cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2009-03-19 10:32 pm
cyphomandra) wrote2009-03-19 10:32 pm
Entry tags:
Banana Fish, Akimi Yoshida
I have just discovered how to put .doc and .pdf files onto my iPod touch Stanza e-reader program, which I'm thrilled about for many reasons (I have a post lurking somewhere about Stanza, but basically I've found it practical, usable and massively convenient, especially during travel, and that's just with reading a bunch of stuff off Project Gutenberg), including the fact that I can now stick stuff for critiquing on it and look at it on the bus and during down time at work. My previous approach has been to carry stuff round on a USB stick, which a) still requires a computer and b) does not allow for the not entirely hypothetical situation wherein I am attempting to critique a story whose author has chosen to give it the working title of "Pornography"(yes, I can retitle it, but not if I haven't downloaded it yet), which is not something I'm going to be opening on anyone else's computer regardless of actual content...
Anyway. The cut/paste app is apparently coming soon, which will make the iPod touch much more workable for typing on, and I presume soon they will come up with an iPod Touch manga reader that I can use to catch up on all my backlog and they will have to chisel the thing out of my hand with a crowbar. Until then I'll stick with the hard copies.
Volume 2.
Shorter is tracking Ash. Marvin threatens Skip, but when Ash offers to trade the thing he got from the dead guy for Skip’s safety, Marvin claims to have no idea what Ash is talking about. Shorter’s gang bursts in, and just as Marvin is about to shoot Ash Skip throws himself heroically in the way and dies, as the cops appear. Marvin makes a run for it in his car, and Ash also steals a car and follows (driving remarkably well for someone who still has his hands tied together), tracking Marvin to his apartment – which is open, and unguarded. He finds Marvin shot dead, Ash’s gun in front of him, and the police (a different set arrive), followed by the police (Charlie & Jenkins) who’ve been involved with Ash earlier and followed Shorter to the warehouse. I feel I should point out that all of this happens in less than 20 pages.
There’s an argument over territory that ends with Ash under custody of the new police, being interrogated in a rather nasty manner (they have magazines and film from Marvin’s apartment showing him molesting a much younger Ash, which they play back to him), and Ash ends up rejecting all help from Charlie and Jenkins (who are, I should point out, technically trying to catch Dino, as they suspect him of being involved somehow in a series of bizarre suicides committed by his enemies). Charlie asks Ibe and Eiji, who had been packing to return to Japan, to help with Ash, as he thinks Ash might respond to Eiji. What they want is for Ash to tell them what’s going on and, if possible, give them whatever he has that they can catch Dino with. Eiji talks to Ash (now under guard in a hospital), but can’t bring himself to ask Ash to give up his quest. Meanwhile, city officials corrupted by Dino ensure that Ash will be put in an adult prison, pending trial… and Charlie goes to talk to Max Lobo, the ex-cop Vietnam vet journalist currently also in the same prison, and ask him to protect Ash.
Protecting Ash is a fairly big ask, particularly as Ash is quite keen on doing things his own way, but at least Max manages to get Ash into the same cell as him. Ash recognises Max’s journalist pseudonym and tells him he should stick to writing columns, as his book wasn’t that great, and then in further demonstration of his social skills promptly picks a fight with someone else at lunch and ends up in solitary, which is not a bad place to be as the corrupt warden has already asked a gang of guys to go after him. When Ash gets out he, and I promise that this actually comes across in the manga as a perfectly reasonably progression of actions, goes after one of the prison gangs led by a guy called Garvey, and allows them to gang-rape him so he’ll end up in the infirmary (with a cheerful doctor who says things like, “At least he won’t get pregnant.”), where he asks for a capsule painkiller for a headache so that he can palm the capsule and hide a message in it, and then slip it to Eiji by kissing him when he visits the next day. Somewhere in the middle of this admittedly rather Byzantine approach to note-passing Ash finds out that Griff, Ash’s older brother, was in Max’s unit in Vietnam, and that Max, in addition to currently investigating Banana Fish, is also the guy who shot Griff when he went mad. Ash (whose real name is now revealed to be Aslan Callenreese: Max gets off lightly with Glenreed as a surname rather than Lobo) is pissed.
