برچسب Banana Fish - جادوی ِ خاطرات

در سال 1973، جایی در ویتنام سربازی آمریکایی سر به دیوانگی می سپرد و همرزمان خود را با گلوله هایش به قتل میرساند. بعد از آن، تنها کلماتی که این فرد به زبان می آورد «ماهی موزی» Banana Fish می‌باشد. 12 سال می‌گذرد؛ پلیسان در نیویورک در حال انجام تحقیقات بر روی خودکشی هایی مرموز می باشند که مدرکی آنها را به سمت «اش لینکس»، رهبر یک گروه خیابانی می‌کشاند. کسی که از قضا برادر آن فردی می‌باشد که در ویتنام دست به آن قتل عام سابق زده است.

Banana Fish انیمه Action Adventure Drama Shoujo Utsumi Hiroko MAPPA

کارآگاه کونان دوشنبه 15 بهمن 1397 ساعت 15:22

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Banana Fish - Episode 16 [Review]

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Banana Fish - Episode 16 [Review]

This week's episode takes its title from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Lo, the Poor Peacock!" The original story focuses on an affluent family that's fallen on hard times, symbolized by the daughter needing to switch from private to public school. It's not as obvious a connection as some of the previous Banana Fish episode titles have been, but I have a couple of guesses. It could refer to Prof. Dawson, once a genius but now reduced to a zombie-like state by the drug he helped create. But more likely, it refers to Golzine, who's been reduced from his head honcho position to be just another observer making suggestions, while the incompetent Baron Zahkarev calls the shots. Zakharev might be better at some things when it comes to running the National Mental Health Institute, but he sure doesn't know their latest escapee the way Golzine does.

The short story "Lo, the Poor Peacock!" ends (spoilers!) with the family regaining their fortunes, after the daughter charms a potential investor while her dad is taken ill. Likewise, by the end of this episode, Golzine retakes his place atop the pyramid in a far less pleasant manner, by violently murdering the Baron. After all, it's the Baron's underestimation of Ash that makes it so much easier for him to escape. Not that Ash couldn't have escaped if Golzine had been running the show—he's eluded him multiple times—but presumably Golzine would've known how to make better use of the building's "top level security system" to thwart the teen genius. The fact that he has to suggest relatively late in the game to disable the pass Ash stole is pretty ridiculous. Baron more than deserves what's coming to him. That said, does the Baron know Ash's actual age? He seems to be under the impression that he's prepubescent, not one year away from legal adulthood, given his assumption that he'd be so much easier to capture than a grown-up on the run.

Then again, the Baron isn't the only one who underestimates Ash this week. Ash's allies, Max and Ibe, also assume that they would need to rescue Ash from the Institute. Granted, the stakes are pretty high, since Ash was almost turned into a zombie like all the other patients in the Institute. But of course, the tables get turned; Ash ends up needing to rescue them at the end. This particular situation does seem like it's specifically set up to test Ash's natural problem-solving and fighting skills, but for them to assume they'd be able to handle it better shows that they haven't been paying attention for the past 15 episodes.

Other than that, this episode is one big chase scene, so the fact that there's still a lot to unpack thematically testifies to the strength of Banana Fish. I also liked the way Ash's character development was allowed to flow more naturally. It was getting a little obnoxious having every character testify to Ash's super-genius. Not only was it unnecessary—we can see Ash's prodigious skills in action—but it was the kind of protagonist-worship I expect from a more poorly-written anime. It took away from the supposed seriousness of this show and made Ash less interesting to watch than characters whose traits were communicated more via their actions. (For example, this is what makes Yut-Lung such a good character.) So I liked getting an extended sequence of Ash solving problems and taking out baddies on his own, rather than just being told about it. But more importantly, this sequence communicates something about Ash that's less remarked-upon by his allies and enemies: his compassion.

