Banana Fish gets revived as it finds its new home on Netflix.
Netflix announced that the anime will premiere on its platform on August 12 with exclusive English and French dubs. Interestingly, the English dubs feature voice actors that match Ash Lynx and Eiji Okumura’s ethnicities. Brandon McInnis will voice Ash in the English dub while JOnathan Tanigaki will voice Eiji. Sébastien Baulain will voice Ash in the French dub and Grégory Laisné will voice Eiji. The anime will be available in the following regions:
- US
- Canada
- UK
- Ireland
- France
Banana Fish, written and illustrated by Akima Yoshida, was serialized from May 1985 to April 1994. The manga received critical acclaim not only for its realist artwork, plot, action sequences, and storytelling, but also for its depiction of a same-sex relationship that, while wasn’t overtly sexual or romantic, was undoubtedly a romantic relationship that speaks to the souls of Ash and Eiji. Although controversial, Banana Fish‘s influence can be felt in stories today. The shojo manga has over 12 million copies in print as of 2018.
The manga inspired a 24-episode anime adaptation with Studio MAPPA helming the animation and production with Hiroko Utsumi as the director. The anime aired from July to December 2018 on Amazon Prime Video in Japanese. Amazon, for some reason, decided to venture into AI-generated voice acting and also decided to use it on Banana Fish on November 30, 2025. After much criticism and denunciation from voice actors, news outlets, and fans alike, Amazon removed the AI dub a few days later. The anime also left Amazon recently.
Viz describes the first volume:
Nature made Ash Lynx beautiful; nurture made him a cold ruthless killer. A runaway brought up as the adopted heir and sex toy of “Papa” Dino Golzine, Ash, now at the rebellious age of seventeen, forsakes the kingdom held out by the devil who raised him. But the hideous secret that drove Ash’s older brother mad in Vietnam has suddenly fallen into Papa’s insatiably ambitious hands–and it’s exactly the wrong time for Eiji Okamura, a pure-hearted young photographer from Japan, to make Ash Lynx’s acquaintance…
Banana Fish premieres on Netflix on August 12 in English and French dubs.
Source: Netflix
