Funimation Audio Leak Causes Controversy With NSFW Jokes

On Friday anime company Funimation shot up to the top spot in the Twitter trending column which, as most of you probably know, is often not a good thing.

The cause of this particular bout of virality was a string of leaked voice work that recorded some Dragon Ball Z actors (which appears to have included Goku’s English voice actor Sean Schemmel) making jokes involving homophobia, rape, and the acting out of pornographic scenes while still in character (which should make those weird porn parodies on tube sites a lot easier to dub). As you probably noticed, you can listen to some of the leaks above.

The recordings were part of warm-up sessions for the voice actors and, like most warm-ups, were previously unknown/unavailable to the public.

According to IGN, the clips were originally revealed by Nick Rekieta as he broadcasted his Rekieta Law livestream. Rekieta says that the jokes are a violation of Funimation’s work guidelines, and he also says that he got the recordings “absolutely, 100 percent legally.” He further maintains that he put out the clips in a journalistic capacity.

When IGN tried to reach Funimation for comment, they replied via email, “Funimation has no comment regarding your story.”

It’s unclear how this will ultimately impact Funimation (who does English dub work for the mega popular franchise), but GameRant is reporting that the audio seems to have angered some Japanese voice actors who have been actively tweeting about the controversy.

The raunchy audio is also surfacing to the public’s attention at the same time that Funimation finds themselves embroiled in a legal battle with a former voice actor, Vic Mignogna, who was ultimately fired after sexual misconduct allegations against him were brought forth on Twitter.