During the Iraq War, a soldier named Griff goes insane and starts killing his own platoon. After being subdued, all he kept speaking was the words “banana fish”.
Years later, Griff is taken care of by his brother Ash, a boy who ran away from home and was taken in by mob boss Papa Dino who abused him.
Now, Ash seeks to unravel the mystery of this banana fish, a phrase that keeps mysteriously popping up in his life.
Despite being gridlocked in the “is it gay or not?” debate, there is no arguing that this is one of anime’s most brutal and gripping thrillers. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Banana Fish, head on down below.
Anime Like Banana Fish
For Fans of Toppling Mafia Families
91 Days
Set during Prohibition, a man named Avilio returns to Lawless, a town famed for brewing illegal liquor, after the murder of his family by the mafia. A mysterious letter prompted him to return and infiltrate the Vanetti family to get his revenge.
This anime tells the story of the 91 days leading to the tragic end between Avilio and Nero Vanetti, the Don’s son.
Both 91 Days and Banana Fish have their plots fully dedicated to main characters taking down a Mafia family from within. However, while Ash is turned traitor on the Mafia family he was once part of, Avilio is an infiltrator looking to dismantle the family for vengeance.
In all truth, if you like Mafia stories, they are somewhat rare in anime, but both Banana Fish and 91 Days offer up the best Mafia anime experiences. They tell tautly-paced stories that highlight vengeance, betrayal, and intrigue in a captivating way.
Bungou Stray Dogs
The orphanage that Atsushi Nakajima has been living at has been recently plagued by a tiger that only he can see. Blaming him for the incident, they kick him out.
Now homeless, he wanders the streets until he meets the eccentric Osamu Dazai and saves him from drowning. As it turns out, Dazai is a supernatural detective and agrees to help him solve the mystery.
Like Banana Fish features a story about an ex-member going after his old Mafia family, so too does Bungou Stray Dogs have an element of that. However, it is framed as more of a detective agency story.
While both Banana Fish and Bungou Stray Dogs both present interesting stories, Bungou Stray Dogs – since everyone has some sort of power – is often more focused on big battles compared to the shootouts in Banana Fish.
Although they both take place in gritty, crime-riddled cities, Bungou Stray Dogs is more like a shounen battler than the more mature story unfolding in Banana Fish.
Tokyo Revengers
For Takemichi Hanagaki, his second year of middle school was when he peaked. He had a small amount of respect as a thug, a loyal group of friends, and even a girlfriend.
Fast forward twelve years later, and he is a single adult that can’t hold down a job. He has even found out that his middle school girlfriend was murdered by the vicious Tokyo Manji Gang.
After an accident, he finds himself back in middle school and discovers that he can travel back and forth in time in order to help change his past and his future.
While both Banana Fish and Tokyo Revengers are focused on gang politics, Tokyo Revengers is a bit more complicated than the straightforward story of revenge in Banana Fish. It is technically about time travel where the main character is trying to prevent a gang from becoming the monstrosity that lead to the death of someone he cared about in the future.
As such, instead of taking down that gang, he is often involved in taking down other gangs that threaten his new friends.
While Tokyo Revengers is a much more shounen action-focused series, it goes deep into gang politics and loves it moments of violence. They are just a little more stylized than the gritty gun violence in Banana Fish.
Gungrave
Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowel grew up on the streets together and both turned to crime in order to get by. However, when their activities are noticed by the eyes of the expansive Millennion mafia syndicate, the pair find themselves brought under their wings and rising through the ranks.
Things go well until one fateful day that changes it all.
Years later, Brandon Heat is brought back from the dead to fight Millennion and its new leader, Harry MacDowel.
Both Banana Fish and Gungrave are Mafia stories about one guy taking down a whole organization in a bloody spray of bullets.
The biggest difference outside of Gungrave’s sci-fi “resurrected from the dead” element, is how the story is told. Banana Fish is one linear tale of vengeance while Gungrave is split between a long flashback explaining how the main character entered the Mafia organization and where things soured, then flashing forward to the distant future where he is taking all his previous comrades down one-by-one.
For Fans of Light Boy’s Love
Yuri on Ice
After a crushing defeat at the Grand Prix finale, Yuuri Katsuki returns home no longer as Japan’s most promising figure skater. With his window for skating success closing, he assesses his options.
After a video of Yuuri performing a routine by five-time world champion Victor Nikiforov goes viral, he suddenly finds the champion on his doorstep, offering to be Yuuri’s mentor.
Banana Fish and Yuri on Ice are two anime series that are consistently subjected to the “is it gay?” debate. However, both Banana Fish and Yuri on Ice are telling stories focused on the main element (mafia intrigue/figure skating) while displaying a slowly building boy’s love relationship as a secondary element.
Both series explore pretty clear romantic feelings between the main characters without throwing the gayness in your face as much as yaoi fans are accustomed to.
No. 6
After a series of bloody wars, humanity retreated into six city-states. However, while everything seemed peaceful and perfect to the elite of these cities, the poor suffered.
One day, Shion, a resident of the elite, encountered Nezumi, a fugitive from outside the utopia. After taking him in, Shion and his family were forced from their home and now learn the ugly side of their society.
Banana Fish sort of hints at its boy’s love leanings early and often with the frequent off-screen implied sexual assault of the main character. That said, it doesn’t begin to show its boy’s love relationship until later on when their relationship deepens right past simply friendship.
