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Banana Fish Comes Home to New York for Sightseeing Tour

Tourism company Kinki Nippon Tourist Kanto announced it has a new trip package to New York designed for fans of Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish manga and anime series. The tour focuses on locations in New York and Manhattan that appear in the series, like the American Museum of Natural History, Grand Central Station, the area surrounding Exchange Place in Jersey, Chinatown, and the Staten Island Ferry.

The tour also includes a bus to take tourists from place to place. The bus tour is "guided" with commentary by Kenji Nojima and Yūma Uchida, the voices behind characters Eiji Okumura and Ash Lynx. After the day's activities conclude, tourists can attend a private dinner party and screening of Banana Fish's final episode while perusing unique merchandise.

The company began accepting applications for the tour on Monday. The entire trip covers five days and three nights from February 20-24, 2019. The total cost is 264,000 yen (US$2,327) per person.

The Banana Fish anime premiered on Fuji TV's Noitamina block on July 5. Subsequent episodes are premiering on Amazon in Japan one hour after they air on Fuji TV. Amazon Prime Video is streaming the series with English subtitles. The anime will be 24 episodes, and will adapt the entire manga to the end, changing only the setting to the modern day. The anime takes place in modern day New York, instead of in the 1980s when the original manga took place.

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...

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."

Source: Comic Natalie