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Banana Fish

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  • Adorkable: Eiji's good nature, lack of street smarts, and stubbornness give him the sense that he's socially awkward, not to mention the imperfect English he spoke in the English version of the manga. The anime tones down Eiji's sarcastic moments, gives him a cuter, more charming design, and accompanies it with geekier clothes in contrast to the other characters' urban attire.
  • Ass Pull: The ending. Ash, who can detect an assassin's presence in the air, dodge machine gun fire, lift a grown man with one arm, and fight off multiple enemies while starving, wounded, and exhausted, finally dies after being stabbed by Lao, a minor supporting character, simply because he was distracted by the letter Eiji gave him as well as the ticket to go to Japan with him. It seems to come out of nowhere and Lao himself had barely shown up in the manga at all for several volumes. In reality, Ash brought this upon himself, as he forbade Sing from telling Lao or the others that Ash was forced to kill Shorter out of mercy and Lao wasn't around when Sing and Ash called off their fight. Making this even worse is that Lao missed all of Ash's vital organs and major blood vessels, so the wound wasn't even fatal. He bled out in a public library for several hours while making no effort to try to survive, and no one else noticed the giant pool of blood, not even the librarian who assumed he was "sleeping" on the visibly bloody letter from Eiji.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: The story has one heck of a Downer Ending, and some people have been known to avoid the series, quit the series halfway through, or start working on a Fix Fic once they hear what happens, since it's commonly seen to be completely divorced from everything else that happened in the story prior.
  • Awesome Music:
    • "Found & Lost" by Survive Said The Prophet is a pretty rocking song fitting for the setting itself.
    • The first ED "Prayer X" by King Gnu that has caused both great delight and pain amongst the fans, especially the official MV.
    • The second OP, "Freedom" by Blue Encount, a rollicking anthem that immediately grabs ones' attention with its stunning instumental and emotive vocals.
    • "RED" by Survive Said the Prophet is an atmospheric rock piece that continuously builds in intensity until the very end.
    • In general, the entire soundtrack for the anime has been praised several times.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Ash himself, in retrospect. Is he a believable badass yet tragic figure worthy of audience sympathy, or an ill-tempered Marty Stu who needs to have his ego stoked every few arcs?
    • Yut-Lung, who some fans love for being a charismatic villain and one of the few with a complex motivation. For others, that's cold comfort given the incredibly twisted things he still does.
    • Eiji, of all people, thanks to his characterization in the anime adaptation. Some feel that the anime makes him too cute and innocent, and dislike how the anime toned down his snarky, sardonic moments. Others dislike him because they feel he's a useless member of "the gang" (quite forgetting that a foreign boy with no ties nor past dealings with street gangs in any country would, realistically, be completely out of his element when in their company on the tough streets of New York City). And then there are others who hate the fact that Eiji, in the anime, is much more closer to the traditional Uke, especially with regards to Ash's more Seme characterization, especially when the original manga doesn't box them into such categories.
    • Blanca as well, who some fans love for being Ash's former teacher, mentor, and all-around suave, charming badass... and then there is the other half who can't stand him, and wonder why he couldn't do more to help Ash both in the past and present, or even rescue him from his horrifically abusive upbringing when he (Blanca) knew full well that Ash was being graphically, sexually abused by Dino and others.
  • Broken Base:
    • The decision to set the anime in The New '10s sparked a lot of discussion among longtime fans. Those who didn't mind the change cited the release gap in between the series' run and the anime's release as a primary factor, and mentioned that the updated time period could help draw newer fans. Others decried the action as taking away context from the plot, as the title and the way the characters were handled could only work in their Eighties setting.
    • The issue of if the anime adaptation ups the Fanservice, and therefore seems to be framing scenes as sexy that were intended as disturbing or even traumatic in the original... or if it's simply making flaws that were already in the original work more obvious, is another subject of hot debate.
    • How does the series handle sexual abuse and trauma? Also, what relationship does it have to Boys' Love, if any? It's started some pretty intense flame wars on social media.
    • The Foxx Arc in both the manga and the anime. Some find it the weakest point of the entire series, redundant, and find Foxx both monstrous to a silly degree and under-developed as a villainous character—others have it at their favorite, and say it is the perfect climax of the whole story where shit hits the ceiling and everyone is at their very best.
    • The fact that Akira and Sing are revealed to have married in the artbook, New York Sense splits the fandom. Some absolutely loathe them together and find it very creepy, while some love it and find it very sweet. Either way, it's easy to find someone who will disagree with you no matter what side you're on.