Eiji heads for Chinatown looking for Shorter, following Ash’s message, and encounters the first female character in a speaking role (Nadia, Shorter’s sister) before ending up at the illegal abortionist’s surgery, where Arthur and gang are unfortunately waiting for him. They are threatening the doctor in order to get the capsule (this is the Banana Fish one, not the message-passing one) and planning to take Eiji to Dino as a gift. Shorter shows up and then Griff staggers out, apparently recognising one of Dino’s lab guys, who then promptly shoots him. Gunplay ensues. Arthur bolts. Meanwhile, Max arranges to switch cells again, as Ash keeps staring at him in a rather creepy manner, and Ash, who has stolen Max’s notes, ends up with Garvey. This time, however, Ash doesn’t plan to just let him take whatever he wants…
On the first time through I was just stunned by how so much happened, particularly now that I’ve typed it all out. It's a very tight, fast story, and there are a lot of nice intercuts where dialogue or position acts as a bridge between sequences. In specific points, killing off the chirpy side-kick is a fairly time-honoured tradition, and from a plot point of view doing it this early (Skip makes it to page 13, although he’s already shot in the top panel) actually worked well for me. But the heroic black sidekick sacrificing himself for the white protagonist is more questionable as a trope, and I don’t think (leaping forward a bit to the next major black character, Cain, who runs a gang in Harlem) that the black characters get their own agendas in this story in the same way that, say, the Chinese gang characters do. I’ll get back to this once more of the other characters start showing up.
Apart from that, I was also a bit unsure as to how much my mad fondness for this series could be due to the fact that it does have a massive slashy subtext (I really like dense plot with subtext, much more than actual romance storylines such as the standard BL titles with a tissue-thin storyline and fixed sex roles that tend to bring me out in hives), so I lent the first two volumes to a control straight male who, as far as I'm aware, has no idea about slash, and he loved them. The Viz blurbs do mention massive crossover appeal for the series in Japan, which I assume means guys reading it, and the covers (yellow, with a blow up of a single frame) aren't exactly typical of either shoujo or shounen.
Volume 3.
Slightly less happens in this one, although there’s quite a bit of set-up going on. Ash starts off by taking out Garvey in an effectively brutal manner, although Max yells at him not to kill the guy and then tries to protect Ash again by offering the services of his lawyer. Eiji catches up with Ibe again (I am unsure if there is some specific in-joke going on here, but both of them are wearing very lurid Hawaiian shirts) and takes him to the doctor’s place, where the doctor updates Ibe, Eiji and Shorter on his research into Banana Fish. The gang the corrupt warden spoke to set up a trap for Ash, at the same time as Griff dies of his wounds and, as the others decide not to tell Ash just yet (although Ibe phones Charlie, who phones Max), Ash manages to use the fork he stole from the cafeteria during the fight in the last volume (he stared at it meaningfully whilst in solitary, I just didn’t have a chance to mention it before) to get the gang to back off by threatening to rip out their leader’s jugular. Unfortunately, Max then bursts in and lets slip the news about Griff. Max and Ash fight, but end up bonding (and drinking bourbon, which I presume is standard prison issue) over memories of Griff, and Ash finally tells Max what he knows about Banana Fish.
Various machinations by the police see Ash out on bail, whereupon he and Eiji end up breaking away from the others and taking a car (and Charlie’s gun) to see Shorter – Eiji, in fact, is the one to drive the car away when the others are trying to restrain Ash, as he feels guilty about Griff’s death and wants to help Ash. They end up crashing at Shorter’s place, discussing their next moves, while Dino plots and Charlie and Ibe try and track them down again, and there is another touching scene where Ash gives Eiji a gun (not Charlie's - he left that on the street somewhere, where a law-abiding citizen picked it up and turned it in), so he can defend himself (although possibly poking Eiji in the face with it to wake him up would be frowned on by responsible firearms users). Ash makes a deal with Mr Lee, someone high-up in the Chinese gangs to borrow a van to get into Chinatown, to attack Dino while he’s visiting his brothel full of under-age boys (in the fishmarket), and then there is a very nifty action scene involving Shorter and Eiji driving the truck while Ash stands on top of it and tries to shoot Dino. Arthur’s intervention with a sniper rifle sees both Dino and Ash wounded, neither fatal, Shorter gets slashed across the face, losing control of the truck, and at some point all the good guys end up diving into the Hudson to escape. getting out just at the right time – and place – to meet up with Charlie, Ibe, and Max. And Max demonstrates his new understanding of Ash by knocking him out when he’s about to head off after Dino again.
