Banana Fish 9

While I was quite satisfied with the conclusion of the fight between Arthur and Ash, I felt like the story lost a lot of forward momentum after that.  As soon as the police got involved and had both Ash and Eiji back in custody, I just knew the book was going to slow down again.  Granted, there’s still a lot of interesting stuff going on.  The parts with Ash in the hospital alone are worth the price of admission, and I was quite drawn in by the uncertainty surrounding what would happen to him.  But the parts that are most interesting to me are when Ash and Eiji are together and when Ash is free to do his scheming, and it looks like it’ll be another couple volumes before I get these elements back.

In fact, the situation Eiji finds himself in is quite bad.  Ash’s situation is quite possibly worse, since… well, everyone will stop looking for him at the end of this volume, but I can trust Ash to free himself from almost anything.  Eiji, on the other hand, is just lost to everybody, and there’s no telling what will happen to him.

On the plus side, I don’t think anyone save for Ash is in a truly life-threatening spot.  While I do have confidence in Ash’s abilities to get himself away from… whoever has him at the moment (the government, maybe?), I have a feeling that Banana Fish will somehow be involved.  Hopefully not directly.

Banana Fish 8

Ooh, this just keeps getting better and better.  This volume, Ash and Arthur decide to settle the score once and for all in a moderated fight that takes place in an unused subway tunnel.  Now, after the elaborate lengths everyone goes through to ensure both of them only have knives and that nobody else was going to interfere with the fight… I mean, you KNOW what’s going to happen.  But Banana Fish pulls it off with way more style than I expected, and the volume ends before the final outcome is resolved.  This scene proves, pretty much without a doubt, that Ash is one of the coolest manga characters ever.

The political intrigue is also ratcheted up in this volume.  Previously, we knew that Dino was trying to sell banana fish to the American Government.  Now, my imagination sort of stops there, and I just fill in a generic war scenario.  But Banana Fish goes the extra step and lays out elaborate scenarios where America fights communism and takes over governments on the sly, where Dino benefits not by being directly compensated, but because he’ll then control drug supplies from these countries.  The scope is pretty impressive, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible of a series that starts off about gangs in New York.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read how this fight with Ash and Arthur ends.

Banana Fish 7

Wow.  Everything here is just… extremely well-orchestrated.  As one character puts it, Ash finally gets off defense and goes on offense.  Using a computer (and this was a lot more plausible when the manga first came out) he hacks into a bunch of companies and basically bankrupts and ruins Dino.  This has repercussions, some of which are threatening, most of which are kind of amusing and in Ash’s favor.

A gang war gets underway here, too.  Dino “buys” Ash off the NYPD when he funds a prominent politician, and the entire police department goes out and starts picking up random blond boys off the street in order to catch Ash.  Arthur also has clearance to do whatever he wants, so all the various gangs in New York City are also in motion.  Ash takes a number of countermeasures that are varying degrees of funny and terrifying.

Really, nothing is quite as funny as the father/son pair of Max and Ash, though.  Ash’s one-upmanship is just not to be believed.

Man, everything about this series is just… well played.  It’s fantastic.

Banana Fish 6

Now that I’ve sufficiently recovered from my Basara marathon, it’s time to take on the rest of Banana Fish, another great shoujo series courtesy of the early 90s (and late 80s, I suppose).

I forgot how absolutely awesome this series is.  The volume starts off with an amazing scene between Shorter, Eiji, and Ash, where Shorter has been brainwashed with Banana Fish to kill Eiji, and something has to happen.  Something does.  Not many shoujo manga (or manga in general, for that matter) have the courage to pull something like this off, so I always appreciate outcomes like we see in this scene.

Later, the youngest Lee brother decides he would like to have some fun at the expense of Dino Golzine, so he frees Ash in a rather roundabout way.  Ash proceeds to singlehandedly storm Dino Golzine’s mansion full of henchman, do what he has to do (save people, take out key targets, revenge et cetera), then completely destroy the place.  While this is going on, Lee is working his way out of the building, Max and Ibe are working their way out with guns blazing, and two different street gangs are trying to work their way in, one to rescue Ash and one to rescue Shorter.  It’s an incredibly well-orchestrated action scene.

The climax occurrs when Ash makes his way into the Banana Fish research facility and finds… well, someone he didn’t want to see, and someone he didn’t want to see in a particular condition.  Ash unloads an entire clip of machine gun ammo into one person, then sets the other person on fire and cries.  It’s quite a powerful moment, and I have to say, I’m looking forward to what can top it in the volumes to come.

