June 19, 2005
Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida
It's in a story by J. D. Salinger. When you meet the `banana-fish' you want to die. It's the fish of death.
The manga Banana Fish originally ran in serialized form in Japan between 1985 and 1994. This is a collection of this series translated into English as part of the Pulp line from Viz Communications.
Women authors of manga comics, like Akimi Yoshida, are generally pigeonholed into the shoujo genre of romantic stories geared for female audiences. But occasionally, the genre produces manga series like this one which cannot be easily characterized into a single genre or marketed to a single demographic. Surprisingly, it manages to be appealing across genres even though it remains firmly within the sensibility of the shoujo genre. This manga gives us a rarely expressed feminist dual of the traditional `exploitation' plot.
The story begins in Vietnam, during the war in the early 70s. An American soldier goes beserk and guns down his friends under the influence of a drug. The soldier, Griffin Callenreese, is shot and crippled by Max Lobo, a journalist with the unit. Griffin appears to be in a coma as a result of the drug. All he can say are the words, `Banana Fish'. After this setup, the story then moves to New York City in 1985. There are series of unexplained suicides being investigated by the police. A pair of reporters, Ibe and Eiji, arrive from Japan to interview some kids who are active in street gangs. One of these kids happens to be Ash, Griffin's younger brother. Ash runs his gang under the shadow of the Corsican mafioso Dino Colzine. The rest of the story follows Ash as he tries to stay alive and find out exactly what `Banana Fish' means.
The New York City setting is, intentionally or otherwise, entirely unrealistic. It seemed constructed from TV shows rather than the real thing. America is construed here as the land of sex and violence, while there are many references made to the fact that Japan is a safe and peaceful place. This seems like a particularly naive proposal to make, and one which is not needed by the main plot. To find out about the reality of gang life of the type depicted in this comic book, you can find a study of the youth gang culture in the New York City of the 1940s and 1950s in "Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings : Youth Gangs in Postwar New York" by Eric C. Schneider.
While the story engrosses, unfortunately the artwork is functional at best. It is not the highlight of this series. Many of the characters seemed to my eye were drawn to look almost identical. In most cases this was benign, but in some panels, this ambiguity causes some confusion.
%S Banana Fish %A Akimi Yoshida %D 1985 %I Viz Communications (Pulp Graphic Novel) %T Banana Fish Vol. 1 %G ISBN: 1569313202 (pb) %P 191 %T Banana Fish Vol. 2 %G ISBN: 1569313695 (pb) %P 188 %T Banana Fish Vol. 3 %G ISBN: 1569314381 (pb) %P 189 %T Banana Fish Vol. 4 %G ISBN: 1569315442 (pb) %P 188 %K graphic-novel
Review written: 2001/02/14
Posted by anoop at June 19, 2005 10:49 AM