When they regroup, they decide to go to Ash’s home town, on Cape Cod, both to get out of Manhattan and to pick up Griff’s letters and army records, for more information. Ash is unthrilled by the whole thing, as is his father, still at the old house, who calls him a whore when they all show up and tells him to get lost again. Ash attempts to teach Eiji how to shoot, with minimal success. At least Griff’s records enable them to identify the guy who shot Griff – Abraham Dawson, who now lives at the address in LA that the dying guy mumbled to Ash way back at the beginning of volume 1.
Moving the action out of New York does slow down the pace a bit. Again, having Ash catch up with his family is another thing that's happening sooner, and with less build-up, than I would have expected, and it works well.
Anyway. The cut/paste app is apparently coming soon, which will make the iPod touch much more workable for typing on, and I presume soon they will come up with an iPod Touch manga reader that I can use to catch up on all my backlog and they will have to chisel the thing out of my hand with a crowbar. Until then I'll stick with the hard copies.
Volume 2.
Shorter is tracking Ash. Marvin threatens Skip, but when Ash offers to trade the thing he got from the dead guy for Skip’s safety, Marvin claims to have no idea what Ash is talking about. Shorter’s gang bursts in, and just as Marvin is about to shoot Ash Skip throws himself heroically in the way and dies, as the cops appear. Marvin makes a run for it in his car, and Ash also steals a car and follows (driving remarkably well for someone who still has his hands tied together), tracking Marvin to his apartment – which is open, and unguarded. He finds Marvin shot dead, Ash’s gun in front of him, and the police (a different set arrive), followed by the police (Charlie & Jenkins) who’ve been involved with Ash earlier and followed Shorter to the warehouse. I feel I should point out that all of this happens in less than 20 pages.
There’s an argument over territory that ends with Ash under custody of the new police, being interrogated in a rather nasty manner (they have magazines and film from Marvin’s apartment showing him molesting a much younger Ash, which they play back to him), and Ash ends up rejecting all help from Charlie and Jenkins (who are, I should point out, technically trying to catch Dino, as they suspect him of being involved somehow in a series of bizarre suicides committed by his enemies). Charlie asks Ibe and Eiji, who had been packing to return to Japan, to help with Ash, as he thinks Ash might respond to Eiji. What they want is for Ash to tell them what’s going on and, if possible, give them whatever he has that they can catch Dino with. Eiji talks to Ash (now under guard in a hospital), but can’t bring himself to ask Ash to give up his quest. Meanwhile, city officials corrupted by Dino ensure that Ash will be put in an adult prison, pending trial… and Charlie goes to talk to Max Lobo, the ex-cop Vietnam vet journalist currently also in the same prison, and ask him to protect Ash.
Protecting Ash is a fairly big ask, particularly as Ash is quite keen on doing things his own way, but at least Max manages to get Ash into the same cell as him. Ash recognises Max’s journalist pseudonym and tells him he should stick to writing columns, as his book wasn’t that great, and then in further demonstration of his social skills promptly picks a fight with someone else at lunch and ends up in solitary, which is not a bad place to be as the corrupt warden has already asked a gang of guys to go after him. When Ash gets out he, and I promise that this actually comes across in the manga as a perfectly reasonably progression of actions, goes after one of the prison gangs led by a guy called Garvey, and allows them to gang-rape him so he’ll end up in the infirmary (with a cheerful doctor who says things like, “At least he won’t get pregnant.”), where he asks for a capsule painkiller for a headache so that he can palm the capsule and hide a message in it, and then slip it to Eiji by kissing him when he visits the next day. Somewhere in the middle of this admittedly rather Byzantine approach to note-passing Ash finds out that Griff, Ash’s older brother, was in Max’s unit in Vietnam, and that Max, in addition to currently investigating Banana Fish, is also the guy who shot Griff when he went mad. Ash (whose real name is now revealed to be Aslan Callenreese: Max gets off lightly with Glenreed as a surname rather than Lobo) is pissed.
Eiji heads for Chinatown looking for Shorter, following Ash’s message, and encounters the first female character in a speaking role (Nadia, Shorter’s sister) before ending up at the illegal abortionist’s surgery, where Arthur and gang are unfortunately waiting for him. They are threatening the doctor in order to get the capsule (this is the Banana Fish one, not the message-passing one) and planning to take Eiji to Dino as a gift. Shorter shows up and then Griff staggers out, apparently recognising one of Dino’s lab guys, who then promptly shoots him. Gunplay ensues. Arthur bolts. Meanwhile, Max arranges to switch cells again, as Ash keeps staring at him in a rather creepy manner, and Ash, who has stolen Max’s notes, ends up with Garvey. This time, however, Ash doesn’t plan to just let him take whatever he wants…
On the first time through I was just stunned by how so much happened, particularly now that I’ve typed it all out. It's a very tight, fast story, and there are a lot of nice intercuts where dialogue or position acts as a bridge between sequences. In specific points, killing off the chirpy side-kick is a fairly time-honoured tradition, and from a plot point of view doing it this early (Skip makes it to page 13, although he’s already shot in the top panel) actually worked well for me. But the heroic black sidekick sacrificing himself for the white protagonist is more questionable as a trope, and I don’t think (leaping forward a bit to the next major black character, Cain, who runs a gang in Harlem) that the black characters get their own agendas in this story in the same way that, say, the Chinese gang characters do. I’ll get back to this once more of the other characters start showing up.
