Banana Fish
Banana Fish on Netflix: The Dub That Almost Wasn’t, and Why It Matters
Banana Fish ran for 24 episodes on Fuji TV and Amazon Prime Video in 2018, directed by Hiroko Utsumi with series composition by Hiroshi Seko. It adapted Yoshida’s shojo manga, which ran from 1985 to 1994 and built an international readership long before anime was widely streamed. The absence of a human English dub had been the community’s most-cited frustration for years. When Amazon filled that gap in late 2025 with an AI-generated cast, the backlash pulled the dub within days. Netflix’s August 12, 2026 release is the version the series was always going to need.
Voice Cast: Brandon McInnis as Ash and Jonathan Tanigaki as Eiji
The voice cast of Banana Fish builds its entire weight on two performances. Brandon McInnis voices Ash Lynx: best known for Gyutaro in Demon Slayer, Sir Nighteye in My Hero Academia, and Gen Asagiri in Dr. Stone, McInnis specializes in characters whose surface confidence sits directly on top of serious damage. Ash runs a street gang on pure survival instinct, and the performance has to hold both registers at once without letting either collapse. McInnis has shown, across multiple roles, that he can. Jonathan Tanigaki voices Eiji Okumura in his first lead anime dub role. Tanigaki’s credits are primarily live-action, NCIS: Hawaii, S.W.A.T., Hulu’s Paradise and that grounded, physically present quality transfers cleanly to Eiji, the one character Ash genuinely cannot perform around.
THE BANANA FISH CAST
| Character | English Voice Actor | Japanese Voice Actor |
|---|---|---|