We've heard plenty of characters tell us about how Ash's love for Eiji is his "one weak spot," but I think this episode proves that this extends beyond Eiji. His whole rescue of Prof. Dawson involves him repeatedly getting screwed over in order to help someone who doesn't benefit him in any way. Dawson has been reduced by the B1 drug to being unintelligent with seemingly no survival instincts, so he's basically just a load who slows Ash down. But Ash still helps him, because Dawson was kind to him in the past, and because it's the right thing to do. It's a reminder that while Ash's bond with Eiji may be his greatest quality, he's a good person overall deep down. Frankly, he wouldn't be able to have the relationship he does with Eiji if he wasn't good at heart; Eiji wouldn't return those feelings if Ash was truly a terrible person. (And that's why the two of them tend to fight when Ash betrays Eiji's expectations of him.) It's that broader compassion, not just his ability to fall for one person, which sets Ash apart from his enemies. It particularly sets him apart from Yut Lung, the character most clearly set up as his foil. Moon Dragon-kun is motivated by hatred and revenge. Ash is too, but also by compassion and love.

Speaking of Eiji, it's a little weird to have an episode of Banana Fish without him, isn't it? Eiji only shows up during one of Ash's inner monologues, where he laments "older guys" getting in his way. (We get some great goofy Ash faces throughout this episode, especially in his interactions with said "older guys.") Luckily, we're about to see way more of him, as Eiji refuses Max's offer of rest and relaxation to run off in search of Ash. I wonder how pleasantly surprised he'll be to find out how Eiji managed to wrestle his way out of Yut Lung's clutches. Even apart, Ash and Eiji's love connection has brought out the most in both boys—for better or for worse.

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Review Banana Fish

کارآگاه کونان یکشنبه 6 آبان 1397 ساعت 01:13

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Banana Fish - Episode 13 [Review]

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Banana Fish - Episode 13 [Review]

Banana Fish makes a direct reference to the literary work in its title this week. It's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a short story by Ernest Hemingway about a doomed couple camping on the mountain. The leopard Ash discusses in his conversation with Eiji in the episode opens the story, symbolizing the fate of the main character—who also wanders out of his "habitat" to a remote wilderness, succumbing to preventable wounds. Ash seemingly takes the "wrong" message from the story, seeing himself as doomed to find a "place of no return" like that leopard, but Eiji reminds Ash that humans can change our fates. We have wisdom that animals do not.

It's an interesting story to have hanging over this episode, which is also preoccupied with fate, death, and the extent to which we can impact either of those. It's also an episode that illustrates how living with these constant preoccupations has warped Ash's view of the world and himself. It's not a bad place to return to Banana Fish from a week off. This episode is full of what the series does best: subtle character drama that requires your attention. I really appreciated that these characters are understood as people, not just as plot points and means to a story's end, which Banana Fish can unfortunately dip into in its weaker moments.

One such character is Arthur, who gets that classic last-minute burst of character development before someone is slated to die. "The Snows of Kiliminjaro" really digs into how personal his beef with Ash has been. Before, Arthur just felt like a particularly bloodthirsty second-in-command for Golzine. Now we see his resentment runs deeper to the way that Ash has always been singled out as the favorite of the mob with his effortless talent. Arthur isn't like that, and somehow the fact that Ash didn't ask for his talents or want them makes Arthur hate him even more. His interesting bit of double talk comes after Ash evades him on the subway, telling his starstruck henchmen that Ash is "just human!"

Yet we see that Arthur himself doesn't really believe this. He's also in awe of Ash's abilities, knowing full well that Ash is a stronger fighter. If he didn't, why would he need to pull the subway trick to defeat him? Arthur should feel like he could take Ash in a fair fight, but he knows he can't, which is why in every showdown they've had, he's tried to cheat in some way. It also reinforces the connections Arthur possesses that Ash no longer does, since he's able to shut down a whole subway line for this. (I also appreciated the depiction of that particular aspect of New York life, as someone who struggled with subway construction shutdowns last time I was there. Even if it's unrealistic in execution, this felt closer to home than some of its other depictions of the city.)

This big fight is juxtaposed with tender moments focusing on Ash and Eiji's relationship. It really hits home the way that these two come from "different worlds"; while Ash is fighting for his life on the subway train, picking off Arthur's mooks, Eiji is back at their apartment, processing his feelings for Ash over tender romantic music. If the framing isn't enough for you, Eiji spells it out explicitly. The awful things Ash has experienced have taken their toll on him, and even if he closes that off to the rest of the world, he still shows this to Eiji—intentionally or unintentionally.

