When people pull out the idea of "a witch" as a strange, evil creature based on the old stories made up for witch trials, it's not depicting a fantastic imaginary monster. Those were real lies, used to condemn real people for personal reasons. Perpetuating the stories as realistic is disrespectful.

A lot of people died in the witch hunts. They were a convenient way to dispose of inconvenient women, or people you had grudges against, and to this day there are parts of the world where being born with the wrong features or practicing folk medicine can get you killed. The stories were excuses.

I think my biggest pet peeve is when fantasy stories present the idea of a "witch" as being another (evil) race, or someone who was specifically bound to or a worshipper of Satan, and recreate hyperbolic slander from the witch trials about black masses or blood sacrifices at face value.

ALL you have to do is just not use it, tell these companies you aren't using it, and make fun of people who do. We need a mass collective effort to make genAI extremely uncool, lame, embarrassing, cringe. Everyone needs to react to it with a MOUNTAIN of hostility until they run out of steam.

Thanks for the added info! Trying to find out how this works has been incredibly tricky. And of course it's an added level of obfuscation when the company with the localization license turns out to be Amazon itself.

I've always been a sub person, and I expect to stay a sub person, but I still want dub actors to get respect for their work. It's still a job they're doing that's creative, and requires skill and professionalism. People who do prefer dubs, or need audio translation, deserve better than this.

However, multiple people have affirmatively confirmed the AI dub has *replaced* the previous English dub, by voice actors, on No Game, No Life, which was also by Sentai. So who knows?

twitter.com/otakuspirite...

Looking at the listing page, I can't get the full track information without paying for episodes, but there's a possibility the AI dub is only on season 2 (not really a great thing, still). If a dub *actor* is credited on season 1 but they didn't keep the track, that's a whole different issue.

Those are the titles I've seen reported so far, but I'm sure there are more.

If your favorite anime is in the same boat, with execs cutting actor and translator jobs for far-below-adequate AI dubs *and subs* (they've been here for awhile), tell not just Amazon but the people who distribute *through* Amazon why you're planning to drop.

This sucks. You should say so.

AI dub tracks of abysmal quality have been reported to my knowledge on @primevideo.bsky.social for:

No Game No Life - released by Madhouse, licensed by Sentai Filmworks
Banana Fish - released by @mappainfo.bsky.social , licensed by... oh, Amazon. huh. 👀
Vinland Saga - MAPPA, @crunchyroll.com et al.