Amazon introduces AI English Dub for Animes
- Thread starter YCoCg
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kanjobazooie
Mouse Ball Fetishist
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falconhoof
Member
AI is pretty queer, so points for that I guess.
March Climber
Member
not much worse than some actual English dubs
every time I hear Dragonball's English dub I cringe hard... so, this isn't all that far off lol
And this type of response is, sadly, why anime dubbing might slowly die out. Half or more of the anime community don't care and wants people to be forced to watch subbed anyway.
My hope was that since this was going to happen anyway, that they would simply AI-dub using the Japanese voice actors' voices, thus the words, acting, and inflections remain the same but only the language changes. That would have been a decently accepted outcome.
This actual outcome is infinitely worse.
IAmRei
Member
my eyes are trained to see both : ))
i'm fine with male voice, but young female voice usually kind of weird : /
but again, this is my opinion.
shoegaze
Member
To me sounds the same as every other anime English dub!
Really hope Amazon doubles down on it and we have dubs for every language eventually generated by AI, as dubbing is ripe for automation. My mom cannot watch 99% of media because she can't speak any major languages. And there must be a lot of people like that.
Eventually it will be indistinguishable from high quality dubbing.
Then grifters can latch onto something else. And hipsters can still enjoy their high quality human dubbing on their VHS tapes.
Really hope Amazon doubles down on it and we have dubs for every language eventually generated by AI, as dubbing is ripe for automation. My mom cannot watch 99% of media because she can't speak any major languages. And there must be a lot of people like that.
Eventually it will be indistinguishable from high quality dubbing.
Then grifters can latch onto something else. And hipsters can still enjoy their high quality human dubbing on their VHS tapes.
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near
Gold Member
Ermmm, I disagree. Those responses were made because historically dubs have been dog-tier. Anime dubbing isn't dying because fans want to force everyone to watch subs. It's dying because studios rarely, if ever, invest properly in dubs.
Dubs are an afterthought, they're rushed and underfunded. While in Japan, voice acting is given much greater importance.
If studios made more of an effort to begin with, far more viewers would be happy to watch anime dubbed.
Soodanim
Member
I don't remember Dragon Ball's English dub being bad. Examples?not much worse than some actual English dubs
every time I hear Dragonball's English dub I cringe hard... so, this isn't all that far off lol
YCoCg
Member
Plenty of recent big hitters have had brilliant dubs, such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Attack on Titan, DanDaDan, etc and not to mention classics like Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy all being better in English than Japanese. This notion that all English Dubs are bad has been off for a long time and the fact that a lot of you here think that AI trash in the OP is "on par" with modern dubs is just laughable bias.
near
Gold Member
I'm not saying every dub is bad, I'm saying the industry as a whole hasn't invested in making high quality dubs the norm. Those that you've listed might be exceptions, but for every good dub there are dozens that are dogshit, that were underfunded and have no voice direction.
Obviously that inconsistency is why many fans default to subs. Because historically, the dubs have not matched the Japanese VAs.
If studios paid the same level of care to dubs far more consistently, the attitude towards dubs would shift. The fact that Amazon isn't even bothered with the example here should highlight how little they -and soon other studios- care about dubs.
YCoCg
Member
I dunno on this one, what range are we talking, shows like Chainsaw Man, Odd Taxi, Black Clover, Spy X Family, The Apothecary Diaries, etc all have very good dubs, I'd question if it's the more niche stuff, but even then Pluto on Netflix has an amazing dub. What shows these days do we consider bad dubs? Maybe I've just not seen them.
near
Gold Member
The last one I tried to watch dubbed was Lazarus and it was so bad that I dropped the show. Not necessarily only because of the voice acting, but that was a major contributing factor.
It just felt like it lacked emotion and direction. Bland.
YCoCg
Member
Oh I agree with that one, such a weird turn out considering Watanabe's previous works had brilliant dubs, again, Cowboy Bebop is probably one of the very rare ones where people push the dub instead of the original Japanese one. The story wasn't the strongest but damn the dub cast felt like they gave 50% on that one. That's probably one of the biggest recent examples of a bad dub.
near
Gold Member
I looove Watanabe's work, so I'll eventually get around to finishing it. But yeah, I was super disappointed in the voice acting, and also because I was forced into it by Channel 4.
I think we have good English speaking voice actors out there, but when it comes to dubbing anime, I feel like studios cop out. Predator: Killer of Killers and LotR: The War of the Rohirrim both have exceptional voice direction, because the studios involved spent the time and money to get it right, and because they were both English-language productions.
March Climber
Member
Believe it or not things were actually improving in the 2010s. Lots of good dub work on a multitude of properties and Funimation was treating it like an actual serious endeavor for their business. Thanks to their connections and backing by Sony they were one of the few companies who initially reached out to Japanese studios and had very close relationships with them.
Hell, Funimation were one of the biggest pioneers behind the idea of a 'simuldub' which helped so that dub fans wouldn't have to wait extremely long for english editions to come out.
