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Banana Fish Anime Reveals Cast, More Staff, 1st Promo Video, Modern-Day Setting

The staff of the television anime adaptation of Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish manga announced the main cast and debuted the first promotional video during a livestream presentation on Thursday. The video reveals that the anime will premiere on Fuji TV's late-night anime programming block in July, and will stream inside and outside of Japan only on Amazon Prime Video

The anime stars:

Yūma Uchida (ReLIFE's Kazuomi Ōga, Yowamushi Pedal Glory Line's Yūto Shinkai) as Ash Lynx

Kenji Nojima (Psycho-Pass' Nobuchika Ginoza, Sailor Moon Crystal's Mamoru Chiba) as Eiji Okumura

Unshō Ishizuka (Cowboy Bebop's Jet, Dragon Ball Super's Mr. Satan) as Dino Golzine

Hiroaki Hirata (One Piece's Sanji, Sword Art Online's Klein) as Max Lobo

The show's staff also revealed at the event that the anime will take place in modern day New York, instead of in the 1980s when the original manga took place. The anime will be two cours (two quarters of a year) in length, with 24 episodes, and will adapt the entire manga to the end, changing only the setting to the modern day.

Hiroko Utsumi (Free!) is directing the anime at MAPPA, and Hiroshi Seko (Ajin, Mob Psycho 100, Inuyashiki Last Hero) is in charge of the series scripts. Akemi Hayashi (Fruits Basket, Peacemaker, Doukyusei -Classmates-) is designing the characters. Shinichi Osawa (Ninja Slayer From Animation) is composing the music. Akitsugu Hisagi (key animator for Kids on the Slope, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG) is the show's "hard-boiled supervisor."

Additional staff members include:

• Chief Animation Directors: Ayumi Yamada, Shinpei Kamada
• Sound Director: Yō Yamada
• Color Design: Chikako Kamata
• Art Director: Toshiharu Mizutani
• Director of Photography: Yusuke Tannawa
• Editing: Hiroshi Okuda

Viz published the manga in English, and it describes the story:

Vice City: New York in the 80s... Nature made Ash Lynx beautiful; nurture made him a cold ruthless killer. A child runaway brought up as the adopted heir, hatchet man, and sex toy of "Papa" Dino Golzine, the East Coast's Corsican crime lord, Ash is now at the rebellious age of seventeen - forsaking the kingdom of power and riches held out by the devil who raised him, preferring a code he can live with among a small but loyal gang of street thugs. But his "Papa" can't simply let him go - not when the hideous secret that drove Ash's older brother mad in Vietnam has suddenly fallen into his insatiably ambitious hands.

It's exactly the wrong time for Eiji Okamura, a pure-hearted young photographer from Japan, to arrive in NYC and make Ash Lynx's acquaintance... and fall with him into the bloody whirlpool of pride, greed, lust and wrath unleashed by the enigma code-named Banana Fish...

The manga ran in Shogakukan's Bessatsu Shōjo Comic magazine from 1985 to 1994, but the upcoming adaptation is the manga's first anime. Shogakukan published the manga in 19 volumes in Japan, and then reissued the manga in 11 volumes (plus a side-story volume). The series has more than 11 million copies in print. The manga already inspired several stage plays.

Yoshida's Umimachi Diary manga inspired a live-action film by director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows, Air Doll), and Sony Pictures Classics licensed the film in the United States under the title Our Little Sister.