I also found this scene interesting in terms of framing. While the visuals keep reminding you that Ash and Eiji do indeed inhabit separate beds, Eiji talks about him with an intimacy where if you heard the lines out of context, you'd think ottherwise. Plus, there's romantic music playing. It's pretty clear what we're supposed to think about who these two are to each other. It reminds me of all those old Hollywood movies where they showed married couples sleeping in separate beds, like that was going to fool anyone.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I think their relationship is relevant in an episode that seems to be so concerned with how that relationship impacts their choices. That's the other big thread of this episode, how Ash's attempts at "selflessness" toward Eiji are really selfish in nature. We see the truth of that in his final line, where we learn it's more about him being afraid to share this side of his life with Eiji, to have him see Ash at what he considers his worst, than it is about protecting him. But throughout the episode, Ash leads us to believe it's about Eiji's safety, while other characters (mainly Eiji himself) give us glimpses of the truth.

Ash's underlings are also beginning to catch on. I thought it was notable that they compared Ash's bond with Eiji to that with Skip, but they seem to realize over the course of the episode that this isn't true. Eiji occupies a truly special place in Ash's life, as the parallels with that past girlfriend showed us last week—he's so special in fact, that Ash seems to have "Eiji-dar" in that last scene, picking out his voice from a crowd. As Ash's gang realizes why Eiji wants to stick around, they end up helping find him rather than going to the airport. Even if Ash is in denial about the importance of this relationship to him, others can help him see the light.

Of course, the truth is that while having people he loves around give him more "weaknesses" for enemies to exploit, love is also his strength. Eiji grounds him, keeping Ash from going off the deep end—acting as a conscience while reminding him that he'll always be worthy of love, even when he can't see it for himself. Eiji also gets to see a more vulnerable side of Ash than anyone else; he's the one person who knows that he's not just the untouchable genius mob boss façade he presents to the world. Ash doesn't really have anyone else in his life like that, with the death of his brother and other close friends. So Ash pushes Eiji away at his own peril. That's the message of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"; while main character Harry bemoans how his creature comforts and wealthy wives have made him too soft as a writer, it's his isolation on the mountain—pushing away even Helen, the woman who accompanied him—that kills him. I hope Ash gets a chance to re-read it soon, because maybe he should remember more than just the striking visual of that dead leopard.

Maybe it's because the show took a week off, but this strikes me as a particularly elegant episode. Everything about this week's installment feels exquisitely deliberate, particularly the shifts between Ash and Eiji's stories and what that structure says about both of them. With seemingly everyone off to prison, hopefully the show can continue to use all the different characters and stories it's telling well in the future.

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Review Banana Fish

کارآگاه کونان یکشنبه 15 مهر 1397 ساعت 22:56

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Banana Fish - Episode 12 [Review]

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Banana Fish - Episode 12 [Review]

My friends who've read the manga told me that this episode of Banana Fish would make for an exciting one, and they were not wrong. Much of it is setup for the gang warfare to come between Ash and Arthur, but there's a lot of action too, even if most is off-screen, with how much of the episode focuses on Ash eliminating his adversaries. There's also some strong character drama in expected and less-expected places, as all this violence slowly takes its toll on Ash.

One of the interesting ways the episode frames all this is setting up Yut Lung as a foil to Ash. This isn't the first time Banana Fish has done this, but the conversation between Yut Lung and Sing at the beginning of this episode really hammers their connection home. Sing remarks on the similarities between them and Yut Lung seems to agree, particularly in how they come from similarly difficult backgrounds. That gives Yut Lung insight into Ash that some other characters might not have—but like any good foil, this also highlights their differences. Yut Lung seems to take joy in hurting the people he needs to hurt, while Ash regrets this necessity of revenge. That's what makes Yut Lung one of the "bad guys" while Ash is our hero, setting up the central conflict of this episode. It also makes me wish there was more Yut Lung around than in just those early scenes.

This episode really ramps up Ash's descent into murder and darkness. To some degree it comes out of nowhere, as a way to set up a fresh conflict. Why Ash is suddenly willing to take things so far, and not consider that some of Arthur's men he's killing are cogs in the machine just like Shorter, is not explored as well as it could be. At the same time, it makes sense that Ash is consolidating his power and realizing that he can't be too choosy about his victims at this stage. Still, Eiji is worried about what he's hearing—that Ash has been killing unarmed people, people who beg for remorse. Ash has his reasons, and we know Eiji loves Ash too much not to eventually forgive him, but it does lead to real conflict between them. It also conflicts with Ash's personal desire not to let Eiji be corrupted by his cruel world.

