Westerners hoping to try out the darling Gatebox Virtual Assistant will be aghast at the decisions of the development team, as they have brought the device to the West but removed the cute anime girls in favor of realistic 3D models of humans, such as a woman in business attire and an athletic middle-aged man.

A reporter from Engadget was at CES 2020 and got to check out the Westernized product, where he learned that an unnamed company from the United States together with tech developers from New Zealand decided to “strip out all of the innate cultural Japanese-ness and replace it with a system that feels more palatable for Western customers”:

The new Western Gatebox is supposed to serve as a virtual concierge system that is available 24/7 or as clerks and advisors at businesses such as gyms, with those in charge being rather disillusioned as to the original purpose of the product.

Westerners who apparently would have loved to purchase the anime-form of the device were not afraid to voice their opinions regarding the absurd decision of changing the initial design: