Some Banana Fish Gushing
A friend asked my why I like Banana Fish. She has just seen the anime and wasn't quite getting the appeal. I wrote so much in reply that I figured I'd post it here or anyone else who might want to read thoughts on BF. (Spoilers for the whole shebang)
Well, from what I’ve seen of the anime-something I’ve desperately wanted for years-I’m also not super fannishly enthralled with it, and it’s interesting to contemplate why, because it is a quite faithful adaptation of the manga. The plot is very close, a lot of the scenes are exact, the character designs are really like the manga, etc. So why is it not connecting the way the manga did…?
I think it may have to do with “chunking,” for want of a better word. When I really think back on the manga, it’s true that a lot of it is dross. It’s got boring plots that don’t make sense with Ash and Eiji split up for volumes at a time. But in manga format, you can skim all that (literally and mentally) and zero in on the core Ash and Eiji stuff. The anime has mostly the same stuff, but in an anime medium, you can’t skip and scan in the same way. You mostly have to watch everything in sequence, and it highlights the fact that a lot of space is wasted on silly plots. In the manga, you can hone in on the “chunks” that are really good.
Some things, though, the manga does better. It just has more detail, which fleshes out the characters, especially some of the secondary characters. The anime early on did some really weird revisions of the reveals about Ash’s past and the development of his relationship with Eiji. For example, they had his dad tell this room full of everyone all about his traumatic past, which had a few bad narrative effects: 1) What?? Why would his dad say this to a bunch of strangers? 2) It wrecked the scene where Ash tells Eiji all this one on one. They also did some weird, premature thing where Eiji declared he’d stay by Ash’s side before Ash asks him to, which means they cut out where he really says he’s going to say with Ash forever (aka the most famous scene in Banana Fish), and it came out really awkward. The modernization was also a bad idea, making some 1980s cultural things not sit well, though this is pretty minor.
As to characterization, Eiji is spot on in the anime, much more so than in the AXEL live action play (which I recommend). I really like Ash in the anime and his seiyu, but he feels different from Ash in the manga. I’m not sure how much of this is language. I read the manga in English and got a really strong sense of Ash’s American voice (though I think the accent I do him in is more New Jersey than New York). His Japanese voice is utterly different-and I feel like overall, the character feels older, more staid, less snarky. The relatively low voice contributes to this.
So those are reasons why I might favor the manga as a way in to the story. But I can't guarantee you’d like the manga; it is pretty much like the anime. But here are some reasons I like the manga…
Well, I wrote up some stuff in this essay. Here’s the LJ link: https://labingi.livejournal.com/293173.html
In a nutshell, I find the love between Ash and Eiji very touching on two (related) counts. First, it is a beautiful example of two people who really click and complete each other and really always want what is best for each other, and act, to the best of their ability, on that impulse. Now, that sounds like it could be very boring, but for me, it is rescued from boring by 1) Ash’s emotional screwed-upedness and 2) the humor. (Eiji is rescued from being a fairly boring male damsel/perfect person by his sense of humor, which is actually really damn sharp.)
Second, and also a factor that preempts the boredom, it is a glorious example of friendship bonding (see essay above). This is meaningful to me personally, but it’s also very well written. Ash and Eiji do not have a sexual relationship, in fact or subtext, and this is very important because Ash is not ready for one, but they also don’t have a typical guys-who-are-friends relationship. They have a very intimate, emotionally open and vulnerable, acknowledged (if not in so many words) love for each other. That’s really rare to see in fiction. It’s so rare I can’t think of another example right now… well, Vash and Wolfwood and, in a different way, Harry and Brandon in Gungrave. But it’s pretty rare.
Now, BF is also a kind of odd win for me in that both Ash and Eiji are close to being annoying types of characters. Eiji is close to a damsel (see humor above), and Ash is absolutely a Mary Sue. I don’t like Mary Sues anymore than the next person, so why does Ash work for me? To be honest, partly because he’s male-my internalized misogyny is giving him some passes-but it’s not just that. Ash works, I think, because the basic structure of his messed up psyche makes sense and has pathos. Now, he’s not utterly psychologically realistic: he’s far too conventionally “good" and high functioning for someone who really suffered all that trauma and hasn’t had a truly good role model since he was, like, five. But I will squint my eyes and chock that up to Griffin being an amazing brother, Shorter being an amazing friend, Blanca having some stabilizing characteristics, Jennifer being an okay stepmom, Dad not being all that horrific, and Ash just having an amazing personality (some people do). He’s still badly scarred, and we see this in his pseudo-suicidal attitude toward life, his almost complete inability to be vulnerable, except with Eiji, and his inability to have positive sexual relationships. He also has the very plausible characteristic of being very quick on the trigger, walking through life prepared at any moment to be attacked. I actually identify quite strong with Ash, despite not being a super person or having gone through anything like his traumas, and I think that must speak to something real in the way his mind is presented.