The two boys talk about girls, and Ash ends up telling Eiji about a girl from his past he liked who was killed under suspicion of being his girlfriend. I suspect that some people might take this story as confirmation that Ash and Eiji's relationship "isn't like that," since he likes girls, but the episode makes the opposite clear. First of all, interest in the opposite sex doesn't automatically mean lack of interest in the same sex. Ash is likely intended as bisexual, and that's just fine. (It would also fit within the aesthetic and tropes of the era that influenced Akemi Yoshida. Male bisexuality was seen as trendy and glamorous in the late 1960s and 1970s.) But more importantly, this story comes up in an episode that constantly reminds us how much Eiji is in that position with Ash now. He's the person from "outside" who has a hold on Ash that nobody else does. And in his effort to protect Eiji from succumbing to that world like he has, Ash makes himself more vulnerable, in a way that someone like Yut Lung—who is only out to protect himself from further harm—is not. Everybody against Ash knows that Eiji is the way to get to him, just as this mysterious girl from Ash's past once was.

Comparing the character's past or current heterosexual desires with their same-sex ones is also a common trope in BL, the genre Banana Fish would help influence. It's a way of reinforcing that this desire is "for real," by juxtaposing it against other desires that we take for granted in that way. To be honest, as many frustrations as I have with some LGBT tropes in anime and manga, I wish more Western media representations of bi characters could take a page from that. I don't like the way it's so often used to suggest that the character is "just like straight people", but I do like how it shows the character's desires for the same and opposite sex as being on equal footing.

We also get more into the political side of the Banana Fish plot. For as many parts of the show's "MK Ultra But For Real" story feel implausible (like that Pizzagate restaurant), this sounds like something that Cold War-era America might have actually used such a drug for if they'd had it. The U.S. in that era was constantly trying to overthrow democratically-elected leaders who were seen as insufficiently supportive of the U.S. or too pro-Soviet, replacing them with right-wing dictatorships. Something like "Banana Fish" allowing them to take over the minds of local politicians, rather than having to search for someone who was already on their side, would make that even easier. The focus on "Kafghanistan" and its role in the global drug trade seems like a way to bring this into the modern War on Terror landscape, even though that would also fit right into the 1980s setting of the original manga. Since this reflects real-world geopolitics, this is a lot more interesting to me than the other aspects of the drug plot, though it's still something the show could bungle. I'm curious to see where Banana Fish takes this. What's interesting is how Ash, this kid who hasn't had much in the way of actual schooling, is so easily able to piece together this political situation.

One thing I haven't discussed as much in this series is the meaning behind the episode titles, which are all references to famous literary works. Besides the "Banana Fish" of the series title and first episode, which are references to J.D. Salinger's famous story, these episodes largely take their cue from works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other American writers from the so-called "Lost Generation"—people who came of age in the bleak aftermath of World War I, having lost so many of their compatriots to that brutal war and the Spanish flu outbreak that accompanied it. The focus on Fitzgerald in particular, as in titles like last week's "The Beautiful and the Damned," also reinforces the "New York, city of sin" focus of the anime, as much of Fitzgerald's work focuses on the decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous in New York during the 1920s, the height of the Prohibition era. (The Beautiful and the Damned is also largely about Fitzgerald's infamously fraught marriage to his wife Zelda, so read into that what you will for an episode centering on Ash and Eiji's relationship and intimacy.) The Hemingway novel referenced this week, To Have and Have Not, focuses on a goodhearted fishing boat captain in Florida who is forced by larger economic forces into darker ventures like smuggling. The similarities to Ash's situation couldn't be more obvious.

By invoking these famous works of American literature, Banana Fish is also situating itself as sitting alongside their caliber. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to put it there yet, but there is definitely more to this criminal love story than meets the eye. Even with its pulpier elements (and it's not like Fitzgerald and Hemingway didn't indulge in those too), Banana Fish paints a compelling picture of the way that society can force otherwise good people into horrible things. There's also a bit of hope in the way it shows that love can redeem people. Eiji may be the person who brings Ash back from the brink, even when he's fake-tormenting him with Halloween pumpkin displays. Here at the halfway point of this anime adaptation, I think it's clear that this element is what gives this story such staying power.

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Banana Fish Review

کارآگاه کونان چهارشنبه 4 مهر 1397 ساعت 15:23