Banana Fish 1

Banana Fish 1 by Akimi Yoshida

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I started watching the anime off recommendations and found out it had a complete manga series that it followed, so of course I had to check it out. It's a little different; the new series having been modified and updated to be more current as far as the timeline. Overall though, the basic story and premise follows very close to what is out so far from the anime (or I suppose it would be more accurate to say the anime follows the manga since it came first). The art style is also very different. The art in the manga here is not as detailed and tends toward older styles, making the characters appear more similar and boxy, especially in their faces, which makes them even harder to distinguish in the black and white medium. Still, the story has potential, or I wouldn't still be curious how it turns out, despite the old school and slow approach to the story at this point.

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Banana Fish

Banana Fish (2018)

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars


I started looking into this because I kept seeing it compared to Yuri!!! on Ice, which is one of my favorite anime to date. Have to say that personally I don't see enough in parallels to make those comparisons warranted. The entire premise and the main characters are vastly different from what some would call their YoI counterparts.

Not to say that this series doesn't have it's own pool of interesting characters to pull from. Ash especially seems to be hard to predict, and keeps revealing new reactions and past information that makes many prior questionable behaviors make a lot more sense. Eiji, on the other hand, seems all to innocent and naive, yet seems to have a surprising amount of conviction himself when it comes to getting things done. Still not as sure of himself, especially when it comes to weapons in this mafia riddled universe, but he's made his choice to stick with Ash and never wavers from that conviction. Surprising for a mellow journalist, past high jumper, who has never even held a gun prior to meeting Ash in the first place.

The modernization of the series to fit the new release of the anime also seems to do well for both the characters and the adaptation. I looked up the manga art and it is definitely more old school in style. Can't say much beyond that at this point however. I plan to finish the anime currently, but we'll see if that changes depending on the series itself with the coming releases considering we're only through the first 6 out of 24 planned episodes.