I also like some of the secondary character stuff very much. The Ash-Shorter-Sing-Lau tangle is very, very good-maybe better in the manga than anime. I’ve seen the anime through ep. 18 now, I think, and I feel like the true insupportability of Sing’s position was not fully expressed. Sing loved Shorter-and all the Chinese gang loved Shorter-and Sing, as their new leader, needs to avenge Shorter, but he also really, really wants to do what’s fair. He really wants to know the real story and ultimately realizes they need to work with Ash to crack the whole banana fish thing and realizes that Ash is not to blame and shouldn’t die for Shorter’s death, but he still needs to appease his gang, and he tries to walk this tightrope (this kid who’s like 15), and he can’t. It costs him his own brother’s trust, and ultimately costs him his brother-as well as Ash’s life.
I also really love the narrative function of Blanca, though Blanca as a person I want to smack. Blanca is a bull in a china shop emotionally. He’s not a bad man, and in his KGB-super-assassin way is trying to do the right thing. But he keeps stepping on people in the most emotionally harmful ways, precisely by walking this line he tries to walk between nice guy and worldly assassin working for the mafia. He does a number on Ash because he is nice enough to gain some of his trust and certainly his respect and admiration-and then he tells him to stay with Golzine and let himself be raped because it will be worth getting the mafia power in the end, which is a higher-end version of exactly the same line Ash got from his father, who told him to put up with being raped by his coach as long as got paid. This is the last thing Ash needs to hear from the only quasi-positive mentor he has and it wrecks any possible genuinely positive relationship he might have had with Blanca-even though Blanca does love him. And then, Blanca does a number of Yut Lung too. In a similar way, he becomes they only remotely good and kind support figure in the life of a young man who desperately needs someone on his side, a friend, mentor, etc. Yut Lung is already cracking under the weight of his envy of anyone who is genuinely loved-by anyone: Ash, Eiji, anyone. And then Blanca ditches him, explicitly to choose Ash over him. That was the last thing he needed too, and that wound is not going to heal. Oh, Blanca...
For the rest, a lot of my engagement with BF now is fan fictional and very much based on my long BF AU fic. I tried to keep that fic “In character,” but writing 60 years of their lives obviously extends my view of them beyond the year or so we see in the canon story, and at this point, I’m very attached to those extended characters. It’s here if you’re interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169662/chapters/247686
Well, from what I’ve seen of the anime-something I’ve desperately wanted for years-I’m also not super fannishly enthralled with it, and it’s interesting to contemplate why, because it is a quite faithful adaptation of the manga. The plot is very close, a lot of the scenes are exact, the character designs are really like the manga, etc. So why is it not connecting the way the manga did…?
I think it may have to do with “chunking,” for want of a better word. When I really think back on the manga, it’s true that a lot of it is dross. It’s got boring plots that don’t make sense with Ash and Eiji split up for volumes at a time. But in manga format, you can skim all that (literally and mentally) and zero in on the core Ash and Eiji stuff. The anime has mostly the same stuff, but in an anime medium, you can’t skip and scan in the same way. You mostly have to watch everything in sequence, and it highlights the fact that a lot of space is wasted on silly plots. In the manga, you can hone in on the “chunks” that are really good.
Some things, though, the manga does better. It just has more detail, which fleshes out the characters, especially some of the secondary characters. The anime early on did some really weird revisions of the reveals about Ash’s past and the development of his relationship with Eiji. For example, they had his dad tell this room full of everyone all about his traumatic past, which had a few bad narrative effects: 1) What?? Why would his dad say this to a bunch of strangers? 2) It wrecked the scene where Ash tells Eiji all this one on one. They also did some weird, premature thing where Eiji declared he’d stay by Ash’s side before Ash asks him to, which means they cut out where he really says he’s going to say with Ash forever (aka the most famous scene in Banana Fish), and it came out really awkward. The modernization was also a bad idea, making some 1980s cultural things not sit well, though this is pretty minor.
As to characterization, Eiji is spot on in the anime, much more so than in the AXEL live action play (which I recommend). I really like Ash in the anime and his seiyu, but he feels different from Ash in the manga. I’m not sure how much of this is language. I read the manga in English and got a really strong sense of Ash’s American voice (though I think the accent I do him in is more New Jersey than New York). His Japanese voice is utterly different-and I feel like overall, the character feels older, more staid, less snarky. The relatively low voice contributes to this.
