When I saw the words Banana Fish English dub available now start circulating online, I almost didn’t believe it. Like, Banana Fish? That Banana Fish? The emotional, gut-punching anime that lives rent-free in my heart? After all these years, getting a proper English dub suddenly? It felt too good to be true.

And for a moment — I’ll admit it — I was excited. Because let’s be real: BL fans like me have waited forever for something like this. The thought of hearing Ash and Eiji’s voices in English, bringing their pain and tenderness to a new audience? That had me pressing play immediately.

But then… I listened. And something didn’t feel right.

Amazon’s Banana Fish English dub AI release felt like a gift — until fans actually heard it

At first glance, this surprise dub drop on Amazon looked like an unexpected blessing. Fans took to social media sharing the news — “Finally!” “Wait, is this real?!” — and for older anime lovers, it felt like a long-awaited win. But that joy was short-lived.

Because the moment the voices kicked in, a strange flatness took over. The emotion? Missing. The pacing? Off. And those subtle, heartbreaking nuances Banana Fish is known for? Completely gone.

That’s when the double take happened.

Scrolling through Reddit and Twitter, the reactions quickly turned from “OMG IT’S HERE” to “Wait… is this AI?!” One fan said it felt like a “soulless text-to-speech audiobook,” while another described it as “emotionally hollow” and “deeply unsettling.”

And sure enough, according to multiple reports, the Banana Fish English dub wasn’t performed by actors at all. It was entirely AI-generated, part of Amazon’s new dubbing tool powered by its own machine learning model. [AV Club]

Fans and voice actors alike are calling it an insult to the anime community

Once the truth came out, the outrage hit fast. For fans who adore Banana Fish, the idea that such an emotionally loaded, character-driven story was handed off to a machine felt not only disappointing — it felt disrespectful.

Across social media, people didn’t hold back. One Redditor summed it up plainly:

“This was literally soulless and directly spits in the face of every person who worked on this show in Japan.”

[Reddit]

And it wasn’t just fans who were upset. Voice actors, who are already facing pressure from generative AI, expressed shock and anger.

Daman Mills, known for roles in SK8 the Infinity and Dragon Ball Super, called the dub “AI-generated garbage” and questioned why such a sensitive story — one dealing with queerness, trauma, and identity — was offloaded to a machine. [ComicBook]

Another actor, Nick Huber, went even further, tweeting:

“It was so f—ing atrocious that I thought it was a cruel joke.”

In one quote that’s stuck with me all week, Mills asked:

“Was a queer trauma narrative handed to a machine because paying real actors is too hard?”

The AI dub isn’t just low-quality — it feels like a loss of care and connection

What makes this sting isn’t just the robotic tone or the awkward delivery — it’s what it symbolizes. BL fans know that stories like Banana Fish don’t come around often. When they do, they matter. They hit hard. And they deserve to be treated with care.

But this dub? It wasn’t crafted. It was generated.

It’s hard not to feel like this was a budget move, plain and simple. A way to check a box without paying artists to do the actual work of acting. And when you’re a fan — especially one who’s waited years to share this show with others — that feels like a punch to the gut.

This could be a warning sign for the future of anime — and fans are pushing back

What’s happening with Banana Fish is more than one bad dub. It’s a snapshot of a bigger, looming issue. Amazon’s use of AI dubbing is being pitched as a “solution” to translation and localization costs — but at what cost?

For fans, voice actors, translators, and the anime industry at large, this feels like a line crossed. If major platforms are willing to hand beloved series to algorithms, it puts the heart of storytelling — and the people behind it — at risk.

And if they’ll do this to Banana Fish, what’s next?

Right now, the community is speaking out. Loudly. Refusing to accept this dub as the standard. Asking Amazon to reconsider. And maybe, just maybe, this backlash will make an impact — because what we love deserves more than just machine voices.

It deserves people. It deserves care.

It deserves heart.