Banana Fish, Akimi Yoshida
Mar. 17th, 2009 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI have, by and large, sucked at reading shoujo manga. I am currently stalled on Please Save My Earth (v13), Fruits Basket (v6) and Saiyuki (second volume of Reload), and I have flipped through and put down various volumes of Cantarella, Tramps like Us, Emma, Nana, Hot Gimmick, Hana Kimi, Paradise Kiss, Mars and Angel Sanctuary. True, I have managed some CLAMP, I love After School Nightmare (although I have still not read the final volume!), and I keep toying with Kaze Hikaru, but really I am much more likely to be found somewhere in the shounen section picking up something involving fight scenes. This is partly art style preference and partly story focus, but I do feel slightly guilty about failing to appreciate stuff that is theoretically aimed at me, or at least younger versions of me. Plus, there’s so much of it out there, and if I liked it there would be more to read ☺
So. I read about Banana Fish on Shaenon Garrity’s consistently excellent Overlooked Manga Festival, a series that was voted top in an all-time shoujo manga series poll (of women) and wondered. I liked the look of the art (this may be a minority opinion, as a fair number of reviewers find it a bit stiff, especially in the first few volumes), and the story sounded interesting, but I couldn’t find it anywhere - libraries, on-line sources, even in actual manga shops. Ordering manga sight unseen gets expensive, and can result in stuff I don't read. I dithered. Then I found the first two volumes in English in a Kinokuniya on my last day in Tokyo, and grabbed them without even looking inside. I think wandering around all of Mandarake and thinking bitter thoughts about how much stuff wasn’t translated may have gotten to me. And, so far (I’m on volume 14 – these notes are back-tracking for my own records) – I absolutely love Banana Fish. I am, however, unsure that it is going to convert me to reading shoujo, mainly because none of the other shoujo manga I’ve encountered have been insanely tightly plotted stories about rival gangs and military drug experiments, as well as being sadly lacking in grenade launchers and duels in abandoned subway stations. Also, the dialogue is brilliant (translation is by Matt Thorn and Carl Gustav Horn, the latter being also responsible for the best translation notes I've ever read, appearing in every volume of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service).
Anyway. These are largely notes/reviews for my own records, although at some stage in the future discerning readers may also get to see me explaining why I complained about Havemercy having hardly any female characters and too much homosocial bonding while I am wild about a manga series with maybe two female speaking parts and an almost-text intense relationship between the two main male leads (short answer: plot. Plus I like Ash and Eiji way more that I liked any of the Havemercy people, clockwork dragons included).
Starts in Vietnam, and then quickly moves to New York, 1985, where Ash, who runs a teenage gang, follows some of his less reliable members and finds them killing a guy who has time to mutter a few words, including the title of the series and hand Ash a mysterious capsule. “Banana Fish” is also what Ash’s brother, Griff, said after he went mad and started shooting everyone in the opening sequence, although now he just sits and stares, while Ash looks after him in between gang-running and gets a deregistered abortion doctor to check up on him every once in a while. The abortion doctor also identifies the JD Salinger reference in the title (Ash: "I was always more into Hemingway"), which was helpful as I never made it past chapter one of Catcher in the Rye. Ash’s attempts to investigate the opening dead guy are watched by Papa Dino, a gang boss who used to keep Ash (here, I can do no better than quote from the blurb, which describes Ash as the adopted heir and sex toy of Papa Dino), who sends a treacherous member of Ash’s gang (Arthur) and a sleazy henchperson (Marvin) off to retrieve the drug thing and teach Ash a lesson.
