In the world of anime, the debate between “dub” and “sub” springs eternal. Purists mostly prefer subtitles, claiming that audio dubbing strips the story and its characters of personality or life. And sure, bad dubs abound for anime translated from their native Japanese — but there are just as many great dubs, performed by actors who’ve become the defining voice for iconic characters. Like any voice work, it’s an art form so long as it’s taken seriously, but even sitting through a bad dub is a small price to pay for accessibility. After all, there are a handful of beloved projects, like 2018’s Banana Fish, that are still without an official dub at all. The medium has potential to be great; studios just need to invest in the proper ways. No one wins when companies cut corners, as Amazon’s new AI initiative wasted no time proving over the holiday weekend.
In the race to compete with heavyweights like Crunchyroll, Amazon has quietly rolled out a new beta program that creates AI-generated English and Spanish dubs for anime. While not officially announced by the streamer, fans streaming select anime caught on pretty quickly, sharing clips from shows like Banana Fish and films like No Game No Life Zero. To no one’s surprise, Amazon’s AI-generated dubs sound pretty awful, with tonally disjointed and lackluster line deliveries robbing major moments of all their narrative weight. That said, the quality of the dub isn’t really the issue here: it’s easy to push back against AI-created work when it’s bad. But it won’t be bad forever, especially not with corporations so committed to improving their algorithms as soon as possible.
