This essay is the culmination of several months and several thousand pages of literature and analysis. Over the past four months I have read all 24 works of literature referenced as episode titles in the anime Banana Fish (and then some) in a personal effort to unpack just what it was that made the episode titles in this series so effective. A fair warning: this is a rather long essay (I have had many thoughts and wanted to do justice in conveying them here) and will be including the link to it on google drive below. The essay is segmented first into an overview of thematic aspects the works referenced (in order) and their relevance either to the particular episode they appear in or to the framing of the story of Banana Fish as a whole. This is followed by an introduction of a few unreferenced works that I believe personally would have been exceptionally fitting additions (Edith Wharton’s “Three Novels of New York”), as well as a discussion of how the placement of some of the titles could have been shifted around for more effective narrative framing. To conclude, I will be going over the recurring thematic threads tying these works to the story of Banana Fish, considering how they work together to illustrate a narrative of disillusionment, destruction, corruption of the self, forgiveness, and the unbearable sadness of the American Dream.*
Two disclaimers: First, this is NOT spoiler-free and goes extensively into the events and themes of the series, and also touches on and discusses a range of potentially triggering subjects including, namely: suicide (death in general), alcoholism, and sexual assault. Second, my personal experience with this series has been exclusively in Japanese, so I recognize that there may be inconsistencies in character names and in any relevant quotations from the text that I’ve chosen to include (which I have translated myself for the purposes of this essay).
*this phrasing (“the unbearable sadness of the American Dream”) I owe to my beloved dear friend @nobodysfunny, who created the concept a few summers ago as the theme for a photographic project.
Yo!!! Someone recorded the whole visual novel part from the event! I really wish someone did this in all of Onmyoji events bc I'm having a hard time to recall things. I didn't play all of the main events in the beginning so a record like this will be helpful to understand what's going on in the main story.
What other series do you think would be considered lgbt friendly?
As in animes that don’t rely on queerbait for fanservice and actually portray LGBT+ characters as normal people? That’d be a big list. Here are some of the titles that I think deserve recognition in this regard:
Banana Fish
Onii-sama e
Card Captor Sakura (and quite literally anything else by CLAMP)
Yuri!!! on ICE
Versailles no Bara
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yagate Kimi ni Naru
Hourou Musuko
No.6
Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Keep reading
Fuckk all that incest shit bro,,, I just want a choukei fic where they just fuck around n make jokes,, ,
Ya’ll ever rip off a demonic alien clowns leg off cause he killed the love of your life?
Do NOT listen to Blue Bird from the Banana Fish ost while thinking about season four of Attack on Titan 😐
Yo quick question,,
Is Hannibal a simp 😳
Cause me too