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Free's Hiroko Utsumi Directs Banana Fish Shōjo Crime Action TV Anime

A website has opened at midnight on Monday to announce that a television anime adaptation of Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish manga has been green-lit. The anime is part of the 40th anniversary of Yoshida's debut as a manga creator. It will air in Fuji TV's late-night anime programming block Noitamina next year.

Text: Akimi Yoshida's 40th anniversary project
Text: That comic masterpiece is finally adapted for the screen!
Text: Banana Fish
Text: Creator: Umimachi Diary's Akimi Yoshida (Shogakukan's Flower Comics imprint)
Text: Director: Hiroko Utsumi (Free!)
Text: Series Script Supervisor: Hiroshi Seko (Inuyashiki)
Text: Character Design: Akemi Hayashi (Doukyusei -Classmates-)
Text: Animation Production: MAPPA (Yuri!!! on Ice)
Text: Anime adaptation green-lit for Fuji TV's "Noitamina" and elsewhere in 2018

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.

The manga ran in Shogakukan's Bessatsu Shōjo Comic magazine from 1985 to 1994, although 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). It 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. Shogakukan is publishing a Mangakahon special Yoshida Akimi Hon book as part of its Mangakahon series on manga creators on December 25 to celebrate her 40th anniversary.

Yoshida's diary website had teased on October 16 that it would have an "important announcement" at midnight on Monday. The announcement is also debuting on screens at the underground passageway outside the ticket gates at Tokyo's Seibu Ikebukuro station on Monday.

Thanks to Dennis R for the embedded video

Source: Comic Natalie