Banana Fish

Episode 24 (and thoughts on Banana Fish as a whole)
Well. They did it. The bastards actually went through with it. I remember when I read banana fish for the first time this ending didn't make me feel sad, it didn't make me appreciate the journey or any bullshit like that, it just left me angry and hollow. When the anime was announced I rejoiced because I thought they would take the opportunity to fix Banana Fish's greatest sin, but nope, guess not. Admittedly they shaved down some of the details which originally made it absolutely infuriating but as a whole this is still awful. You could write a book about all the narrative and thematic failings of this. I'm kinda speechless honestly. I used to have faith that MAPPA would be able to improve the story but as the episodes kept coming and the issues kept piling up I realized that this has all been a mistake.

As a whole, the anime has changed my opinion of banana fish drastically. Shotgunning through the manga all in two days, I thought banana fish was great and was genuinely excited to see it hit the big screens. But going through the story at a slower pace, week by week, I've come to realized just how many gigantic problems this story has. Granted, some of them are specific to the adaptation and there's parts I still like about it, but as a whole I cannot consider Banana Fish as "good" anymore.

If there's one thing I'm grateful to Banana Fish for, it's that it forced me to really think about how I watch media, making me realize that I need to think way more critically about things and not be blind to a show's many faults just because it has a couple things I like. So thanks, I guess?

Banana Fish sure is one hell of a drug-- feels good to finally be free of it.
 
Thoughts after reading the epilogue and special chapters from the manga:
it was quite interesting seeing how Ash and Shorter first meet. I think more than ever that Shorter was one of the first Ash ever became friends with. It also felt awesome to see how Eiji was able to come to terms with Ash's death, and part of that comes from talking about it with your friends and family. I can see these becoming ovas at some point, but that more or less wraps the story up on a better note.
 
6/10
Not impressed by sappy ending. Show had plenty of oppurtunities to be grim, but decided to be contrived and romantic to the end. I understand that if you care about the characters, it might get you, but I really didn't.

Maybe simply not my genre, but as I mentioned before, I think there's major structural issues as well.

Who even was that soldier dude, and why was he the final villain?
 
tootalls said:
Happy I dropped this early, based on these reviews, it's not looking like it was worth watching.
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It depends. I still really enjoyed it, but I was focused on Yut Lung for most of it, and could partake in the Ash/Eiji shipping. As a story, yeah, it's not the greatest, and the anime has definite pacing issues. It's a shoujo in the end, so that's why it's not very realistic I suppose. It annoyed me at times and there are several things I don't like about it but I still consider it one of my favourites (more so the manga than the anime) because of how invested I got in the characters. And Yut Lung is definitely one of my fave anime/manga characters so if I'm honest he bumps the score up for me quite a bit even if he spent most of the series being a jealous bitch.

I get why people don't like it, and it's one of those series where I think all criticisms are valid. I dunno, it's not a series I'd recommend to most people.
 
More thoughts on the ending:
as I listened to the lyrics of the 2nd ending song during the 2nd half of the series, I realized it was foreshadowing for Ash's death. That explains why the song Red had this saddening effect to it. Despite how depressing the song is, I still like it. I hope that doesn't make me seem like I'm weird.
 
Ebonyslayer said:
More thoughts on the ending:
as I listened to the lyrics of the 2nd ending song during the 2nd half of the series, I realized it was foreshadowing for Ash's death. That explains why the song Red had this saddening effect to it. Despite how depressing the song is, I still like it. I hope that doesn't make me seem like I'm weird.
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It's a really good song, honestly.
 
Episode 24:

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YES BUT DID ASH DIE.

It must say a lot about the show that, when Ash was doing his dramatic run through the snow, I was already waiting for something depressing to happen. So when Lao showed up, it was funny in a "THERE WE GO" kind of way, but it was also really frustrating, because HOW IS THIS GUY NOT DEAD YET? Fuck Lao. I knew he was destined to prolong the plot and the drama to insane levels the minute he showed up, and it's been gratifying to see how right I was about him all along. But still. Fuck Lao, for real.

And what was up with that Golzine death scene? What the fuck? That shit's terribly anti-climactic for a guy they made sure was as despicable as possible.

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If I had one thing to say to this show, that would probably be it. Got so caught up in the beauty and mythos of its very own Ash Lynx, that literally everything in the plot had to give way to his majesty. I've been saying for a while that I was never really able to get into Banana Fish despite my best efforts, and now I'm thinking that's got mostly to do with the Problem of Ash. There was nothing in him that made me want to care for him or relate with him, and because Eiji was the only guy who could do either, I wasn't able to understand much of Eiji either. Shorter could've been the guy to keep me invested here, but we all know where that plot point went.