    • The story's ending has been highly contested ever since the original manga ended. Ever since it became known that main character Ash gets killed off, fans have been in an eternal debate over Akimi Yoshida's decision to do such a thing—especially when it became public knowledge that her own editors told her that it was a bad move, and her selected ending was far too brutal. For many fans, this resulted in extreme Fanon Discontinuity after anything volume 19, due to the sheer cruelty of Ash getting stabbed just when he was running to reunite with Eiji and start anew. For at least half the fandom, this was pretty much when the series was ruined forever. However, there are fans who felt that the ending made sense because after being fatally stabbed, Ash realizes that he still has enemies around and Eiji would be in mortal danger again if he gets involved. It only got even more broken when the epilogue Garden of Light was released, and then the pseudo-epilogue artbook, New York Sense followed.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Dino Golzine is a savage crime boss who has an iron fist over New York City. He's also the owner of Club Cod, a seafood restaurant that serves as a front for child sex trafficking, selling runaway kids who are drugged to live only a few years and unable to escape. Being a victim of sexual abuse himself as a child, it conditioned his personality, turning him into a cold-hearted and perverted sociopath. Having a rather creepy obsession with Ash Lynx, his undisputed favorite victim, he forces him to become his ward and grooms him into becoming just as cold, ruthless, and powerful as he is. When all of this backfires on Golzine and Ash escapes his control, he learns about a dangerous drug-like substance known as "Banana Fish" and uses it to threaten several of Ash's cohorts while also selling it to a few US senators aiming to get the upper hand on political opponents. Once he gets Ash back into his control, he formally adopts him and vows to make not only him a slave but completely crush what's left of his soul, threatening to kill Ash's Morality Pet, Eiji Okumura, if he doesn't comply. Once Ash escapes again, he then decides to dig throughout New York City, targeting Ash, Eiji, Ash's subordinates, and anyone else helping them.
    • Abraham Dawson is the scientist who, prior to the main story, found the Banana Fish drug along with his brother Alexis. After this, Abraham then experimented on his friend by using Banana Fish on him, resulting in the friend's death. Bullied by other soldiers when he went to The Vietnam War-—Iraq War in the anime-—he then uses Banana Fish against other soldiers, including Ash's half-brother, Griffin Callenreese, in order to pit them against each other. Returning from the war, he then tries to improve Banana Fish and sells them to the Corsican Mafia, led by Golzine for more profit. After finding out that Griffin is still alive, Abraham shoots him in a fit of paranoia. His worst act is when he, under a demonstration presented by Golzine, experiments on one of Ash's friends, Shorter Wong, by brainwashing him with the Banana Fish in order to kill Eiji, while taking personal delight from all of this.
    • Eduardo L. Fox, aka Edward Foxx, is a ruthless mercenary who faked his own death to escape prosecution for war crimes. Returning under the employ of Golzine, Foxx begins killing people in the most gruesome ways possible, from amputations to disembowelment, wiping out the allies of Ash, taking Ash hostage, and raping him to place him under Foxx's control. When Ash escapes, Foxx is only too happy to torture his friends to find out where he is before pursuing Ash to the Foundation. Intending to seize control and keep Ash as a broken figurehead slave, Foxx betrays and guns down Golzine while trying to kill all of Ash's allies, intending to rule over the Foundation with no regard for the misery he spreads.
  • Designated Hero: Even though we're supposed to side with them and many of them are pretty friendly and likable, remember that all of the gang members are still criminals who won't think twice about shooting, killing, or doing any other illegal stuff.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: Even though there's no official confirmation, it becomes pretty clear that Ash has severe issues.. He shows a combination of signs of depression, PTSD, and even borderline personality disorder, ranging from frequent crying, self-loathing and Past Experience Nightmares, to violent outbursts, suicidal thoughts, and full-on emotional breakdowns at worst.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Shorter. Many new fans of Banana Fish seem to adore Shorter and reacted poorly to his death in episode 9, which trended in Japan.
    • Blanca became popular almost from the moment of introduction in episode 17, The Killers. His design, charisma, sense of humor, and general badassery (not to mention, his past relationship with Ash), have made him one of the favourites in the entire show.
    • Max Lobo is very beloved for his good-natured "dad" personality, and for providing both humor and heart in such a bleak series. He's a fan-favourite, and considered by most to be Ash's "real" father, thanks to how much he grows to care for him like a son.
    • Jessica, Max's estranged wife, isn't given much screentime, but has always been well-received by fans due to her sex appeal, her personality, and her lingering romantic tension with her ex-husband.