No. 6, however, plays things closer to the vest. It subtly builds up the main characters as friends and suddenly they become something more. It’s like secret boy’s love that catches people off guard who didn’t know there was BL in these otherwise good anime.
While No. 6 isn’t a Mafia story, it does possesses a fairly intriguing plot where they are unrevealing the dark secrets of a post-apocalyptic society.
Given
On one particular day, Ritsuka Uenoyama decided that two things he loved – playing guitar and playing baseball – had become boring to him.
However, when he encountered Mafuyu Sato holding a broken guitar, he fixes it. Upon fixing it and hearing him sing, it leaves a huge impression.
Banana Fish and Given are both from a new age of boy’s love anime where sometimes you don’t even realize you are watching a boy’s love anime. Both series are about BL relationships, but not so forcefully romantic. Well, Banana Fish has plenty of force sexual assault, but that’s used more for shock value than contributing to the love story.
Instead, each series dedicates itself to a plot and building out its characters. While the band-focused Given is much different in plot from the Mafia revenge-focused Banana Fish, these two series are most similar in their subtle and slowly progressing boy’s love relationship that really invests you.
For Fans of Gangs and Criminals
Gangsta
Nicholas Brown and Worick Arcangelo work as handymen, mercenaries that will do anything for the right price.
Working for the mob and police alike, they delve into the underbelly of the city, a place that was once haven for Twilights, people who were augmented by a special drug.
While Banana Fish has plenty of intrigue, it isn’t really an action-focused anime despite following the bloody takedown of a Mafia family. If you enjoyed the gritty underworld aesthetic, but did want something a bit more focused on action as well as intrigue, Gangsta offers that.
Like Banana Fish, Gangsta’s plot also surrounds individuals that were tested on with an experimental substance. However, instead of being turned into berserk assassins by LSD, they developed superhuman abilities.
Black Lagoon
Average business man Rokurou Okajima found his life turned upside down when he was captured and held hostage by a mercenary group in Thailand called Black Lagoon.
After learning how disposable his life was to his company, he decides to quit the salaryman life and join the very group of mercenaries that held him hostage.
While he finds himself unexpectedly good at their various work, his ideals about the world vastly clash with those of his companions.
Both Banana Fish and Black Lagoon take place in areas inspired by the real world, but are distinctly fictional. While Banana Fish is a fictional version of New York, Black Lagoon takes place in a fictional Southeast Asian country in our world. However, what they most have in common is the stories that fully take place in the criminal underworld.
Both Banana Fish and Black Lagoon follow career criminals as they carve a path of destruction through wherever they go. However, while Banana Fish is focused on one Mafia family takedown, Black Lagoon, as it follows mercenaries, has more diverse jobs – though all criminal in nature.
Baccano
In the early 1930s, the transcontinental train, Flying Pussyfoot, starts a legendary journey across the country that will leave behind a trail of blood.
During this same period, the ambitious scientist Szilarf and his unwilling assistant Ennis investigate missing bottles of immortality elixir in New York. This can be traced back to 1711 where the alchemists creating this elixir learn the real price of being immortal.
Among these mysterious events, a Mafia war heats up.
Follow this intricate tale of alchemy, immortality, and survival as it weaves together many seemingly unrelated events.
Both Banana Fish and Baccano focus on primarily “western-style” criminal characters, using them to create an intriguing and often action-packed mystery. However, while both series have a way of gripping you with their tense mysteries, Baccano is a bit more difficult to digest.
Baccano is a story with a ton of characters, each with their own stories going on, and to make things more complicated, it is told non-linearly. As such, while Banana Fish is tautly paced, but easy to follow, Baccano requires a bit more thought to piece together events sometimes.
Great Pretender
After life turned him down the path of crime, Makoto Edamura cockily thinks himself the best swindler in Japan. However, after trying to swindle a tourist only for the tourist to swap it back, he finds the police on his trail.
Making his escape, he runs into this tourist again, a move that would take him all the way across the sea to Los Angeles. There, he learns that this tourist was in fact a man called Laurent Thierry, a successful confidence man, who wants to recruit him onto his team.
Both Banana Fish and Great Pretender are anime that follow criminal main characters. They also both draw you in with cool or clever main characters, but keep you coming back with their sad, sad backstories.
What Banana Fish does best is creating a well-paced revenge story that makes you want to see what happens next. Great Pretender does something similar, but with heists. When planning a heist, it draws you in so well that you simply need to see if it pays off.
IWGP – Ikebukuro West Gate Park
Ikebukuro is a thriving commercial district by day, but the different gang activity at night can cause issues for those that live there.
Makoto Majima works independently of any gang loyalty to solve various disputes in the neighborhood, often aided by the G-Boys, a strong gang led Makoto’s school friend Takashi Andou. However, when a rival gang known as the Red Angels starts to move in on the G-Boy’s turf, tensions rise between the two factions.
In a way, IWGP is a glimpse at Ash’s life before the gang war. No, no one in IWGP is being a child sex slave, but instead the plot focuses on a guy that wanders around gang territory and solves various disputes and problems in the gang and the community.
Both series surround pretty suave main characters who are deeply ingrained in gang activity. They mediate disputes and make sure that turf wars don’t break out in the neighborhood. Of course that is decidedly different from Banana Fish which is fully about starting a gang war.
Banana Fish has a more tautly-paced intrigue plot, but while IGWP is a slower tale, it does tell a good underworld story.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Banana Fish? Let fans know in the comments section below.
