For a more visual review; check out this DTube video:
Status: Episode 19
This next anime is called… wh- Banana Fish?
Now don’t be afraid, but this anime is quite gay. No I don’t mean the anime is gay, just that this anime has many characters who are homosexual. Infact, this might as well be a sausage party if it wasn’t for the few female characters in this show. But I digress.
This show is a crime drama in the US during the 80’s. Wait, it’s suppose to be the current decade? Anyway, this crime drama is about how the one of the mobs leaders of new york, The Lynx called Ash, have stumbled upon a dying man, which he gets a sample from. He learns that his team are looking for that sample and as he digs in, we finds out that the mobs is now developing a new sort of drug. This drug seems to be the same one his brother had been taking back in the Iraq war. Cue to the title, Banana Fish.
As the mobs finds out that he has the sample, it becomes a cat and mouse game to prevent the drug to be known by the public. And what a coincidence, since we have two reporters that want to interview the criminal life of New York. And one of them is rabbit, your bullied asian who used to jump very high. He gets dragged into the conflict and is introduced into the criminal world that the Lynx lives in. With the mobs wanting to capture their rebel, our rabbit gets more information about the criminal than what he asked for.
One thing that did caught my attention about this anime was that consider its casting. The be specific, the voice for Dino, Unsho Ishizuka. Yeah, this was one of his final roles. So since I do like the voice actors performance, I thought I would give this show a chance. Beside, it was based on a manga so it gotta be good right? Let’s take a look.
We can begin with the voice actors. As I said before Dino VA has passed away, and it seems that he did a good job for one of his last performance. I never though Mr.Hei Satan Joestar would sound such a heartless villain. Ash voice actor can really portray a teenager that has gone from tough and traumatic time, yet has a soft voice whenever to ease the mood. Those two where the voices I noticed the most out of the cast, I can’t comment on the rest of them except that they didn’t have an at least one American accent or anyone speaking English. Not a complaint, just a nice thing to have.
The chemistry between Ash and rabbit, Eiji is what makes this show good. You can see how both of these characters starting to care about each other, how their interaction changes from each episode. You can see that Ash really doesn’t want Eiji to end up in his situation and tries to force him away. Yet no matter how far Ash pushes Eiji from his world, Eiji comes back to support him. To be like his moral and tell him to not become a monster.
See this is one of the reason why people celebrate this anime and it’s manga. Their relationship isn’t about two guys having intercourse with each other for their affection, they talk, they eat and they seem to work together. This relationship seems so natural. The bishonen part of the story is probably the best part of this show. That and how it treats people with a traumatic experience. Both hilarious exploit like fear of Pumpkins and then serious horrors like rape.
The rest of the character interaction seems good, you can have these character in a serious situation and be goofy in another. There are episode like episode 16 where the entire thing is greatly balanced between a moment of suspense and goofs. Just watch or rewatch episode 16 will ya!
So Taff, if this anime is good, why is it so low on the list.
Well dear viewer, there just a itty bitty small problem regarding the detailed I gave you in the synopsis. This isn’t a modern adaptation. Or I should say, this is not a great modern adaptation. In fact, this is a horrible modern adaptation.
Let me explain. You see when are going to update your story from an era when cell phones either didn’t exist or where very primitive, you are going to need to change your story for it to still work. This is not a necessity to think too much of this unless your story revolves heavily on character sharing and gathering information. This means that if character want to know shit or contact someone about some shit, they can do so much faster and more outspread thanks for the today's technology. With that said, I am asking you; Do you think this show acknowledge, not only that phones exists, but it’s capabilities on sending and receiving information?
Here’s the scenario. Episode 7, Ash and the gang are in LA. They have ‘saved’ the Chinese pretty boy and now they are investigating his house since he has some stuff regarding the drug. They have just found a computer in the study room. They deduce that it might have information about the drug and they go and trying to log in. Ash tells to Shorter, his right hand man, to investigate on the Chinese boy since he seems suspicious.