    • Bones, one of Ash's subordinates, provides some of the biggest sources of comic relief in the series when paired with Alex and especially Kong. He also stands out with his salmon-colored hair and his very uniquely toothless design.
  • Friendly Fandoms: This fandom has plenty of overlap with fans of Yuri!!! on Ice, since both anime are produced by MAPPA and have LGBT themes (though Yuri and Victor's romantic relationship is less subtextual than Ash and Eiji's). However, there have been some issues with Yuri!!! on Ice fans who are newcomers to Banana Fish and don't realize that the latter tends to be darker and more violent than the former.
  • Genius Bonus: The "Banana Fish" of the title and story is a reference to J. D. Salinger's short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". The short story itself is mentioned in-series. The anime's episode titles are also all references to famous mid-century novels and short stories by authors such as Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: At first, Ash holds Max accountable for shooting Griffin (Max's best friend) and leaving him there to die, despite Griffin being under the influence of Banana Fish and Max shooting him in the leg to keep him from killing the other remaining soldiers, leaving him without much of a choice. He doesn't know all of the details of Banana Fish at this point, but Ash still blames Max and threatens to kill him once he gets out of prison. Much later, Ash himself is put in the same position when he's forced to shoot and kill a drugged Shorter to keep him from killing Eiji, and Sing, though curious about the full details, becomes determined to take revenge and kill him.
  • Ho Yay: While it's more or less confirmed that Ash and Eiji were in love with each other, one notable case of this occurs during Garden of Light between Sing and Eiji. Sing occasionally stays Eiji, who now permanently lives in an apartment in New York. Like Eiji, Sing can't move on from Ash's death either, as he has to live with his half-brother Lao killing him and how melancholic Eiji's personality has become since then. This stress eventually leads Sing to tell Eiji bluntly to accept Ash's death and move on from him, followed by a Big Damn Hug, saying that he only wants Eiji to be happy again. While this is done because Sing can't forgive himself and so they can both finally heal from Ash's death, it may seem to others that Sing has grown feelings towards Eiji and is secretly jealous that Eiji still clings on to Ash after all this time. Backing this up is how pleasant he feels when he believes Eiji's ability to sense desperate S.O.S signals is why Ash loved him.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Outside of children and a select few other people, Ash isn't the most pleasant person in the world. Given his backstory and everything he goes through in the story, it's still easy to sympathize with him.
    • Yut-Lung is even worse in this regard. He has a similar backstory to Ash's, but he's willing to take innocent people down with him.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
    • ASH. As the almost stupidly-popular main character, Ash naturally gets shipped with everyone. There's Ash/Eiji which is pretty much the favorite ship for either character, but there are also those that support Blanca/Ash thanks to their overall history together (and the fact that Blanca asks Ash to come away with him to the Caribbean at the end of the series, though this can also dip into underage-territory if Blanca is paired up with Private Opinion-era Ash. The sheer obsession Yut-Lung has with Ash is interpreted like this for some fans. Then there are others who will pair up Ash with loveable Max due to their chemistry (though it causes major Brain Bleach for those who are utterly disgusted by it), and Chinatown Boss Sing, who has shades of Big Brother Worship towards Ash. Ash also gets paired up with fellow Gangbangers like Alex, Cain, or even Arthur every now and then. Sometimes he's even shipped with Griffin, his brother!
    • Eiji gets shipped with plenty of people, some of which are definitely borderline crack pairings like Cain/Eiji, or Blanca/Eiji. Yut-Lung/Eiji has their own fanbase, while Eiji/Sing has its fans as well, though it is also deeply loathed by a lot of the fandom for obvious reasons. Shorter/Eiji still has a SMALL, but devoted group of shippers.
    • Blanca/Yut-Lung has always been popular in the manga, and is popular once more thanks to the nature of their relationship in the anime, despite the fact that Yut-Lung is only 16, and Blanca twice his age. There is also Sing/Yut-Lung, which is also very popular, perhaps even more so, thanks to their close relationship in the manga, the fact that Sing is pretty much Yut-Lung's only friend, as well as the fact that in the somewhat sequel manga, Yasha, now-adult Sing and Yut-Lung are still involved heavily with the Chinese Mafia. For a while, Yut-Lung/Shorter had a surge in shippers, mainly due to episodes 7 and 8 in the anime.
