HOW BANANA FISH UNDERSTANDS AMERICA

DEVON NGUYEN - Writer, 3rd Year, Anthropology

“'Merica”

For a good two decades now, western anime fans have bemoaned and joked about the depictions of Americans and American culture in their favorite series. Ranging from hilariously outdated to surprisingly on the mark, it’s always been entertaining to see how countries incorporate the United States into their stories, what more when said stories actually take place in it. This brings us to Akimi Yoshida’s hit eighties thriller manga, Banana Fish, which features an almost exclusive American cast and setting. Even when the 2018 anime diverges from the manga in terms of time period, it still feels wholly different from what other mangaka have tried.

Right out of the gate, the manga delves into the nitty gritty politics of the eighties. Whether it be the rampant number of runaway children who were kidnapped and forced into human trafficking rings or the devastating crack epidemic, Yoshida wove those mainstay issues into her story, constantly reminding the reader that what her characters witnessed and experienced was very much real. I was pleasantly surprised whenever the Vietnam War was mentioned, even more so when the drafting of Ash’s older brother essentially kicked off the entire plot. Even in America, media focused on the Vietnam War pales in comparison to media of other armed conflicts the country was involved in, so for a twenty eight Japanese mangaka to make that integral to her plot is pretty amazing. I also find the addition of the rivalries between the Chinese and Vietnamese gangs to be small, yet poignant in detail. Just the simple acknowledgement of Chinese-Vietnamese relations–in the eighties no less, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people fled to the United States a decade prior, thus making these tensions become diasporic–says a lot about how Yoshida fully immerses her stories in the culture of the era. Capturing the harsh and unforgiving atmosphere of New York in the eighties is no easy job, but she managed to do so without ever having visited the state before and during serialization.

The 2018 anime switches things up by having the plot set in the modern era instead of the eighties, something which I (and other fans) have mixed feelings about. The New York of the twenty-ten’s is nothing compared to the New York of the eighties. Gang violence isn’t as prevalent as it used to be, drugs aren’t as accessible, and the overall image of the city has livened up significantly. And instead of the Vietnam War being the catalyst that set off the plot, it’s the War on Terror, a conflict that doesn’t feel as intertwined in the narrative like the former. In spite of this, the anime manages to capture the general vibes of the modern-era city quite nicely. The fashion is quintessentially New York and the speech and slang feels recent, not to mention the fantastic background work. Most anime depict the city as just another metropolis with tons of people, cars, and skyscrapers–maybe the occasional landmark or hotdog cart too. With the anime, it’s like the animators look at pictures taken from the people who lived in New York and breathed new life into them.

But if there’s one thing that Yoshida truly gets right about her writing about America, it’s her understanding of the country’s vast diversity. New York isn’t just an ordinary city, it’s a city with an intimate relationship with immigrants from across the world. I think it’s amazing (and a little disappointing) that a manga from the eighties exhibits racial diversity better than other western focused series that’ve been published in the past decade. Even without having visited New York or the United States, Yoshida was still able to see what others still have yet to recognize, and I think that’s wonderful.