Banana Fish, Akimi Yoshida

[cyphomandra]

Ash wanders thoughtfully along the beach while Ash’s dad tells the others more of Ash’s backstory, which involves Ash shooting a pedophile at the age of eight (I am still slightly vague about the timelines here. Ash is 17 in 1985, so he’s 5 or 6 in the Vietnam flashback (1973), when Griff is 18 (according to Lobo). So this happened after that – and then he goes on the run and ends up with Dino? When does he pick up Griff again?). Ash’s dad and his current girlfriend Jennifer end up talking in the bar they run, when a bunch of bad guys (Dino’s) come in and take them hostage in an attempt to get Ash again. Ash hands himself over, but Ibe and Max pretend to be cops and in the ensuing shootout Jennifer is killed and Ash’s dad injured. Before the police show up, Ash’s dad frames the whole incident as a robbery gone wrong so Ash & the others can get away – there’s a kind of limited, understated understanding between them here, although previously Ash's dad has really not come across at all well.

Meanwhile, Dino is making deals with the Chinese gangs. And, on the road (for at least a week, although it's pretty clipped), Shorter and Ash are stealing chickens (there is a hilarious frame of chibi Ash plucking one while chibi Shorter looks bemused). There is also a nice moment where their camp in the wilderness is interrupted by a guy who points out that LA is just over the hill.

In LA they’re supposed to be looking for the Banana Fish guy, but Max ends up taking them his ex-wife’s place (she pulls a gun on him, convinced he’s shown up to kidnap their son). Jessica (sorry, there are actually three female speaking characters; I’d combined names) works on a female version of Playboy magazine and argues vigorously with Max, but is also able to fill in the group on Alexis Dawson, a cancer expert who lives at the address they’ve been given. At the address they find a creepy old lady (possibly meant to have cataracts? No pupils in her eyes) and a bunch of bad guys who they foil in their attempt to abduct a young Chinese guy, Yau-Si, who claims to be Professor Dawson’s adopted son. Obviously given this description things are not what they seem, and although Yau-Si shows them around the professor’s house (trashed by persons unknown after the professor’s recent mysterious disappearance) and thoughtfully reads over Ash’s shoulder while he breaks into the professor’s computer, Shorter’s enquiries into Yau-Si’s past in LA’s Chinatown reveal that Yau-Si is in fact Yut Lung, the youngest brother of the powerful Lee family to whom Shorter owes a deep familial allegiance. Shorter, trapped between his familial loyalties and his friendship with Ash, agrees to keep silent and serve Yut Lung in secret.

Ash and Max argue over who gets to follow up on their discoveries in the professor's files, namely that Banana Fish is a drug used by the military in experiments, but they both agree that Eiji should stay out of it. Ash takes on the responsibility of trying to force Eiji out, telling him he’s nothing more than a handicap to them, and although he also tells him that Eiji can do things he (Ash) can’t, and is also the only person to ever help him without expecting anything in return (the pole vault incident), he still leaves Eiji crying (granted, this does not seem particularly hard to do) and ends up drinking in the kitchen with Max again. Max has decided he’s going to hand over all his notes to the New York Tribune and go with them for the story. Ash is going back to New York as well.

Yut Lung tells Shorter to kidnap Eiji, and threatens Shorter’s sister when he baulks. And three armed guys from a Chinese gang break into Jessica’s house.

I’m still not sure whether the whole Yut Lung intro with the abduction was set-up, but I suppose that makes the most sense. Does this mean they brought the old lady as well? Also, in these summaries, I tend to cut out the bits where Dino is plotting and having various meetings with other gangs/senior American politicians etc, as well as the bits where we cut back to Charlie and Jenkins being defeated by corruption. This is, sadly, less because I am depressed at the state of modern politics and more because I want to get back to Ash and Eiji. I think I have also generated unnecessary confusion over the Dawson brothers - Alexis is the older one who pops up from behind furnishings and is slightly less unlikeable, Abraham is the more corrupt one working for Dino. They are Jewish, which crops up again later when Abraham is trying to defend his actions by saying that all the military guys he experimented on (except Griff, actually) abused him for being Jewish.