Banana Fish

Episode 9

Now that Banana Fish has explained all its worldbuilding, there's nothing holding it back from full-on violence and emotional anguish. If you had developed any fondness for Shorter Wong, or were just creeped out beyond belief by what we'd learned about the Banana Fish drug, this is going to be a difficult one to watch. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad episode, but I'm not sure Banana Fish executed this twist as delicately as it should have.

For starters, everything feels very rushed this week. We've only had a couple of episodes to grapple with the weight of Shorter's forced "betrayal," and just one episode to consider how Golzine and his gang would use Banana Fish for their own purposes. Having Shorter drugged with it and then killing him off in the very next episode is cutting to the chase a little harshly, isn't it? Perhaps in the manga this had more time to play out, so I'm not sure whether this fast plot is an adaptive choice or not. Still, it just felt like a quick waste what could have been a more interesting storyline. Playing up Shorter's betrayal for character drama could have made for a really heart-wrenching and satisfying evolution in the plot and given given more weight to his interactions with Yut Lung. Maybe I'm just too attached to Shorter as a character, but it feels like losing him also means losing that link between some of these different characters and squandering some potential.

Banana Fish does try its best to compensate for this abrupt shock by deepening Yut Lung's connection to Ash. It seems like he grew up in much the same circumstances, as a beautiful sex toy for the creepy older men running these gangs. Yut Lung takes easily to being expected to sleep with Golzine, and when this shocks Eiji, Yut Lung explains that this is just the way he was raised (the more proper word might be "groomed"), just like Ash. He also suggests that he resents Eiji for having a much more idyllic childhood. This could set Yut Lung up as an interesting foil to Ash; where Ash feels like he wants to protect Eiji's innocence, while Yut Lung hates him for it. The unfairness of others getting to grow up without abuse makes Yut Lung want to drag them down with him. He's becoming a fascinating enough character in his own right that we don't need the Shorter connection to justify focus on him, even if losing it in this way is a bummer.

Banana Fish does at least make Shorter's slow-motion demise across this episode interesting. One of the benefits of film as a medium is how immersive it can be, allowing you to really see, hear, and feel from someone else's perspective. Banana Fish's anime adaptation convincingly uses its additions of color and sound to give you a visceral idea of how the drug affects Shorter. We see him through others' eyes, transformed into a mindless murder zombie, but we also see through his own as the shock of the drug pumps into his veins. While it's certainly heartbreaking, it also unfortunately adds to the feeling that Banana Fish is more about shocking and disturbing viewers than anything else right now.

As thoughtful as Yut Lung and Eiji's bedside conversation is, it feels like an afterthought compared to everything that happens between Shorter and Ash. The episode has clearly put its focus into disturbing and upsetting viewers as these gangsters destroy one young man's life to torture another. I've accused this show before of relying so much on shock value that it cheapens some of the serious issues being portrayed. Rape threats feel less shocking after what feels like the 100th one in less than ten episodes. This episode is like a weird reversal of this, because it spends so much time dwelling on the agony of Shorter's last moments that everything else feels muted. The drugging and torture sequence already feels like it's extreme for the sake of being extreme, so when it's dragged out for most of the episode's runtime, the impact begins to lessen and cheapen. It feels like Shorter was killed off because someone had to get offed in a gruesome fashion every couple episodes, not because it made sense for his character arc.

Another thing that frustrated me about killing Shorter now is the Soo-Lee Sing storyline. Soo-Lee is the de facto leader of Shorter's old gang of Chinese-Americans since Shorter has been kidnapped. In order to find their leader, they go around their larger authority—the Lees and their alliance with Golzine—in order to instead link up with Ash's old gang and free their two leaders. That could also have played out for several more episodes, if Shorter had remained alive but imprisoned. If Shorter was forced to betray Ash while trying to find a way out, seeing his gang seek their own secret betrayal in Shorter and Ash's favor could've made a compelling conflict. As such, while I'm sure Banana Fish isn't introducing this just to throw it away next week, I suspect this plot will play out a lot differently with Shorter dead. If their attitude is "nobody but Shorter," they don't have much to fight for now that he's gone.

We also "meet" Abraham this week; he's obviously shown up before, most notably with Griffin's death, but this is the first time we really get to know him, and he might be the sickest character on the show, which is no small feat. Perhaps that adds to the "torture porn" element of this episode; Abraham feels like a cartoon mad-scientist, focused on advancing his research no matter who he has to hurt in the process. Human lives are nothing to him except potential lab rats. We do see that even he's a bit haunted by what he's done, at least to Griffin, through flashbacks he has while torturing others. And it's good to see the two brothers meet again, since there could be a meaty conflict there. Still, all he does is further add to the inhumanity of everyone on Golzine's side.

Yut Lung seems suspicious of what Golzine's after, and we know he has his own score to settle with his family's gang. Perhaps his moral ambiguity (if you can say that of someone so willing to hurt innocent people for his own ends) will be what keeps this show interesting going forward. I'm really attached to the main characters, but it's becoming harder and harder to watch as they too become "lab rats" in the experiment to show us just how twisted the storyline can get. Banana Fish obviously has a point to make beyond its constant darkness, but it needs to get better at showing us that side.

Rating: B

Banana Fish is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Rose is a Ph.D. student in musicology, who recently released a book about the music of Cowboy Bebop. You can also follow her on Twitter.