Banana Fish 13
Posted: May 15, 2009 Filed under: Banana Fish 1 Comment »This volume sort of slows the pace down a bit as Ash goes through with everything that was laid out last time. Later, a few things set the stage for the action next volume, mostly Eiji and Ash’s boys designing a plan to help Ash escape. Not much happens outside of conversation as far as that is concerned, but I didn’t mind the slowness. It’s a good chance for the story to pause and catch its breath.
There are a lot of interesting side characters at this point in the story. Certainly one of the biggest mysteries is Blanca, who seems to care a great deal about Ash, and yet takes Dino Golzine’s job anyway. He puts a damper on things since Ash can’t make a move while Blanca’s got a contract against him. Blanca is just far too skilled to even begin to mess with. It’s hard to tell what he’s got up his sleeve. Yut-Lung also reveals some interesting background information about him, but one wonders if that will go anywhere.
At one point, Ibe compared Blanca to Golgo 13. After the feats from last volume, he just said what we were all thinking. I liked that Max had no idea what he was talking about.
Aside from Blanca, there’s also Sing. Now, Sing and the Chinatown gangs have a grudge against Ash and his boys over killing Shorter. Sing is a bit of a wildcard, but he’s a wildcard with a lot of decent connections that has a self-proclaimed interest in Ash. He begins to play both sides of the field here, and the results are kind of interesting.
There’s also Yut-Lung. Even though he wants to kill Eiji, and even when he takes sides with Dino Golzine, it’s hard for me to believe he’s actually a bad guy. I mean, he is. That fact will probably never change. But I have to wonder about some of his motives. Interestingly, he tries to hire Blanca again in order to completely destroy Ash. Perhaps he was insulted after Ash was so willing to pull the trigger last volume.
Seeing Ash playing his role with Dino here is most heartbreaking. Dino is pretty devious, and Ash is good at what he does (which is nothing perverse here, so not to worry), so seeing the two of them interact and watching it slowly kill Ash is very interesting indeed.
[...] on vol. 1 of Animal Academy (Tangognat) Connie on vol. 13 of Banana Fish (Slightly Biased Manga) Michelle Smith on vols. 7 and 8 of Beauty Pop (Soliloquy in Blue) Snow [...]