  • LGBT Fanbase: Quite a few members of the community love this manga, especially the relationship between Ash and Eiji.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Former KGB Lieutenant Blanca becomes The Mentor to protagonist Ash Lynx, making him into a merciless fighter. Hired by Dino Golzine, Blanca attacks and easily subdues Ash for Dino. When Ash manages to escape from Golzine's clutches, it is Blanca who hunts him down for them, using his knowledge of the New York City sewer system. Realizing the depths of the depravity of Yut-Lung, his current employer, Blanca leaves him and allies with Ash out of a show of his own beliefs of honor and human compassion, proving his status as Ash's most Worthy Opponent in the series.
  • Moe: Eiji has been designed to be much cuter and purer than his manga design, courtesy of the director, Utsumi Hiroko. It's something that has led to both his popularity and hatedom.
    • Sing is also given a slightly cuter, more youthful design than his manga counterpart to emphasize his younger age.
    • Skipper, a small child and the youngest member of Ash's gang, someone you'd never expect to see hold his own in the streets.
    • Bones, the mostly-toothless member of Ash's gang is this to some as well (and adorable to all).
    • Short flashbacks where Ash is shown as a little boy before anything bad occurs are very popular with fans, since small!Ash is utterly adorable. Him trick-or-treating in his "pumpkin-head" is a popular image among the fandom.
    • Michael, Max's adorable little boy. There was a collective gasp of "aww!" from viewers when he appeared. Later on we see him again in Garden of Light and New York Sense where he is now all grown up.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • If Abraham Dawson injecting Ash's brother Griffin with Banana Fish and later killing him wasn't bad enough, experimenting on Shorter with banana fish and later making him kill Eiji and forcing Ash to shoot him can be considered his worst act.
    • Foxx was always evil with his killings being very disturbing, but when he brutally rapes Ash, he cements himself into monster territory.
  • Never Live It Down: Ash's hate for/fear of pumpkins. In-universe, Eiji really likes teasing Ash about it. Episode 16 seems to make it seem as if his negative energy manifests into his hated pumpkins. Fans love to draw fan-art of Eiji with a pumpkin in order to scare Ash.
  • Periphery Demographic: The manga was a phenomenon among all demographics in Japan when it first came out, and it's not hard to see why. Boys and adult men who usually wouldn't touch shoujo manga found themselves drawn to the action and gritty atmosphere, to the point where even GACKT is a longtime fan of the series. It also drew in plenty of adult women, despite the manga being primarily aimed at teenage girls (even if it doesn't seem like it). And despite not officially being a Boys' Love manga (as creator Akimi Yoshida has said she doesn't consider it to be such), many of its fans accepted it into the fold thanks to the close relationship between Ash and Eiji, with the series being an influential work on the genre as a whole.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: Several, including more normal ones like Blash (Blanca/Ash)
  • Realism-Induced Horror: This series makes no secret of how rough and scary the worst aspects of New York City and life as a professional criminal are. What's worse is that the deuteragonist is just an innocent bystander from across the globe who ends up caught in the middle of a three-way war between several groups of highly competent street punks, a dysfunctional chinese crime family, and a ruthless mafia boss who's organized a child sex trafficking ring while attempting to make his presence known throughout the political world. The protagonist on the other hand was a rape victim (one of the many in the series) at a young age who ran away from home, became the ward of said mafia boss, and grew to become of the most highly skilled criminals in the world, all at the cost of his childhood and mental health.
  • The Scrappy: Lao is completely and utterly universally despised for not just murdering beloved main-character, Ash Lynx, but murdering him just as he is about to go to the airport and reunite with Eiji, and try to start over again after such a horrible life. Lao is also deeply loathed for being the hammer that smashed Eiji's heart permanently by killing Ash, and also for causing younger half-brother Sing so much guilt-by-association. So there's no surprise for the limited remorse he gets when Ash shoots him just seconds later. Lao is 100% nonredeemable and unforgivable in the fandom's eyes.
    • Ash's dad, Jim, is massively hated by everyone ever since it was shown that he told his own son (as a small child that too!) to "get paid every time he gets raped". Jim is so loathed that he's been compared to another hugely hated dad, Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist. That's saying something.
    • Colonel Foxx. He was already hated even before he savagely rapes Ash and psychologically breaks him further in a display of power thanks to his unsettling personality and his frightening killing methods. He's just gotten even more loathed as time has gone on, due not only to the aforementioned, but also because some find him poorly written, feel he appeared way too late in the series, and that his arc is the weakest in the story.