Banana Fish 5

My supply of Banana Fish is exhausted!  I think I’ve got the next five volumes coming either tomorrow or Saturday, and I also just placed an order for the rest since I wanted to take advantage of the current Right Stuf Viz sale.  I got an appalling amount of stuff, on top of the fact I just ordered all of Red River, like, yesterday from there.  I knew I should have waited for a sale.

But what was I talking about?  Oh yes, Ash Lynx and friends.  I got a kick out of the fact that I paused briefly during a scene at the beginning where Eiji is being put to sleep with acupuncture to flip to the back, and the last page inexplicably featured Ibe and Lobo chained together while wearing tuxes and Shorter screaming at the sight of Eiji.  In context, that’s a really intense scene.  Out of context, it’s pretty hilarious, especially since there’s no hints whatsoever at the beginning of the volume what’s going on there.

I felt pretty bad for Shorter in this story.  I’m glad Ash knew what was going on and wasn’t blaming Shorter for things, but Shorter had a rough time.  He did his best, but the bigger fish sort of jerked him around.  I felt pretty bad about him being the guinea pig, too.  That’s actually quite terrifying, and I know it won’t end well.

There’s a lot behind that scene the book ends on.  But one of the nicer things is the nice tuxedo dinner.  Not only do we get to see Ash in a suit and acting all high-class, we also get to see Ibe and Max making weird faces throughout the dinner.  I’m just starting to appreciate those two.  I keep kind of wishing that Ibe would go away, but he’s a good guy, and Max needs someone to hang out with.

Banana Fish 4

Wow.  Just… wow.

I really, really liked the scene in the beginning where the assassins bust in on them.  I like the action scenes in this series a lot, actually.  They’re far better than some of the more violent and action-packed scenes in most other series.  There’s a lot of negotiation going in in some cases, some outsmarting, and in this case, some family bonding.  I kind of wonder if we will see that character again.

And then, we must move from Massachusetts to California.  One thing I was a little disappointed by was that I was cheated out of a “roadtrip across America” storyline, a type of story I’m very fond of.  There’s still time for the entire series to be trots to different locales in America, though.  Even if that’s not how things pan out, I guess I can’t complain too much… it is a manga, not intended for an American audience that would be very familiar with the different side trips and roadside rests and all.  Notably, the best instances of that type of story are by non-native Americans or expats.  There are certainly others that are quite good, though.

So we cut right from Cape Cod to Los Angeles.  Much backstabbing occurrs, though the backstabbing is not particularly willful on the part of the closest member of the team.  The mob has no problem stabbing backs, though, which is where the primary betrayal is happening.

We also get some… implications about Ibe and Eiji.  Both are different than what they advertise themselves to be job-wise, but I have to say that the situation between the two was not what I expected.  I suspect Ibe is not the jealous type, but that they even have a relationship like that, however lightly implied (Eiji… might not know how Ibe feels?), is kind of unexpected.  We can only hope this doesn’t complicate things between Ash and Eiji.

I also liked Max Lobo’s wife and kid.  Any scene with the three of them in it was pretty funny.  She also wasn’t at all what I expected.

Banana Fish 3

If you’re planning to collect this series, here’s something to keep in mind:  All the early volumes are published in two editions, the Shojo edition and the Pulp edition.  As the series goes out of print, the prices on the Shojo editions are going to go up since this is what people are going to look for.  If you find that you don’t want to pay $30 for an ex-library copy of a single volume of manga, look to see if there is a Pulp edition (in this case, 1569314381).  The art is flipped and the trim size is larger, but you’ll probably pay far less as long as the used copies hold out.  In my case, it was $3 instead of $30, and it was very much worth it to me.

I think my commentary on this series will be far less… animated than the entry I just wrote for Basara.  There’s all sorts of fun stuff going on in Basara, but everything in Banana Fish is pretty serious business, and I feel like it’s hard to pick apart the plot since the volumes just move so smoothly and seamlessly through the story.  One thing leads to another, and there’s no pause between things.  It’s pretty amazing actually, because I just can’t think of any other series where not a lot of effort goes into transitioning between prison fights, skipping bail, murder attempts, and road trips to Cape Cod.

Ah, poor Griff.  I wasn’t expecting that so soon, honestly.  I was really hoping that his walking around last volume meant good things.  He is sort of a catalyst, though, and I’m kind of surprised that Ash didn’t go visit that doctor when he got out of prison to get an idea of what happened, or even to pick up the Banana Fish.

Banana Fish is explained slightly better, and I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.  The origins and what Dino plans to do with it are still rather dim points though, and I’m kind of looking forward to finding these things out.

