So "Banana Fish" is finished and I have thoughts about it

(partially reworked from tumblr)

I paid too little attention to the second half of Banana Fish to write a useful review of it. I was supposed to re-watch it over Christmas with my sister, who hadn't kept up, but then it turned out that she'd caught up anyway. So here's your quality gauge: I won't be watching this anime again unless someone pays me for it.  

The thing is, had Banana Fish not been what it is, I’d have dropped it five episodes in. But Banana Fish is noteworthy just for being what it is: namely an adaptation of a shoujo classic that’s usually sorted into the BL fold somehow, following shortly after a previous anime by the same studio that was also about a pair of dudes who had the kind of relationship the female audience eats up and regurgitates on pixiv.

In short: It's a mediocre action-drama gangster anime which is mainly interesting becaues a lot of people are swearing up and down that the main guys are a couple, even if it never happens on screen. It's not awful. It's not great. My enjoyment ended pretty quickly after my favourite character was killed, and that, I think, says everything that needs to be saying about the writing of both characters and plot. 

Well, that and the fact that I was watching Sailor Moon on my work commute over the same time period as I finally made the effort of catching up with the last three months of Banana Fish. And Sailor Moon was three times more fun.

Spoilers below.

( On where things went wrong, and the unfortunate implications in the depiction of queer men )