Banana Fish is an anime that premiered in 2018 that is exclusive to Amazon Prime. For many years it was available as a Japanese dub with English subtitles, and that’s how I watched it.
This is an emotional series that dances around the BL, but the love and affection is there. Here’s a brief description of what it’s about:
Ash Lynx is raised by an infamous gangster, Dino Golzine. When Ash grows up, he has his own gang and he must stop Dino from catching hold of the Banana Fish, a mysterious drug that causes insanity.
—IMDB
Banana Fish originally debuted as a manga in 1985 and ended in 1994. Written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida, the target audience for the manga was shoujo audiences–girls and young women. It was serialized in the Bessatsu Shōjo Comic.
Banana Fish is darker fare, with violence, abuse, sexual trauma…but also is filled with devotion and themes of loyalty and sacrifice. It has one of the most tragic endings in anime and manga ever, in my opinion. When I watched the anime for the first time, I cried at the end of it. Happiness can be fleeting, friends.
After years of no news, Amazon Prime debuted an English dub of Banana Fish, which hugely excited me because I love the English voice actors, and I wanted to know who was going to be who (Daman Mills would be a great Ash, I think).
Alas, the worst thing that could possibly happen to Banana Fish happened:
Amazon dubbed the series in English using AI for all of the voices!
This disgusts me. There is so much talent out there in the world, and Amazon has like a gazillion dollars–they totally could have afforded to hire experienced, notable English VAs. Why the hell did they go the robot route?
And they do sound like robots. No expression. No emotion. Doing Banana Fish, a completely emotional series, without emotion, is a death sentence for the anime.
Look at this crap:
Although I can’t find anything to corroborate this, the rumor mill on Threads says that the makers of this trashy dub fed recordings of the original Japanese cast of Banana Fish into their AI program to teach it to “act.” So not only is this dub awful, but if this is true, Amazon committed a vast copyright violation, meaning this dub was built on theft.
It seems like Amazon Prime is not stopping with Banana Fish, either. The series No Game No Life and Vinland Saga apparently are getting the AI English dub treatment, too.
This isn’t the only time Amazon Prime has pissed me off with Banana Fish. Waaay back when the series debuted, I was disappointed to learn that the series would be locked into streaming and a Blu Ray/DVD of the series wasn’t going to happen. This is a missed opportunity for Amazon, I think, because anime fans are the most loyal consumers of physical media. The only way to get the series on Blu Ray is to buy the Japanese edition, which costs over $170 just for the first few episodes. If you want to order it from Amazon Japan directly to get it cheaper, that would be ¥11,978 (about $77) for part one. Not to mention we’re still dealing with tariffs, so it would actually be more. And I believe there are four parts to the series on Blu Ray. Goodbye, money!
Getting back on track…
We cannot let studios get away with using AI in the place of flesh-and-blood voice actors.
Blow up social media and tag Amazon and Crunchyroll (who is using AI to subtitle their anime). Write angry posts like this one. If you have self-control (I struggle with this), boycott them as much as you are capable. Write to them. Email them.
This is the start of a disturbing trend where AI is used to cut corners, cut costs, cut quality, and cut talented, human actors. If enough people voice their anger and frustration, and deprive Amazon and others of their hard-earned money, maybe they’ll get the message that we don’t accept this. We can’t accept this. We cannot go down this road any further.
Anime fans or no, what do you think about AI replacing voice actors?
Kristina Elyse Butke 
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