The action in this series is superb.  I look forward to absolutely every fight Ash starts, because it’s just so cool.  I wouldn’t have really believed I could like a character this much for such weird reasons.  I mean, the reasons really are just that he’s cool.  His personality is still kind of a mystery, and I disagree with a lot of decisions he makes.  It’s a good thing he has his coolness, because I think I would be at a loss without that element.

I’m kind of hoping Ibe hops ship soon.  He’s kind of a downer, though I admire his dedication to Eiji, and I know he has to stick around for his sake.

I’ve got one more volume of this before I have to pause and wait for more to come in.  I anticipate a pretty hardcore marathon and/or party when they finally do.

Banana Fish 2

So Ash is quite a creepy boy.  His silence lands him in prison when the mob boss Dino pulls a few strings, and he gets kind of weird on his cellmate when he finds out that Max Lobo knew his brother in Vietnam and was also researching the meaning behind banana fish.  Actually, this scene was unfortunate in that Ash Lynx and Max Lobo, two men with slightly silly names, exchanged their real names.  Aslan Callenreese for Ash and Max’s real last name is Glenreed, which sounds like a real name, but… well, Aslan Callenreese.  It’s almost as good as our friend Quillish Whammy from Death Note.

The setup for landing Ash in prison baffled me a little bit, especially since this was before the age of cellphones.  How did Dino know that Marvin was going to botch things, and how did he know that things were going to play out exactly right in order to send Ash to prison?  Maybe getting him arrested was actually Arthur’s doing, who… maybe could have taken advantage of the situation, and then Dino had him thrown into prison.  But even Arthur setting up Ash like that is a little unbelievable.  I didn’t like it any less for it, though.  The whole thing was rather awesome, if not for poor Skip.

Actually, what was also unfortunate was what Ash was hit with for motive in the police station.  That was really, truly unfortunate, and it made me hate Dino and Marvin a lot more.

Eiji is still around at the end of the volume, and he tries his hand at some covert gang communication.  He’s not so good at it, but I suspect he’ll be around for a long time yet, so he’ll get better.

I’m really kind of wrapped up in things right now.  I have no doubt that I could read the whole series in one sitting.  Volume 3 has still not arrived, and I’m dying to continue.

Banana Fish 1

I’ve actively resisted this series for years.  I have zero interest in a story about gangs, and to add insult to injury, it was added to my beloved Animerica Extra mid-series.  Do you know how many new series got added to AE while I was reading it?  Not many, and I wasn’t all that inclined to read a story about gangs from the middle.  I hold long grudges.  But I’ve also been hearing praise about it for years and years, and there’s only so much hype I can take before I cave and buy something.  So here we are.

Banana Fish blew me away in less than one volume.  I was pretty much convinced I was going to have to consume the entire series quickly by page 50 or so.  It’s the dialogue that did it for me.  The way the characters talk to one another is fantastic and extremely amusing.  It’s literally the best translation/adaptation I’ve ever seen.  Since Banana Fish consists entirely of characters talking to one another for most of the volume, that sort of thing can make or break it.  I probably wouldn’t have liked it nearly as much with a straight translation, but I became sort of attached to the characters as they shared brutal quips with one another.  It’s really the best.

Like I said, most of the volume is setup with little action.  We get the story of Ash Lynx and we learn his place as a sort of leader of youth gangs in New York, and why it is that everyone follows him.  We also learn of his connections with organized crime, and we start to see the beginnings of some huge conspiracy involving something called “Banana Fish,” which at this point looks like a drug.  That’s lots and lots of story, but as I said, the characters are so entertaining as things are laid out that it makes it a pleasure to read.

There’s a little action towards the end, as one of the mob bosses figures Ash is hiding something important and has a few people beat him up and take some hostages in order to get the information.   These scenes spare the reader the brutality (unlike in Let Dai), and Ash usually just talks back and takes his beatings pretty lightly… it’s actually kind of amusing to see the other guys get so worked up over him.

There’s two reporters from Japan that come to do a feature on youth gangs in New York.  They get involved right when Ash’s hideout gets busted, and one of them gets kidnapped.  That two reporters can waltz into a gang hideout and ask the leader questions about what he does is kind of hilarious, but I liked the detail since it made Ash and company a little more human and less the sort of punks you would expect.

Also, when was the last time anyone brought up Kojack?  Like, 20 years ago?  Of course, it would take a manga to once again ask the all-important question “Who loves ya, baby?”

Ash has sort of stumbled onto the Banana Fish drug, and it’s got something to do with his brother snapping in Vietnam a few years ago, but that’s pretty much the only solid direction as of yet.  I love the way the plot is building, though, and I don’t see this getting old any time soon.  I’m very much looking forward to running through this series very quickly.