Banana Fish

Episode 18

Banana Fish is a show of many moods, but episode 18, "Islands in the Stream," covers an even wider variety than usual with none of the whiplash this show induces in its weaker moments. It builds bridges between the story's shifts in mood rather than jumping abruptly between them, and the result is one of the show's strongest episodes so far, setting the pieces into place for the endgame.

It all starts with Holstock's death, clearly under similar circumstances to Kippard's from the end of last episode. While the news later reports it as an "accident," we see how it starts with a gunshot at his driver. Before Ash sees that on the news, we get a lot of tender scenes between him and Eiji back at their hideout. Eiji plays the concerned boyfriend, making sure Ash eats, sleeps, and keeps clean; Ash even tells him he would be a "good wife" at one point. All the same, he clearly enjoys Eiji doting on him, and it sets up how Ash will get to dote on Eiji later in the episode. Sadly, their hideout is no longer safe, and Eiji gets shot by Blanca from across the alleyway. Ash helps nurse him back to health, but not before lying to him (something Eiji can now recognize because Ash gets "terribly calm") in order to protect him.

I want to dwell on those soft early moments, because they play an important part in the overall "arc" of this episode. Part of why Banana Fish succeeds tonally this week is due to building things up gradually. Aside from Holstock's "accident," the episode starts in a happy place and slowly gets darker as time goes on. Even when Yut Lung and Golzine hand Ash their list of demands, we don't really believe Ash will go along with them—until the last few scenes, when he gathers everything and everyone, hands them over, and we see him in the car looking defeated. Ash and Eiji just got back together, and now Ash has to go be Golzine's prisoner again. Even knowing Golzine won't make the situation as bad doesn't really help, for all the reasons Ash states in his conversation with Blanca.

Music plays a huge role in setting the tone for all these scenes. Banana Fish has always had an excellent score, but it relies heavily on repetition—giving us the same leitmotifs over and over for the same characters and situations. (It can get cliché at times, like the pentatonic scale—a common musical symbol for China in film—playing when Yut Lung or Sing appear for the first time in a while.) This week, Banana Fish seems to find some new grooves for arguably the two most important scenes in the episode: Ash and Eiji's domesticity and Blanca's conversation with Ash near the end. Both have a tender core to them, surprisingly in the second case, but more playfully in the case of the Ash/Eiji scene. The theme for Blanca scene has a "mysterious" edge to it, like it's opening up a new pathway to the story. Blanca trained Ash and thinks he "understands" him better than anyone, yet he still has a limited view of what Ash is capable of compared to Eiji.

This allows for a variation on a familiar theme: Yut-Lung as a "foil" to Ash. I've seen some analyses characterize Yut-Lung's reaction to Ash/Eiji as a case of "evil cannot comprehend good," but I think it's more complicated than that. Ash isn't monolithically good either, and we've seen him go down some pretty dark paths in this story that put him in conflict with Eiji. Golzine might not know him as well as he thinks, but he wouldn't have seen Ash as a potential successor if the boy didn't have a dark side. Banana Fish has also done a pretty good job of portraying Yut-Lung as "less bad" than other villains, suggesting his twisted nature is a result of his upbringing. I think the point the show is trying to make is that Yut-Lung has never known love, and therefore he can't comprehend it as something that would motivate someone to self-sacrifice. It's not that he doesn't understand that kind of self-abnegation, since he seems prepared to do it himself at times to wipe his family off the map. But Yut-Lung has never known what it's like to love or be loved by someone. The family that was supposed to love him simply used him as another tool, and he came to resent them for all they put him through. Yut-Lung only knows hatred and revenge. That's why he can't comprehend why Ash would do so much in service of another person, especially a "weak" guy like Eiji—and particularly, why Ash would give up his own quest for revenge.

Ash's conversation with Blanca highlights another reason why Ash has such strong feelings for Eiji. Here's a person who claims to understand him better than anyone else, and in some ways he certainly does; Ash can't match him as a sparring partner because Blanca taught him everything he knows. All the same, Blanca has a narrow view of Ash's potential compared to Eiji. He thinks Ash can only belong to the world of organized crime and violence, which was why he agreed to train him to survive. He sees Eiji as someone who will only destroy Ash, as an incarnation of the promise of something better that he can never have. Ash stands his ground though, insisting that all the things he'd gain as Golzine's appointed successor—wealth and fame and power—would simply be "fake." He'd feel emotionally hollow. Eiji gives him something greater, a real human connection with someone he loves, someone who believes Ash is capable of more than violence. As a viewer, this seems obvious to me, given that Ash is smart, beautiful, and clearly all-around perfect at everything he does. But it says something that even so many people who supposedly knew him well still saw him as indelibly married to that world.

Banana Fish clearly comes from an era when creators were far more restricted in the level of affection and romance that could be depicted between two boys for a general audience. Still, episodes like this one make me bristle at accusations of "queerbaiting" directed toward series like Banana Fish. The show goes as far as it can to show that Ash and Eiji have a bond so strong that Ash is willing to "betray" his revenge for others he cares about, like Shorter and his brother, in order to protect the one he loves. Even if it's couched in the language of "friendship," the level of true love between them is pretty obvious. I've seen plenty of shows go the opposite route, where characters have explicit gay coming-out scenes, but the obligatory relationship to follow felt stilted and hollow. I wish the tradeoff between explicit text and emotional intimacy in storytelling wasn't so common, but I'm happy enough with the relationship as Banana Fish is portraying it.

This episode may end in a sad place, but it's hard for me to feel too sad. Even with Ash looking so defeated, I know he likely has a trick up his sleeve. If anything, maybe getting physically closer to Golzine will make it easier for Ash to finally do him in for good. This is still the story of Ash and Eiji and how their love for each other survives all odds. This episode is one of the strongest illustrations of that yet, so I find it hard to believe it's already the end. Our boys have more surprises in store for us.

Rating: A+

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.