One of the biggest hits to dubbing from late 2010s into 2020s was the fact that Funimation was absorbed into Crunchyroll, a company who still to this day never took dubs as seriously, is poor with their release schedule to the point where they inconsistently release them to this very day, would have mistranslation errors, and would sometimes hire cheaper talent on exclusive content. To this day they are still missing certain dubs from Funimation even though they promised to not let that happen post-merge.
I have gone into this on threads in the past, but Funimation acted like an actual big business and Crunchyroll just happened to be the more popular company. Crunchyroll is the Twitch of anime and it sucks that we are where we are today.
So when I lament about the future death of english dubbing, just know that it's more than just this AI development that lead us to this point and where we are headed.
It's why I won't bother busting out lists of anime with good dubs like
YCoCg
… You don't care 
. You don't care because you're in the age demographic that experienced the growing pains of dubbing in the 90s and still equate that same quality to the entire dubbing industry of today. So there's no point. All I can do is sit back and watch as two snowballs that were started from two different directions on the dubbing mountain inevitably cause a double avalanche at the bottom.
calico
Member
They can do this but most of the shit I watch on Amazon doesn't even have functioning English subs for foreign dialogue sections. Ok.
I'm all for AI voice as a dev option for gaming if/when they eventually figure out how to make it not suck. The quality in this video is obviously nowhere near ready to be shown to an audience - I'm not sure what they are hoping to gain from a beta like this.
I'm all for AI voice as a dev option for gaming if/when they eventually figure out how to make it not suck. The quality in this video is obviously nowhere near ready to be shown to an audience - I'm not sure what they are hoping to gain from a beta like this.
GateofD
Member
A lot of the modern dubs are actually really bad. You pick a handful out of hundreds. And most of these are from over 20 years ago.
So many seasonal animes and ones with a mid tier fan base on them has the most hallow dubs ever. Which is in the same category or higher than Bananafish. Everytime I come across a bunch of random dub clips when I doom scroll shorts, I think it was a fandub or something. Guess even take a popular one like hero academia. The dub is slop.
YCoCg
Member
Which ones do you consider bad?
And of course Ghost Stories. That had a great dub.
It's not particularly good, then again it's not as bad as the English in "Itazura na Kiss" which I've mentioned before. (And yes I know the VA in that are Japanese but the characters that speak English 2 of them are from England and the other one is supposed to be a genius so you'd think they could just hire a couple of people just to do the english voices.)
BTW I've seen Banana Fish(I thought it was good) so I got to ask the obvious question since it seems like people are claiming they did it because Amazon is "Anti-queer". Umm, you did know the show is actually more about pedophilia right? (I mean literally a huge theme in the show is about child molestation. The only time we're sure about the sexual orientation of characters they're pedophiles.)
BTW I've seen Banana Fish(I thought it was good) so I got to ask the obvious question since it seems like people are claiming they did it because Amazon is "Anti-queer". Umm, you did know the show is actually more about pedophilia right? (I mean literally a huge theme in the show is about child molestation. The only time we're sure about the sexual orientation of characters they're pedophiles.)
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Reizo Ryuu
Member
Yeah that's awful.
Mostly cause I can't stand engrish, and understand enough Japanese to get annoyed with the samey recycled archetypical performances over and over.
Only really watch subbed if the anime takes place in japan or uses a lot of japanese names/idioms.
Anyway this AI shit is some of the worst "performances" I've ever heard, people saying it sounds the same as en dubs in general, just come across as "always sub" weebs.
I watch most anime dubbed
Mostly cause I can't stand engrish, and understand enough Japanese to get annoyed with the samey recycled archetypical performances over and over.
Only really watch subbed if the anime takes place in japan or uses a lot of japanese names/idioms.
Anyway this AI shit is some of the worst "performances" I've ever heard, people saying it sounds the same as en dubs in general, just come across as "always sub" weebs.
Tams
Member
Other than the odd robotic intonation and word merging (they clearly cheaped out on the LLM they used), it sounds as identically bad as almost all English dubs. 
In fact, the LLM must have been trained on those same shitty voice actors, as it really does sound just like them.
In fact, the LLM must have been trained on those same shitty voice actors, as it really does sound just like them.
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Tams
Member
It's not that I think subs are superior; it's that 95%+ of dubs are pure shite and, for me at least, painful to listen to.
I actually prefer the very rare good dubs out there.
Tams
Member
They are all at best good, mostly listenable.
The problem is the voice actors ham it up far too much as if the animation is lacking emotion so they have to express it.
T.v
Member
This is my main issue with most dubs as well. There's not a genuine bit of acting in them. Not surprising, since most voice actors seem to be gay cunts too busy posting on social media to take acting classes nowadays.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
OmegaSupreme
advanced basic bitch
Good God subs only people are insufferable
The_hunter
Member
Only noobs watch anime dubs
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