So those are reasons why I might favor the manga as a way in to the story. But I can't guarantee you’d like the manga; it is pretty much like the anime. But here are some reasons I like the manga…
Well, I wrote up some stuff in this essay. Here’s the LJ link: https://labingi.livejournal.com/293173.html
In a nutshell, I find the love between Ash and Eiji very touching on two (related) counts. First, it is a beautiful example of two people who really click and complete each other and really always want what is best for each other, and act, to the best of their ability, on that impulse. Now, that sounds like it could be very boring, but for me, it is rescued from boring by 1) Ash’s emotional screwed-upedness and 2) the humor. (Eiji is rescued from being a fairly boring male damsel/perfect person by his sense of humor, which is actually really damn sharp.)
Second, and also a factor that preempts the boredom, it is a glorious example of friendship bonding (see essay above). This is meaningful to me personally, but it’s also very well written. Ash and Eiji do not have a sexual relationship, in fact or subtext, and this is very important because Ash is not ready for one, but they also don’t have a typical guys-who-are-friends relationship. They have a very intimate, emotionally open and vulnerable, acknowledged (if not in so many words) love for each other. That’s really rare to see in fiction. It’s so rare I can’t think of another example right now… well, Vash and Wolfwood and, in a different way, Harry and Brandon in Gungrave. But it’s pretty rare.
Now, BF is also a kind of odd win for me in that both Ash and Eiji are close to being annoying types of characters. Eiji is close to a damsel (see humor above), and Ash is absolutely a Mary Sue. I don’t like Mary Sues anymore than the next person, so why does Ash work for me? To be honest, partly because he’s male-my internalized misogyny is giving him some passes-but it’s not just that. Ash works, I think, because the basic structure of his messed up psyche makes sense and has pathos. Now, he’s not utterly psychologically realistic: he’s far too conventionally “good" and high functioning for someone who really suffered all that trauma and hasn’t had a truly good role model since he was, like, five. But I will squint my eyes and chock that up to Griffin being an amazing brother, Shorter being an amazing friend, Blanca having some stabilizing characteristics, Jennifer being an okay stepmom, Dad not being all that horrific, and Ash just having an amazing personality (some people do). He’s still badly scarred, and we see this in his pseudo-suicidal attitude toward life, his almost complete inability to be vulnerable, except with Eiji, and his inability to have positive sexual relationships. He also has the very plausible characteristic of being very quick on the trigger, walking through life prepared at any moment to be attacked. I actually identify quite strong with Ash, despite not being a super person or having gone through anything like his traumas, and I think that must speak to something real in the way his mind is presented.
I also like some of the secondary character stuff very much. The Ash-Shorter-Sing-Lau tangle is very, very good-maybe better in the manga than anime. I’ve seen the anime through ep. 18 now, I think, and I feel like the true insupportability of Sing’s position was not fully expressed. Sing loved Shorter-and all the Chinese gang loved Shorter-and Sing, as their new leader, needs to avenge Shorter, but he also really, really wants to do what’s fair. He really wants to know the real story and ultimately realizes they need to work with Ash to crack the whole banana fish thing and realizes that Ash is not to blame and shouldn’t die for Shorter’s death, but he still needs to appease his gang, and he tries to walk this tightrope (this kid who’s like 15), and he can’t. It costs him his own brother’s trust, and ultimately costs him his brother-as well as Ash’s life.
I also really love the narrative function of Blanca, though Blanca as a person I want to smack. Blanca is a bull in a china shop emotionally. He’s not a bad man, and in his KGB-super-assassin way is trying to do the right thing. But he keeps stepping on people in the most emotionally harmful ways, precisely by walking this line he tries to walk between nice guy and worldly assassin working for the mafia. He does a number on Ash because he is nice enough to gain some of his trust and certainly his respect and admiration-and then he tells him to stay with Golzine and let himself be raped because it will be worth getting the mafia power in the end, which is a higher-end version of exactly the same line Ash got from his father, who told him to put up with being raped by his coach as long as got paid. This is the last thing Ash needs to hear from the only quasi-positive mentor he has and it wrecks any possible genuinely positive relationship he might have had with Blanca-even though Blanca does love him. And then, Blanca does a number of Yut Lung too. In a similar way, he becomes they only remotely good and kind support figure in the life of a young man who desperately needs someone on his side, a friend, mentor, etc. Yut Lung is already cracking under the weight of his envy of anyone who is genuinely loved-by anyone: Ash, Eiji, anyone. And then Blanca ditches him, explicitly to choose Ash over him. That was the last thing he needed too, and that wound is not going to heal. Oh, Blanca...
For the rest, a lot of my engagement with BF now is fan fictional and very much based on my long BF AU fic. I tried to keep that fic “In character,” but writing 60 years of their lives obviously extends my view of them beyond the year or so we see in the canon story, and at this point, I’m very attached to those extended characters. It’s here if you’re interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169662/chapters/247686