VICE CITY: NEW YORK IN THE 80s...

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... Epic in scope, and one of the best-selling shojo titles of all time in Japan, Akimi Yoshida put an electric shock into the genre and gained a huge crossover audience through Banana Fish's stripped-down, non-stop style.

The announcement of Ash's death on television news has young Eiji in shock and denial. Ash's body is prepared for autopsy, but Max Lobo is convinced that the body has only been made to look like Ash. Meanwhile, the real Ash Lynx is transferred to a medical compound controlled by the Union Corse and corrupt Senator Kippard, where he will be a guinea pig for the dreaded Banana Fish. But neither Ash nor his friends are content to let him rot there, and they begin their own independent escape plans