    • Unfortunately (for some), Akira, who only appears in Garden of Light and New York Sense, is this. She was rather liked by due to her sweet-natured personality...at least until the moment it is shown that she grows up and marries Sing who is ten years older than she is. Many readers immediately hated on her, blaming her for turning Sing into a "pedophile" (even though there was absolutely no implication of this whatsoever in Garden of Light). She is also hated by some fans for "ruining" the ships of both Eiji/Sing and Sing/Yut-Lung, neither of which have ever existed in the first place, and are hotly contested on their own anyways. Many fans also consider Akira's marriage to Sing as proof of Yoshida being a Heteronormative Crusader, although they are Happily Married. Just another case of Fandumb.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The kiss between Ash and Eiji while Ash was in prison, mostly because it was the only scene in the series that makes any trace of romance between them blatantly obvious, though it was mostly as a way for Ash to pass a note to get Eiji to meet up with Shorter.
    • The aforementioned "Candy Bar" scene.
    • All of the final scenes that center around Ash's final moments of life.
  • Squick:
    • The entire subplot of the history of Dino's Club Cod restaurant can easily drive away potential fans. The high-end seafood restaurant theme is a front for selling off runaway adolescent and preadolescent boys to grown men, many of which are high-standing political figures who covertly use these boys as sex objects.
    • The fact that Ash was not only raped over and over starting at the tender age of 7, but was a child prostitute for years is disgusting, painful, and horrific to viewers. Any scene in the manga or anime that references this no matter how subtly, tends to induce this reaction.
    • Pairing Ash up with Max, Blanca (or Blanca with Yut-Lung), Dino and Foxx may also induce this reaction for some, though it's the latter two that really horrify most. Speaking of pairings, both the fan-pairing of Sing/Eiji and the canon couple of Sing/Akira can have this reaction among some, though for entirely different reasons.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Ash's father, Jim, was portrayed as a caring father in his younger days, but the way how he handled his son's rape (such as telling him to "get paid next time"), and his harsh treatment of him in the present day is taken very poorly by audiences. And despite the story's attempt to redeem him in his last appearance, audiences still regard him as a horrible parent who did nothing to help his son when his neighbors sexually abused him.
    • Yut-Lung can also delve into this because, despite his tragic, brutal backstory, half of the audience finds him irredeemable, evil, and unworthy of sympathy. As screwed up as his situation is, his hatred towards his brothers is undoubtedly justified. However, he's so determined to eradicate the Lee name that he also demands that their wives and children, who are all presumably innocent, killed as well. And that's to say nothing of his intense hatred towards Eiji, who he's so determined to kill just because he's jealous of his and Ash's friendship.
    • Lao's abrupt stabbing of Ash was done to avenge Shorter and the two Chinese guys that Ash killed for targeting Eiji, as well as to protect Sing. Lao forcefully leaves the gang after disagreeing with Sing for allowing himself to take the heat for the attack and challenging Ash to the death as punishment, with everyone, including himself, clearly knowing that he wouldn't make it out alive. Lao isn't exactly wrong for what how he felt or what he did, but Sing at least had the decency to question why Ash killed Shorter and forgive him for it. Lao never bothers to ask for himself, take into account Ash's horrible life that he never even wanted to be a part of in the first place, and because of a lack of communication, gets himself killed while robbing Ash of the one chance he had to salvage it. If that weren't bad enough, Lao spent that entire day stalking Ash and waiting for the perfect time to strike, and clearly saw Ash and Sing both still on good terms after all the chaos, making Lao's stabbing come across more as jealousy over Sing's hero-worshipping.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Since the manga originally ran during the eighties and nineties, some of its portrayals of gay men aren't very flattering, as most male characters who identify as "gay" and show sexual interest in other men are also pedophiles and sex traffickers.
    • In the manga, black characters are typically drawn with very pronounced lips. Since this is now considered racially insensitive, those designs certainly wouldn't fly today, and the anime does away with that design choice altogether.
  • Values Resonance: Despite the series' sometimes questionable portrayal of gay men, the largely sexless romance between main characters Ash and Eiji (who are both male) is praised for being ahead of its time, with their relationship being deeply significant for people who have gone through sexual trauma, and for people who identify as asexual in any way.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The series is a crime thriller with a lot of mature themes that wouldn't be out of place in a seinen series, with Ash in particular having gone through Rape as Backstory. Despite this, the manga originally ran in a shoujo magazine. Yes, shoujo, not seinen, not shonen, not even josei.
  • The Woobie: Sing crying in episode 22 shows the poor kid has a lot on his plate. Between struggling to lead a gang and keep their faith in him, trying not to cause any conflict with other gangs, having an acquaintance screw him over using his subordinates, and having the three people he's looked up to all killed by each other within a year, you can understand why he regrets becoming his gang's leader.

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