Banana Fish
Banana Fish is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida. It was originally serialized from May 1985 to April 1994 in the manga magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic. Set primarily in New York City in the 1980s, the series follows street gang leader Ash Lynx as he uncovers a criminal conspiracy involving "banana fish", a mysterious drug that brainwashes its users. In the course of his investigation he encounters Eiji Okumura, a Japanese photographer's assistant with whom he forms a close bond.
The visual and narrative style of Banana Fish, characterized by realist artwork and action-oriented storytelling, represented a significant break from then-established manga conventions of highly stylized illustration and romantic fantasy-focused stories. While the series was aimed at the audience of adolescent girls and young adult women, its mature themes and subject material attracted a substantial crossover audience of men and adult women. Its depictions of homoeroticism in this mature, action-oriented context were particularly influential on manga depicting romance between male characters. Banana Fish was acclaimed by critics, who offered praise for the series' plot, dialogue, and action scenes. It is Yoshida's most commercially successful work, with over 12 million copies of collected volumes of the series in circulation as of 2018.
An English-language translation of the series was published by Viz Media, which also serialized Banana Fish in its manga magazines Pulp and Animerica Extra beginning in 1997, making Banana Fish one of the earliest manga series to reach a wide audience in the United States. The series has been adapted several times, notably in 2018 as a 24-episode anime television series directed by Hiroko Utsumi and produced by MAPPA. The anime adaptation aired on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block and is syndicated globally on Amazon Prime Video, which simulcast the series during its original broadcast run.
Plot
Banana Fish is set in the United States during the mid-1980s, primarily in New York City. Seventeen-year-old street gang leader Ash Lynx cares for his older brother Griffin, a Vietnam War veteran left in a vegetative state following a traumatic combat incident in which he fired on his own squadron and uttered the words "banana fish". One night, Ash witnesses two of his gang members kill a man who instructs Ash to "seek banana fish" before dying. The two gang members tell Ash they were acting on orders from Dino Golzine, the head of the Corsican mafia in New York; Ash was formerly an enforcer and child sex slave to Golzine, having been groomed from a young age to become the eventual heir to his criminal enterprise.Ash begins to investigate "banana fish" but is impeded in this endeavor by Golzine, leading him to turn on his former patron. Ash encounters multiple allies and enemies in the course of his dual efforts to uncover the meaning of "banana fish" and dismantle Golzine's criminal empire: chief among his confidants is Eiji Okumura, a Japanese photographer's assistant who has travelled to New York to complete a report on street gangs, and with whom Ash forms a close bond. It gradually transpires that "banana fish" is a drug developed by an American military doctor during the Vietnam War that brainwashes its users; early versions of the drug were tested on American soldiers, including Griffin, which drove them to insanity. Its perfected formula has been acquired by Golzine, who intends to sell the drug to factions within the United States government, who in turn seek to use it to overthrow communist governments in South America.
Ultimately, Golzine is killed in a climactic battle, his government co-conspirators are exposed as participants in his child sex trafficking ring, and all evidence of the banana fish project is destroyed. Ash comes to recognize the danger he exposes Eiji to, and reluctantly ceases all contact with him. Eiji returns to Japan, though prior to his departure, he writes Ash a letter in which he tells him that "my soul is always with you." While distracted by the letter, Ash is fatally stabbed by a rival gang lieutenant. He staggers into the New York Public Library Main Branch where he dies, smiling and clutching Eiji's letter.
Production
Context
entered a period of significant creative development beginning in the 1970s, characterized by the emergence of new narrative and visual styles, and the ascendance of female manga artists into what had formerly been a category dominated by male creators. Manga such as The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda established non-Japanese settings and androgynous characters as a common motif for manga, while works by Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, and other artists associated with the Year 24 Group originated as a distinct subgenre of manga. Early Year 24 Group typically depicted romanticized European or historic Japanese settings, though works that depicted homosexuality by artists unassociated with the group such as Fire! by Hideko Mizuno depicted unidealized American settings, and frequently included one or more Japanese characters that served as a point of reference and identification for Japanese readers.Banana Fish creator Akimi Yoshida made her debut as a manga artist in 1977, having originally been inspired to pursue a career in manga after watching a revival screening of the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy while in high school. The film, which depicts the relationship between a con man and a male hustler in New York City, had a profound impact on Yoshida, and influenced her to create works that replicated its themes of close spiritual and fraternal bonds between men. Yoshida would first explore these themes in her debut serial manga series California Story, which depicts themes of homoeroticism in a New York City setting, and which manga scholar Yukari Fujimoto regards as a narrative and thematic precursor to Banana Fish.