Everyone here is too superhuman to give a proper shit about, and their only flaw is that none of them know how to love like a normal human being. It'd make for a sad story if Ash wasn't trying to be a dick and one-up everyone with his more tragic backstory. The show likes to tell its characters to stop holding on to their pasts and move on, but it doesn't like taking its own advice. It must not like its audience a whole lot too, because after making everyone involved go through such depressing plot points, Banana Fish ends the journey by... dragging everyone back to the hell hole it plunged them into in the first place. Yeah, I don't know, that shit might have passed for profound back then, but it's only frustrating and incredibly contrived by today's standards.

I've also got a bone to pick with the new characters, especially Blanca and Foxx. They came in way too late in the story, so I wasn't able to give a proper shit about any of them, even if I'm sure they tried their hardest to stay relevant. That's another thing about this show, now that I think about it: it tries and tries its hardest, but never really gets anywhere in the end. Banana Fish is ultimately a story about hitmen learning how to love, but it devolves into a torture pleasurefest that's intent on punishing everybody, including the audience.

A lot of Banana Fish's problems have a lot to do with the writing, that it makes me think it's the source material itself that's problematic and not the adaptation. Drama for drama's sake, convoluted plot points that were hurriedly resolved, and character baggage that doesn't nearly excuse anyone's actions. This show has a lot of problems, but I think those were the main issues I had with it. Everything in this series begins and ends with Ash, in both good ways and bad. It's just too bad for Ash's seiyuu, I guess, but good voice acting and proper emoting can only take a badly-written character so far.

2/5
 
A promising plot + good bromance + bad pacing.

The ending was good
Ash was going to have to die at some point of the story. It was his fate to suffer life and die in peace.

Overall rather disappointing. 5/10

For those who are looking for further depression, try watching the official PV for the first ED on YouTube. For those who haven’t watched ep 24 yet, the PV is a spoiler.
 
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Thoughts after rewatching Banana Fish:
to be honest, I've realized that the pacing just doesn't feel as well as it could have been, and I stuck with it as the episodes were coming out, so maybe I should have noticed it more. The Banana Fish drug plotline felt weak, it was just something to start the story but never went anywhere with it in the end. There were critics back in the day that praised how the manga showed how negative rape is opposed to those yaoi fantasies that were all over the place.

Its nice to know that this was a good inspiration for other shojo series, but its just not good as a series in general honestly. 2/5 for me! Though its nice to know that Mappa studio has been doing awesome with Dororo 2019!
 
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Ebonyslayer said:
Thoughts after rewatching Banana Fish:
to be honest, I've realized that the pacing just doesn't feel as well as it could have been, and I stuck with it as the episodes were coming out, so maybe I should have noticed it more. I do like Eiji and Ash a lot as a bromance, but there were other parts that took away from that. The Banana Fish drug plotline felt weak, it was just something to start the story but never went anywhere with it in the end. There were critics back in the day that praised how the manga showed how negative rape is opposed to those yaoi fantasies that were all over the place.

But the villains are nothing to write home about, although I do like Lung. Its nice to know that this was a good inspiration for other shojo series, but I definitely think the story content hasn't aged well. 2.5/5 for me! Though its nice to know that Mappa studio has been doing awesome with Dororo 2019!
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But was written in the 90'so it is old and dated manga. It was not bad compared to newer stories. It hard to adpt from 87 to 2018, 25 yrs.? Stuff doesn't transfer.
 
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I love watching this anime. Really cute between them when there is no cural things happending. I do not like this ending. Will there be the next season?
By the way, what sites do you guys get? Nowadays anime-planet is my top 4 besides myanimelist, crunchyroll, nihofun.com

I go to watch dororo, period. :-)
 
Aahhh! Banana Fish was so hard to watch it all because I knew what would happen. Yet it was also so good! Aahh! I’ve never been so emotionally torn about any story before, anime or manga. So good as a story. I wish there was more really good fanfiction and doujinshi for Banana Fish.
 
I started watching the show today, after a friend pointed it out to me a long time ago. I gotta say, it's very entertaining to watch and I just can't help but play the next episode. It reminds me a lot of HBO's Oz, which is a great thing because I love Oz.

It's a little bit weird that there's barely any female characters, but it's not like it really bothers me. As long as said characters are well written, I don't care if all of them are male or all of them are female. Ash is a little bit edgy but I like him and I can understand why he is the way he is. Eiji is a sweetheart.

The opening and ending themes are great and the art style is nice to look at. I don't have any complaints about the animation quality either.
 
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