© 吉田秋生・小学館／Project BANANA FISH
Amazon Prime Video‘s streams of the Banana Fish anime and No Game, No Life Zero anime previously listed “AI beta” dubs for its English and Latin American Spanish dubs. The company’s streams of the Pet anime and Journal of the Mysterious Creatures anime were also listing the English and Latin American Spanish dubs as “AI beta” dubs. The Vinland Saga anime’s stream listed its Latin American Spanish dub as an “AI beta” dub.
Amazon Prime Video has since removed the English and Latin American dubs for Banana Fish and No Game, No Life Zero. As of December 3, the Journal of the Mysterious Creatures and Pet anime’s “AI beta” English dubs had remained on the service, but they were removed as of December 4. The Latin American Spanish dub for Vinland Saga was also removed as of December 4.
Amazon announced its AI-dubbing pilot program for English and Latin American dubs on March 5.
Users on social media started noticing the AI English dubs and posting about them on Friday. Soon afterward, many voice actors started speaking out against the Banana Fish AI dubs, including the following (note: some of the linked social media posts contain adult language): Daman Mills, Kara Edwards, Nick Huber, Dawn M. Bennett, Martin Billany, Dave Wallace, and Abigail Blythe.
ANN reached out to Aniplex regarding the Banana Fish English and Latin American Spanish dubs on Friday, and to Kadokawa and Sentai Filmworks/HIDIVE about the No Game, No Life Zero English dub on Saturday. Kadokawa stated that it has not approved an AI dub “in any form.” Sources at HIDIVE stated that it was “not aware in advance” of the AI dub, and is “looking into it with Amazon.” Aniplex did not issue a statement as of press time.
The 24-episode Banana Fish anime adapted Akimi Yoshida‘s manga and premiered in July 2018. The anime adapted the entire manga, but took place modern day New York, instead of in the 1980s when the original manga took place. Amazon Prime Video streamed the series as it aired with English subtitles.
The No Game, No Life Zero anime film opened in Japan in July 2017. Sentai Filmworks screened the film with both an English dub and with English subtitles in select U.S. theaters in September and October 2017, before releasing the film on home video in August 2018. HIDIVE started streaming the film on May 23, with the English dub. ANN can confirm the end credits on Amazon Prime Video still lists Sentai Filmworks‘ English dub cast and staff, despite the “AI beta” dub being completely different than Sentai Filmworks‘ dub.
Update: Corrected information on Vinland Saga‘s dub. Thanks, SiliconDon and anime-prime.
Update 2: Added more information regarding dubs for Pet and Journal of the Mysterious Creatures, as well as Amazon‘s AI dubbing pilot program. Thanks, SiliconDon and anime-prime. Sources: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon
Update 3: More dubs removed. Thanks, SiliconDon. Source: Amazon Prime Video
Source: Amazon Prime Video (link 2) via @brainchild129 and @jgryph0n on Bluesky
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
