The fan-beloved anime series has lacked an official dub since its release in 2018. There may have been a paranormal primate paw involved, however, since their wish (sort of) came true in the worst kind of way.
To call the Banana Fish AI dub “bad” would be a disservice to bad dubbing. I’m personally a great fan of bad dubbing in certain circumstances. Life would be a little duller without Robot Alchemic Drive‘s infamous bread and water soup, or Chaos Wars‘ infamous… everything. But those are human failures. There’s a certain something with an unintentionally bad creation that makes many of us want to cheer for it. Something poignant and beautiful in failing so fantastically that it elevates the entire experience. If you’re going to fail, fail spectacularly, as they say.
These AI dubs don’t have the same effect. Maybe it’s the context that makes it more sad and frustrating than funny. This is something that people do for a living, who were not hired and paid to do an infinitely better job, or at the very least given the opportunity to do a bad job. Maybe it’s simply the lack of humanity that can be felt even when it can’t be neatly defined or described. Either way, it’s awful and I want it to go away.
This may be the outgrowth of Amazon’s AI dubbing initiative launched in March of this year, which started with “12 licensed movies and series.”
Banana Fish isn’t the only anime to receive the Moonbase Alpha treatment. The ensloppiffication continues with titles such as Pet and the No Game No Life Zero film, which already had a dub.
What pisses me off about this is there are a bunch of LGBTQ+ actors who love this and would love the job, but Amazon is beholden to Trump and won’t do it.
Banana Fish is awesome and it deserves better.