Development
Yoshida did not have a fixed composition for the plot of Banana Fish from its outset; while she had a general idea of the series' story, the particulars of plot and characters were developed throughout its serialization. Owing to the influence of Midnight Cowboy, Yoshida sought to create Banana Fish as story focused on an emotionally intense relationship between two characters, who became Ash and Eiji. Originally, Ash was conceived as an upbeat character inspired by manga protagonists, as Yoshida sought to contrast the moody protagonists typical of her other works, while Eiji was originally conceived as a female character. In the latter case, Eiji was made male due the character's largely passive role in the story, and Yoshida's personal dislike of inert female deuteragonists in manga who exist solely as a source of conflict or romance for the male protagonist.Yoshida's style as a manga artist – as exemplified by Banana Fish – deviated significantly from typical manga of its era in terms of narrative, character, setting, mood, and visual style. Writer and translator Frederik L. Schodt notes that while Yoshida's works adhere to certain conventions of manga as textual and subtextual homoeroticism, she at the same time adopts "a completely masculine art style, eschewing flowers and bug eyes in favor of tight bold strokes, action scenes, and speed lines". She forgoed many of the conventions made popular by the Year 24 Group – highly stylized character designs, a focus on romance and fantasy, grandiloquent writing – in favor of artwork that was stripped-down and realistic, panels that focused on characters and actions over backgrounds and environments, and frequent action sequences. Her characters are drawn as realistically proportioned, contrasting both the "willowy bodies" typical of men in manga and the "hyperdefined anatomy" typical of men in manga. In contrast to the European settings popular in manga of the 1970s, Yoshida expressed a general disinterest in European culture and "English pretty boy types", preferring instead the "carefree attitude" of working-class American men.
The physical appearance of many of the characters in Banana Fish is based on real-life public figures: Ash's appearance is based on tennis player Stefan Edberg in the earliest chapters of the series before shifting to a design based on actor River Phoenix, while Eiji is based on actor Hironobu Nomura. Yoshida likened this process of selecting real-life figures to depict as characters to casting a "B-grade action movie". The author developed an interest in River Phoenix after watching his 1986 film The Mosquito Coast while visiting the United States; she was unaware Phoenix also appeared in the 1986 film Stand By Me, which she had previously seen, and became intrigued by Phoenix's range as an actor given the differences between the two characters. Yoshida notes how as Ash's design shifted from the Edberg to the Phoenix design his physicality shifts as well, from "athletic and solidly-built" to a "slender pretty boy".
Despite her lack of fixed composition for the story, Yoshida intended from the earliest stages of the series' development to have Banana Fish conclude with Ash's death. She briefly reconsidered this approach following Phoenix's death in 1993 at the age of 23, as she did not wish the series to be perceived as making light of a real-life tragedy. In discussing her rationale for Ash's death, Yoshida has indicated her fascination with people who live intensely and die young, describing Ash as a person who "lived his full life in 17 years"; further, Yoshida believed that as Ash had committed acts of violence and murder throughout the series, he needed to pay for these actions with his own life. The seeming ignominy of Ash's death at the hands of a low-level gang member was intentional on Yoshida's part; a protagonist who seems to die meaninglessly recurs as a motif in manga, Midnight Cowboy, and Yoshida's own California Story.
The concept of the mind-controlling banana fish drug originated from Yoshida's interest in Central Intelligence Agency research into mind control, such as MKUltra and Project ARTICHOKE, and her research into similar programs in the Soviet Union leading her to consider drugs as a tool for warfare. Yoshida has had an intellectual interest in drugs since high school, noting that her generation was influenced by and developed knowledge of drugs in a broad sense due to the influence of the drug culture of the era. The author has stated that depicting Cold War-era politics became more difficult as political realities changed over the course of Banana Fishs nearly decade-long run – principally the dissolution of the Soviet Union mid-serialization – but that she ultimately did not strive for strict realism in her depiction of politics and current events.