and the extensive use of speed lines, represented a break from the typical visual and narrative conventions of manga. Yoshida has stated that her interest in action stems from childhood, specifically her desire to play active sports like soccer instead of typically feminine pursuits such as rhythmic dance, and that the preponderance of male characters in Banana Fish stemmed in part from her difficulty in imagining stereotypically passive girls in these active scenarios. Violence and its dehumanizing effects recur as a major theme throughout the series, as character struggle to reconcile their humanity with the violent acts they commit and endure. Ash represents the apex of this theme: a character whose traumatic past has left him resigned to a life of violence, and who faces the conflict between his desire for a "normal" life with Eiji, and his desire to "protect Eiji from the horrors of his violent life". Sexual violence also recurs throughout the series, with depictions of rape that Parte argues echo scenes of sexual abuse of women in erotic manga. Thompson notes how the series does not contain any explicit depictions sex or nudity, and how rape is depicted "entirely as trauma and never as titillation", contrasting the common theme of rape fantasy in BL manga. Reception and legacy , over 12 million copies of collected volumes of Banana Fish are in print. A 1998 reader's poll in the Japanese magazine Comic Link ranked Banana Fish as the greatest manga of all time. While Yoshida had published several manga titles prior to Banana Fish, the series became her most critically and commercially successful work, and "cemented her status as a great creator". Though Banana Fish was published and marketed as a manga, its dense plot, heavy dialogue, and extensive action sequences led it to attract a significant crossover audience of male and adult female readers; Schodt identifies the series as "one of the few girls' manga a red-blooded Japanese male adult could admit to reading without blushing". The series was similarly praised "as an example of mature, plot-driven comics" when it was released in English, and became one of the earliest manga series to reach a wide audience in the United States. Banana Fish was particularly influential on the boys' love genre, inspiring a wave of action-centered boys' love manga which focused on older protagonists and realist artwork, including Fake, Yellow, and Togainu no Chi. The series