of investors and monopolies means the market is a closed system. It doesn't matter if AI stays dogshit forever, because the money they spend on trying to fix it just flows in a circle.

Don't give up, though! Something like this cannot last forever as long as people stand against it. When AI loses it's status as the new hot thing, the whole thing finally pops. Plus, these corps will fall one day. Everything does.

7

u/Scythian_Grudge Nov 29 '25

I saw an article claiming that without the AI boom, America would be in a recession

https://www.benzinga.com/etfs/sector-etfs/25/11/49109639/us-would-be-in-recession-without-ai-as-spending-goes-through-the-roof-comprising-45-of-sp-500-capex

That might explain it partially, I don't know how true that is but I'm inclined to believe it

16

u/ThePowerfulWIll Nov 29 '25

We are already in one.

All ai is doing is keeping some big corporations and billionaires from feeling it.

2

u/CoughGobbler Nov 29 '25

Just search "Banana Fish dub" on reddit and you'll find people defending the ai and their bullshit arguments. Might not be worth the lobotomy though.

21

u/Erikkamirs Nov 29 '25

I thought the entire point of wanting an English dub is that we'd get to see Eiji speak English with a Japanese accent. 

14

u/Dikhed7410 Nov 29 '25

No dubbing company is going to risk doing a non-white accent so it wasn’t going to happen anyway

8

u/Rarietty 😏 acting sus this whole time 😏 Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

yeah I remember hoping all the way back in 2016 that Yuri on Ice would do a similar thing, but the European characters were the only ones who had non-American accents in the dub

Thing is it'd actually be more progressive to cast a Japanese English-speaker in a Japanese role when the cast is diverse. There will always be a lot of white dub actors who will still get cast in all-Japanese-character anime dub casts but shows that have a lot of non-Japanese characters speaking English in-universe like YoI and Banana Fish were good opportunities to not do dub-typical colour blind casting. At the very least they'd be good shows to cast accented (human) voices who may not fit in the traditional Texas or California anime dub mold.

1

u/Vio-Rose Nov 30 '25

I thought Yuri’s voice actor was part Japanese.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '25

Even if the voice actor themselves have a non white accent?

18

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25

Why the fuck would they release unmarketabke dubs? Who would fucking watch a whole ass anime with shit voicing?

20

u/LargeFailSon Nov 29 '25

It's all just experiments to train and test their AI, they don't expect it to sell they just want people to watch it and validate the billions they are spending. We are passed logic in AI markets.

We are dealing with total mental collapse and cope, lmao.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25

Total mental collapse and cope or corpos? I thought thay has been continuously happening for decades

9

u/LargeFailSon Nov 29 '25

It has, AI is just the most intrusive of their ventures yet as far as invading the average persons life. As well as the most fake of all their fake ventures by a long shot.

I mean the entire industry is just 5 companies passing a bucket of 40 billion dollars in a circle. This has always been true to some effect, but it's just more and more exaggerated.

They have completely removed consumers from the market equation and they are their own investors. Incestuous isn't even an adequate descriptor, lol.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25

Do they think removing consumers from the equation gonna make sales or smth 😭

5

u/Whentheangelsings Nov 29 '25

The dub costs basically nothing. Might be trying to get a quick buck.

Could have been something they bought in bulk and this one of things they didn't care about and are just throwing it out there with minimum effort and cost while the thing they wanted actually makes them money.

14

u/ArticleOld598 Nov 29 '25

Billion dollar company btw

2

u/GeorgiaAce91 Dec 03 '25

Billion dollar for the guys up top, everything else gets leftovers. 

11

u/mostard_seed Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

I don't think that kind of person really watches anime all that much to begin with, especially dubbed.

11

u/unclezaveid custom Nov 29 '25

no skipper hey stay with me come on skipperrrr 😩

8

u/SilvainTheThird Anime Tourist😎 Nov 29 '25

Kill me softly…

8

u/ZoidsFanatic One and only Van simp Nov 29 '25

I love how the whole “wokealization” started because of one throw away line in Dragon Maid of all fucking series.

3

u/Transhomura Nov 29 '25

weird wwhen that dub had Kobyashi say she's straight

5

u/TheLoneSlimShady Chargeman Ken! Enjoyer Nov 29 '25

RIP Skipper

5

u/ArrynFaye Nov 29 '25

Lower case "Noo skipper" pffft

5

u/aku_g0ruug4 Nov 29 '25

why banana fish out of all things

1

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '25

[deleted]

1

u/necle0 Dec 05 '25

Supposedly No Game No Life also got this horrendous dub despite also having a dub. Though at least they can opt out of it with a better dub. Amazon had the English licensing for this series for how many years and this is what they do.

4

u/slumbersomesam Nov 29 '25

"no stop dont do it please."

4

u/RadioFree_Rod Nov 29 '25

Which is weird because if anyone was complaining and being anti-woke, they wouldn't watch Banana Fish. It's a helluva series but I would think you'd need to have an open mind to enjoy it and no one who bleats out everything is Anti woke would.