Apart from that, I was also a bit unsure as to how much my mad fondness for this series could be due to the fact that it does have a massive slashy subtext (I really like dense plot with subtext, much more than actual romance storylines such as the standard BL titles with a tissue-thin storyline and fixed sex roles that tend to bring me out in hives), so I lent the first two volumes to a control straight male who, as far as I'm aware, has no idea about slash, and he loved them. The Viz blurbs do mention massive crossover appeal for the series in Japan, which I assume means guys reading it, and the covers (yellow, with a blow up of a single frame) aren't exactly typical of either shoujo or shounen.
Volume 3.
Slightly less happens in this one, although there’s quite a bit of set-up going on. Ash starts off by taking out Garvey in an effectively brutal manner, although Max yells at him not to kill the guy and then tries to protect Ash again by offering the services of his lawyer. Eiji catches up with Ibe again (I am unsure if there is some specific in-joke going on here, but both of them are wearing very lurid Hawaiian shirts) and takes him to the doctor’s place, where the doctor updates Ibe, Eiji and Shorter on his research into Banana Fish. The gang the corrupt warden spoke to set up a trap for Ash, at the same time as Griff dies of his wounds and, as the others decide not to tell Ash just yet (although Ibe phones Charlie, who phones Max), Ash manages to use the fork he stole from the cafeteria during the fight in the last volume (he stared at it meaningfully whilst in solitary, I just didn’t have a chance to mention it before) to get the gang to back off by threatening to rip out their leader’s jugular. Unfortunately, Max then bursts in and lets slip the news about Griff. Max and Ash fight, but end up bonding (and drinking bourbon, which I presume is standard prison issue) over memories of Griff, and Ash finally tells Max what he knows about Banana Fish.
Various machinations by the police see Ash out on bail, whereupon he and Eiji end up breaking away from the others and taking a car (and Charlie’s gun) to see Shorter – Eiji, in fact, is the one to drive the car away when the others are trying to restrain Ash, as he feels guilty about Griff’s death and wants to help Ash. They end up crashing at Shorter’s place, discussing their next moves, while Dino plots and Charlie and Ibe try and track them down again, and there is another touching scene where Ash gives Eiji a gun (not Charlie's - he left that on the street somewhere, where a law-abiding citizen picked it up and turned it in), so he can defend himself (although possibly poking Eiji in the face with it to wake him up would be frowned on by responsible firearms users). Ash makes a deal with Mr Lee, someone high-up in the Chinese gangs to borrow a van to get into Chinatown, to attack Dino while he’s visiting his brothel full of under-age boys (in the fishmarket), and then there is a very nifty action scene involving Shorter and Eiji driving the truck while Ash stands on top of it and tries to shoot Dino. Arthur’s intervention with a sniper rifle sees both Dino and Ash wounded, neither fatal, Shorter gets slashed across the face, losing control of the truck, and at some point all the good guys end up diving into the Hudson to escape. getting out just at the right time – and place – to meet up with Charlie, Ibe, and Max. And Max demonstrates his new understanding of Ash by knocking him out when he’s about to head off after Dino again.
When they regroup, they decide to go to Ash’s home town, on Cape Cod, both to get out of Manhattan and to pick up Griff’s letters and army records, for more information. Ash is unthrilled by the whole thing, as is his father, still at the old house, who calls him a whore when they all show up and tells him to get lost again. Ash attempts to teach Eiji how to shoot, with minimal success. At least Griff’s records enable them to identify the guy who shot Griff – Abraham Dawson, who now lives at the address in LA that the dying guy mumbled to Ash way back at the beginning of volume 1.
Moving the action out of New York does slow down the pace a bit. Again, having Ash catch up with his family is another thing that's happening sooner, and with less build-up, than I would have expected, and it works well.