So with the scenario set up. What do you think would happen? Don't think what happened in the manga, think as this was made today. What do you think these competence characters would do with the technology at hand?
Normally you would either call someone and they tell you through phone who he is or you have Ash, who also has some hacker skills in this version, to search for anything regarding this boy through the web.
If that is what you thought it would happen, then you are wrong. Shorter instead goes to some pal who shows the info through his own phone and then he gets captured. Yeah just showing the info on his phone when he could had texted or screenshotted it.
Speaking of, phones are treated either as photograph or newspaper. It's not that fill the same function, it's just that in these scenes they replaced it like it's paper 2.0. I'm not joking, replace these with what was in the manga and the scene and nothing would has changed. I swear, if there was a scene with a fly, they would use their phones to smack it.
It feels like the writer mostly did was to press control and f4 to replace every old device with new device, without thinking about what it did to the plot. I wouldn’t have much problem with this scene, IF IT WASN’T SO IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT.
By capturing him or setting him up, this trigger set of events that the story continues on. One of these events directly involves a characters death and many character getting dragged in this because of these events.
If you want him to be captured, just think a way of work around it. How about him contacting his friend through phone and then have the Chinese boy stun him in the act with his needle. You know, combine the two scenes.
I would had understood if the characters were making haste decision based on emotion or did not have the knowledge to be critical thinking. But since this show likes to flex Ash incredible intelligence with his IQ over 180, you kind of think that me might be too causes about sending his friend, his close ally somewhere far from him, when gangsters are looking for you. Hell you are waving your phone all over the place. I’m not asking to use your phone all the same, but you can’t say you exhausted all possibilities when ignoring the power of your phone. And when they do acknowledge modern technology and its possibilities, it comes at the cost of someone's deducing skill.
See this is why episode 7 is the worst episode for me. What you have just created, is a black hole. This hole will further expand the further you establish that this anime takes place in the current decade. I can’t believe you crippled your own story just for sake of relevance and quick wit. You did this for what, referencing 9 11 and say something is fake news. Good God.
And then we have the antagonist, which is basically Dino and his henchmen. As I mention that it becomes a cat and mouse game, this feels more like the mouse gets crushed too many times for the game to be on the edge. I mean the opposition is too OP in the first 10 episodes of this series. The win and lost ration is too unbalanced for me to know that Ash is even consider to be a threat for the mobs. It's like every time he wins at something, it's either getting countered pretty quickly or he had to sacrifice something.
I know that mobs does have their contacts and all, but the level of these references are just too outlandish for me. So okay we get that he’s a businessman, he has at least one cop on his side, understandable, he has sleeper agents in prison, fine fine, he is friend with a rival gang who are willing corporate, that’s fine too, he has top scientist , well he does have finance so he could back it up, he also gets founded by a republican politician and the general. Woaw! Now we are going to some places. What? He’s gonna be friend with another countries president now? I mean we are about to reach supervillain level of contact here. Do the mob always have contact in the state this high in authority? I am curious.
The first OP is quite nice and I have problem with the second OP. It just quills with good old ENGRISH. Oh yeah, we are talking about 90’s Berserk OP quality.
You know, I don’t have a problem with Engrish. It is just when you consider that artist like Tatsuro Yamashita exists, you kind of think Japanese artist would at least not have their pronunciations this thicc.
With all said about this anime, I need to say this; I think that this anime came out waaay too late. It doesn’t have the same impact as the manga had back in the 80’s and 90’s. If this anime was to out between 20 to 10 years ago, then this anime could had been ahead of its time with how nasty the system can be and how less dramatic it is by having a homosexual relationship.
Because let’s face it, being openly gay isn’t uncommon these days. Misbehaviour within the state is a problem that we are more aware of then we like to care and portable devices that could prevent certain events from happening exists. It’s not that we lack homosexual character these days anyway, and it’s sad how the studio changed nothing to it as they adapted it.
Overall, this is good show, but man, this show could had been so much better. I have little hope that this anime will turn around as a modern adaptation in the upcoming episodes. This Banana is Dated…
Fish!