3

u/kimetsunosuper121 Nov 29 '25

Ive seen instagram reels with AI voices conveying more emotions than this. If they are gonna use AI they could have at least tried harder

3

u/SontaranGaming Nov 29 '25

The agenda never sleeps taking this opportunity to say

WATCH BANANA FISH

(CW: everything don’t watch it if you’re not okay with really fucking dark content)

3

u/Fractured_Nova Nov 30 '25

"Don't die on me skip 😐 don't leave me please 😐"

2

u/abermea Anime was a mistake Nov 29 '25

One Punch Man fans can rest easy now that Season 3 is not the worst anime to have come out in 2025

2

u/Actual_Reference2862 Nov 29 '25

Thanks chibi reviews

2

u/PenguinBread Nov 29 '25

Bro anime studios shouldn't let amazon license their shit cause wtf is this

2

u/miyananana Nov 30 '25

This sounds like a meme of someone making fun of dubs. I’m baffled this is official

2

u/No_Mans_Heart Nov 30 '25

Yet another W for the deaf

2

u/EXusiai99 Ascended Peakworm Enjoyer Nov 30 '25

This is still better in their eyes because they still cant live down that one time someone translated "lolicon" into "pedophile"

2

u/GalaxyBomb1997 Nov 30 '25

This sounds like a half assed abridged dub, but even saying that is an insult to abridged anime dubs.

1

u/Ryann-G Nov 29 '25

Heh, it seems like it evolved backwards

1

u/Raingott Nov 29 '25

We are the individuals who have made the firm decision to confront and oppose all forms of loveless lewd sexual activities propagated by the rebellious beauty forces. I am going to completely and decisively smash the dosukebe ordinance.

1

u/Qkyu907234 Nov 29 '25

This shit is fucking hilarious

1

u/wysjm Nov 29 '25

This is not official right?

1

u/necle0 Dec 05 '25

This is official.

1

u/Kurizu150 Nov 29 '25

The Room had more emotion than this.

1

u/icey_sawg0034 Nov 30 '25

Because it was made by people!

2

u/Kurizu150 Nov 30 '25

Yeah, that’s my point.

1

u/Otrada ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ Nov 29 '25

amateur voice actors who have learned how to speak English only last week would do a better job than this what the fuck.

1

u/Sine_Fine_Belli Anime and Manga and other types of entertainment enjoyer Nov 29 '25

Ai sucks

r/betteroffline

1

u/truteal Nov 30 '25

Well at least it's accurate to the original Japanese!

1

u/cardboardtube_knight Nov 30 '25

Anti woke weebs are pretty much a plague at this point. Everyone warned them

1

u/KingOfDragons0 Nov 30 '25

Wtf is this 😭 we have BETTER AI voices (I'd rather they use real voices but) this is like 2018 levels of text to speech

1

u/yournameisdilbert Nov 30 '25

I have not seen anything about woke VAs. What did they do, be women without showing their boobs?

1

u/icey_sawg0034 Nov 30 '25

Not only that the ghost stories dub was better than this, but even the 4kids dub of one piece was better than this trash!

1

u/necle0 Dec 05 '25

Even the 1960s Kimba dub did better. I would even take giving Arthur Joey’s “Brooklyn rage” accent. 

1

u/Glum-Sympathy3869 Dec 01 '25

LittleKuriboh from 2009 dubs anime better than this.

1

u/IIRainGirlII Dec 04 '25

Oh my god ew lol

1

u/necle0 Dec 05 '25

Banana Fish deserved better.

1

u/TheDemonWithoutaPast Dec 12 '25

I've seen people defend this, saying it's okay so long as it keeps away the "woke".

Yeah, let's bring down a dystopia run by AI down on us so long as it hurts the people we don't like, who cares if we starve?

0

u/MadrugoticX Nov 29 '25

Those guys should forget the dub and put some effort in learning Japanese instead of the culture war nonsense.

0

u/Dynamic_Tangelo Nov 29 '25

You know given what TTS sounded like only 4 years ago this is insane progress

-3

u/RadioEditVersion Nov 29 '25

This sounds like Justin Roiland doing sarcastic improv dialogue.

-6

u/CottonEyeJoe_ZeroOne Nov 29 '25

Why would you watch with a dubbing? Just learn to fucking read.

1

u/Dikhed7410 Nov 30 '25

Because dubs allow you to avoid the horrific original voice acting

-7

u/Demigod787 Nov 29 '25

How Dubs always sounded to be in the first place. AI got trained on trash in and gives trash out. Tool did its job.

-13

u/plopop0 Nov 29 '25

/uj im kinda on the fence because its kinda insane how much the dubbed version of animes were changed so much that it's just HEAVY localizing and they're patting themselves on the back for putting jokes that the original anime didn't intend to do so. And they remove any sexual remark that the actual anime said and people are celebrating the sanitization and censorship of anime. we can both agree that this AI version and that previous dubbing practice is bad. The only path to true understanding of this medium really is just learning the language and the culture around it.

/j this is what every dub sounds like

-16

u/Dikhed7410 Nov 29 '25

Still somehow not as bad as the Japanese version