What Did 'JelloApocalypse' Say About The 'Lovely Complex' Anime Dub To Get Fired? The Viral Controversy Explained
A popular YouTuber and animator, JelloApocalypse, is receiving criticism after spilling a little too much behind-the-scenes dirt about the English dub of the anime series Lovely Complex. JelloApocalypse was working as a writer on the dub team when, recently, he released a long statement on Patreon that "lacked professional discretion," causing Discotek Media to cut all ties with him. Here's the full story.
Who Is 'JelloApocalypse' And What Is 'Lovely Complex?'
JelloApocalypse, real name Brendan Blaber, is an animator on YouTube with over 1.9 million subscribers. He's perhaps most well known for his "So This Is Basically" series of videos, in which he gives tongue-in-cheek explanations of a variety of TV shows, video games and anime series. Some of his most popular videos have tens of millions of views.
Lovely Complex, also known as Love Com, is a romantic comedy manga series that ran between 2001 and 2007 and was adapted into an anime series in 2007. The series follows a relationship between a tall girl and short boy. Previously, the series was only available to English viewers with subtitles until, in October 2023, Discotek Media announced the release of an English dub, which was released at the end of January 2024. Purportedly, JelloApocalypse was hired to work as a writer on the dub.
What Did 'JelloApocalypse' Say About 'Lovely Complex' That Got Him Fired?
About two weeks after the release of the English dub, JelloApocalypse made a long post to his Patreon page titled "Marissa And I Wrote An Anime Dub." While he spends a lot of the post praising the team behind the Lovely Complex dub, he also spends a lot of time criticizing the show itself. In particular, he points out a number of problematic plotlines and scenes from the series, calling out the portrayal of the trans character Seiko and the presence of repeated transphobic jokes about her.
JelloApocalypse claims that he pushed to have some of these jokes altered in the dub, but complains that the jokes were left in-tact in the English subtitles. Overall, his piece is very critical of the anime and its production, even struggling to recommend it, writing, "I think we turned an unremarkable and frustrating 3/10 show into a pretty funny and mostly watchable 7/10. I want to show off what we did! However, I don't really want to recommend that people watch LoveCom in order to see it."
The post quickly went viral and was shared across social media, leading JelloApocalypse to delete it. Unfortunately for JelloApocalypse the page had already been archived and continued to spread, making its way to the team over at Discotek Media.
A day after it went viral, Discotek Media released a statement explaining that they kept the problematic jokes in the English subtitles to keep them more accurate to the Japanese dialogue, something that is important to many anime fans. They also write that they won't be working with JelloApocalypse in the future for displaying a "lack of professional discretion."
For the full history of the JelloApocalypose Lovely Complex Controversy, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
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chausies
Lovely Complex is probably my favourite Romcom, it's insanely good. Unfortunately, a lot of why it's good is because of the Japanese dialogue, thick with different dialects and manners of speech that just can't be directly translated to english. Just like how Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker's accents/manners of speech are integral to enjoying Rush Hour.
Of all the anime to try and give an English dub to, I'm surprised they'd dig deep and go for this one #.#. Anyways, I'm still a fan of Jello's dope shit. Everyone's allowed to have some shitty takes every now and then.
TheOneWhoWroteThis
I remember watching JelloApocalypse when I was younger as I liked the animation style. I then took a break to go to college (2013-2017). I later tried getting into his content again, but it seemed REALLY insufferable (didn't notice it much as a kid since I was more interested in the animation). As such, I'm not too surprised that this news happened as JelloApocalypse is probably one of THE most insufferable YouTubers on the platform. I'm more surprised that he even got to work on this series since I don't think he usually works on official works (he usually just parodies them while constantly insulting the works).
The easiest way to get blacklisted in an industry like this is to talk crap about the work and/or company that you worked with. Word spreads fast within an industry, so I don't see him working with other members of the industry that vet their localizers.
My main concern is if this is a one time thing with Discotek. They tend to be pretty solid (I buy a lot of their works as they distribute stuff like Lupin III and Urusei Yatsura), but I can see this controversy hurting their reputation through association.
No!!
Look, I am all for transrights bit why Is backstabbing people so normalized in twitter? He doesn't need the anime he worked for anymore so backstab an throw under the bus it Is even though they opened so many doors for him…..treacherous dishonorable fucks….