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Banana Fish, Akimi Yoshida
Mar. 17th, 2009 10:13 pmI 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).
( Volume 1. )
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).
( Volume 1. )