Meanwhile, two Japanese reporters – Ibe and Eiji – show up in New York, having come over to write stories on the decline of American society via youth gangs or similar. Sadly, their contact Max Lobo, a journalist, is in prison after punching a cop in a discussion about his divorce (I think), but Charlie, another police officer, puts Ibe and Eiji in touch with Ash via Skip (the problematic black side-kick – I’ll get back to him in v2, because I do think Banana Fish has some race issues) and the Japanese reporters go and visit Ash’s bar. There is a not-at-all-Freudian scene where Eiji, on meeting Ash, asks to hold his gun because of never having seen a real one up close before, and then the gang Arthur’s rounded up burst in, and start shooting. Skip and Eiji get captured and taken as bait for Ash, who despite managing to shoot the driver of their getaway car in a rather nice action scene does not stop them and is forced to steal a motorbike in order to catch up with Arthur and offer himself in exchange. Ash gets beaten up and locked up with Skip and Eiji; Marvin then tries to rape Ash (possibly to get him to tell him about the capsule, mostly because he’s a sleazy henchperson who’s watched the child sex films Ash was in), who knees him in a suitable place and then escapes with the others. Unfortunately they end up trapped in a dead-end. Fortunately, Eiji is able to get over a 4m wall by using his pole-vaulting skills. Unfortunately, he lands on broken glass and cuts his arm badly, and although he runs to get help he ends up passing out in a phone box, having dialled but not spoken to the police station. Fortunately, Ash’s friend Shorter, who runs a Chinatown gang, and was in the bar when Arthur’s guys attacked, has managed to threaten an informant into finding out where the gang took Ash, and heads off to save him…
So. I read about Banana Fish on Shaenon Garrity’s consistently excellent Overlooked Manga Festival, a series that was voted top in an all-time shoujo manga series poll (of women) and wondered. I liked the look of the art (this may be a minority opinion, as a fair number of reviewers find it a bit stiff, especially in the first few volumes), and the story sounded interesting, but I couldn’t find it anywhere - libraries, on-line sources, even in actual manga shops. Ordering manga sight unseen gets expensive, and can result in stuff I don't read. I dithered. Then I found the first two volumes in English in a Kinokuniya on my last day in Tokyo, and grabbed them without even looking inside. I think wandering around all of Mandarake and thinking bitter thoughts about how much stuff wasn’t translated may have gotten to me. And, so far (I’m on volume 14 – these notes are back-tracking for my own records) – I absolutely love Banana Fish. I am, however, unsure that it is going to convert me to reading shoujo, mainly because none of the other shoujo manga I’ve encountered have been insanely tightly plotted stories about rival gangs and military drug experiments, as well as being sadly lacking in grenade launchers and duels in abandoned subway stations. Also, the dialogue is brilliant (translation is by Matt Thorn and Carl Gustav Horn, the latter being also responsible for the best translation notes I've ever read, appearing in every volume of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service).
Anyway. These are largely notes/reviews for my own records, although at some stage in the future discerning readers may also get to see me explaining why I complained about Havemercy having hardly any female characters and too much homosocial bonding while I am wild about a manga series with maybe two female speaking parts and an almost-text intense relationship between the two main male leads (short answer: plot. Plus I like Ash and Eiji way more that I liked any of the Havemercy people, clockwork dragons included).
Starts in Vietnam, and then quickly moves to New York, 1985, where Ash, who runs a teenage gang, follows some of his less reliable members and finds them killing a guy who has time to mutter a few words, including the title of the series and hand Ash a mysterious capsule. “Banana Fish” is also what Ash’s brother, Griff, said after he went mad and started shooting everyone in the opening sequence, although now he just sits and stares, while Ash looks after him in between gang-running and gets a deregistered abortion doctor to check up on him every once in a while. The abortion doctor also identifies the JD Salinger reference in the title (Ash: "I was always more into Hemingway"), which was helpful as I never made it past chapter one of Catcher in the Rye. Ash’s attempts to investigate the opening dead guy are watched by Papa Dino, a gang boss who used to keep Ash (here, I can do no better than quote from the blurb, which describes Ash as the adopted heir and sex toy of Papa Dino), who sends a treacherous member of Ash’s gang (Arthur) and a sleazy henchperson (Marvin) off to retrieve the drug thing and teach Ash a lesson.
Meanwhile, two Japanese reporters – Ibe and Eiji – show up in New York, having come over to write stories on the decline of American society via youth gangs or similar. Sadly, their contact Max Lobo, a journalist, is in prison after punching a cop in a discussion about his divorce (I think), but Charlie, another police officer, puts Ibe and Eiji in touch with Ash via Skip (the problematic black side-kick – I’ll get back to him in v2, because I do think Banana Fish has some race issues) and the Japanese reporters go and visit Ash’s bar. There is a not-at-all-Freudian scene where Eiji, on meeting Ash, asks to hold his gun because of never having seen a real one up close before, and then the gang Arthur’s rounded up burst in, and start shooting. Skip and Eiji get captured and taken as bait for Ash, who despite managing to shoot the driver of their getaway car in a rather nice action scene does not stop them and is forced to steal a motorbike in order to catch up with Arthur and offer himself in exchange. Ash gets beaten up and locked up with Skip and Eiji; Marvin then tries to rape Ash (possibly to get him to tell him about the capsule, mostly because he’s a sleazy henchperson who’s watched the child sex films Ash was in), who knees him in a suitable place and then escapes with the others. Unfortunately they end up trapped in a dead-end. Fortunately, Eiji is able to get over a 4m wall by using his pole-vaulting skills. Unfortunately, he lands on broken glass and cuts his arm badly, and although he runs to get help he ends up passing out in a phone box, having dialled but not spoken to the police station. Fortunately, Ash’s friend Shorter, who runs a Chinatown gang, and was in the bar when Arthur’s guys attacked, has managed to threaten an informant into finding out where the gang took Ash, and heads off to save him…
