Banana Fish, Volume 1

This felt a lot like the manga equivalent of an exploitation film. We practically get the shots of characters on 42nd street, in front of the array of various grindhouse movie theaters. However, unlike exploitation films, this manga has a production valume you can see on the page. Akimi Yoshida has an art style that reminds me, a lot of Katsuhiro Otomo, from the way she draws faces, to the detail in her background.

If I was to lay one complaint at her work, it's that she doesn't draw black people very well. It's not that the characters are drawn like Black Sambo (like some artists have a bad habit of doing - lookin' at you, Akira Toriyama). The character of "Skip" is supposed to be a black kid in his mid-teens - but his lips are drawn show more just a little too big. It's not so much that it's a caricature, but it's enough to stand out and be jarring. show less

Unfortunately I lack the proper historical perspective to appreciate this series for its place in shoujo/queer comics history, so if you want that, look elsewhere, since I know a lot has been written about this series by people smarter than me who have that context. While I will not be doing this series the justice it deserves without that perspective, what I can say is, for me: it's fine enough for organized crime queer comics from the 80s. I'm also biased in that I find organized crime media rather boring, but I enjoyed the anime adaptation well enough, so. The variety of character designs is pretty neat, and the way it shows cops is well... accurate to my understanding of cop-centric media at the time, toeing the line between show more sympathetic to the poor and marginalized and also sympathetic to cops who are I guess just doing whatever cops are supposed to be doing (while noting they're kind of incompetent and gross). The story is very 80s America, and that works quite well. The main drug plotline isn't all that fascinating, but I am biased in that I've seen a lot of stories about drug wars, gang violence, and the horrors faced by veterans. But I do still find Ash/Eiji compelling, even in their brief interactions here. Ash is still a wonderful character.

Since this story actually came out in the 80s and is intended to be ABOUT the 80s, it works well enough, rather than the beautifully done and more visually enjoyable anime adaptation that also kind of Frankenstein-monster'd its way to modernization while still attempting to retain the aesthetic/culture of 80s America, which truly doesn't work. The story here just doesn't work as is but set in 2016. But here, it's fine. If you combine the visuals of the anime with the story here, you get something solid between them. And that's not to say the art is bad here, because it is rather good (even if I don't care for how Eiji is drawn, and the way the manga sometimes does bad stereotype art for black people), but the anime does have much better art mostly. The plots that were good in the anime come right from here, including Ash letting Eiji touch his gun, and Eiji vaulting over a wall and getting injured, and Ash being deeply impressed by him, so there's that. show less

Amazingly good for manga! It like, has a real PLOT!

4.5/5

I know what I'm getting myself into but I just can't help it...

Año 1973, Vietnam. Un soldado pierde los papeles tras musitar las palabras “Banana Fish”... Año 1985, Nueva York. Ash intenta averiguar qué hay detrás de esas palabras, tras las cuales parece cernirse la oscura sombra de Papa Dino, un capo mafioso de los bajos fondos.