Banana Fish

Episode 12

My friends who've read the manga told me that this episode of Banana Fish would make for an exciting one, and they were not wrong. Much of it is setup for the gang warfare to come between Ash and Arthur, but there's a lot of action too, even if most is off-screen, with how much of the episode focuses on Ash eliminating his adversaries. There's also some strong character drama in expected and less-expected places, as all this violence slowly takes its toll on Ash.

One of the interesting ways the episode frames all this is setting up Yut Lung as a foil to Ash. This isn't the first time Banana Fish has done this, but the conversation between Yut Lung and Sing at the beginning of this episode really hammers their connection home. Sing remarks on the similarities between them and Yut Lung seems to agree, particularly in how they come from similarly difficult backgrounds. That gives Yut Lung insight into Ash that some other characters might not have—but like any good foil, this also highlights their differences. Yut Lung seems to take joy in hurting the people he needs to hurt, while Ash regrets this necessity of revenge. That's what makes Yut Lung one of the "bad guys" while Ash is our hero, setting up the central conflict of this episode. It also makes me wish there was more Yut Lung around than in just those early scenes.

This episode really ramps up Ash's descent into murder and darkness. To some degree it comes out of nowhere, as a way to set up a fresh conflict. Why Ash is suddenly willing to take things so far, and not consider that some of Arthur's men he's killing are cogs in the machine just like Shorter, is not explored as well as it could be. At the same time, it makes sense that Ash is consolidating his power and realizing that he can't be too choosy about his victims at this stage. Still, Eiji is worried about what he's hearing—that Ash has been killing unarmed people, people who beg for remorse. Ash has his reasons, and we know Eiji loves Ash too much not to eventually forgive him, but it does lead to real conflict between them. It also conflicts with Ash's personal desire not to let Eiji be corrupted by his cruel world.

The two boys talk about girls, and Ash ends up telling Eiji about a girl from his past he liked who was killed under suspicion of being his girlfriend. I suspect that some people might take this story as confirmation that Ash and Eiji's relationship "isn't like that," since he likes girls, but the episode makes the opposite clear. First of all, interest in the opposite sex doesn't automatically mean lack of interest in the same sex. Ash is likely intended as bisexual, and that's just fine. (It would also fit within the aesthetic and tropes of the era that influenced Akemi Yoshida. Male bisexuality was seen as trendy and glamorous in the late 1960s and 1970s.) But more importantly, this story comes up in an episode that constantly reminds us how much Eiji is in that position with Ash now. He's the person from "outside" who has a hold on Ash that nobody else does. And in his effort to protect Eiji from succumbing to that world like he has, Ash makes himself more vulnerable, in a way that someone like Yut Lung—who is only out to protect himself from further harm—is not. Everybody against Ash knows that Eiji is the way to get to him, just as this mysterious girl from Ash's past once was.

Comparing the character's past or current heterosexual desires with their same-sex ones is also a common trope in BL, the genre Banana Fish would help influence. It's a way of reinforcing that this desire is "for real," by juxtaposing it against other desires that we take for granted in that way. To be honest, as many frustrations as I have with some LGBT tropes in anime and manga, I wish more Western media representations of bi characters could take a page from that. I don't like the way it's so often used to suggest that the character is "just like straight people", but I do like how it shows the character's desires for the same and opposite sex as being on equal footing.

We also get more into the political side of the Banana Fish plot. For as many parts of the show's "MK Ultra But For Real" story feel implausible (like that Pizzagate restaurant), this sounds like something that Cold War-era America might have actually used such a drug for if they'd had it. The U.S. in that era was constantly trying to overthrow democratically-elected leaders who were seen as insufficiently supportive of the U.S. or too pro-Soviet, replacing them with right-wing dictatorships. Something like "Banana Fish" allowing them to take over the minds of local politicians, rather than having to search for someone who was already on their side, would make that even easier. The focus on "Kafghanistan" and its role in the global drug trade seems like a way to bring this into the modern War on Terror landscape, even though that would also fit right into the 1980s setting of the original manga. Since this reflects real-world geopolitics, this is a lot more interesting to me than the other aspects of the drug plot, though it's still something the show could bungle. I'm curious to see where Banana Fish takes this. What's interesting is how Ash, this kid who hasn't had much in the way of actual schooling, is so easily able to piece together this political situation.

One thing I haven't discussed as much in this series is the meaning behind the episode titles, which are all references to famous literary works. Besides the "Banana Fish" of the series title and first episode, which are references to J.D. Salinger's famous story, these episodes largely take their cue from works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other American writers from the so-called "Lost Generation"—people who came of age in the bleak aftermath of World War I, having lost so many of their compatriots to that brutal war and the Spanish flu outbreak that accompanied it. The focus on Fitzgerald in particular, as in titles like last week's "The Beautiful and the Damned," also reinforces the "New York, city of sin" focus of the anime, as much of Fitzgerald's work focuses on the decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous in New York during the 1920s, the height of the Prohibition era. (The Beautiful and the Damned is also largely about Fitzgerald's infamously fraught marriage to his wife Zelda, so read into that what you will for an episode centering on Ash and Eiji's relationship and intimacy.) The Hemingway novel referenced this week, To Have and Have Not, focuses on a goodhearted fishing boat captain in Florida who is forced by larger economic forces into darker ventures like smuggling. The similarities to Ash's situation couldn't be more obvious.

By invoking these famous works of American literature, Banana Fish is also situating itself as sitting alongside their caliber. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to put it there yet, but there is definitely more to this criminal love story than meets the eye. Even with its pulpier elements (and it's not like Fitzgerald and Hemingway didn't indulge in those too), Banana Fish paints a compelling picture of the way that society can force otherwise good people into horrible things. There's also a bit of hope in the way it shows that love can redeem people. Eiji may be the person who brings Ash back from the brink, even when he's fake-tormenting him with Halloween pumpkin displays. Here at the halfway point of this anime adaptation, I think it's clear that this element is what gives this story such staying power.

Rating: A-

Banana Fish is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Rose is a Ph.D. student in musicology, who recently released a book about the music of Cowboy Bebop. You can also follow her on Twitter.