J.D Salinger and Banana Fish

Banana Fish is one of those pieces of media that leaves a deep impact on anyone who has watched or read it. The Japanese manga series was written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida and was serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Shojo Comic from 1984 to 1994. It was adapted into an anime of 24 episodes in 2018. It follows the story of a young gang leader, Ash Lynx, in the dangerous streets of New York City and what happens when he is given a mysterious vial by a dying man. Following his chance encounter with Eiji Okumura, a Japanese photographer’s assistant, they begin chasing the truth of bananafish.

Banana Fish has a lot of literary references, some of them very evident with episode names like “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, “The Catcher in the Rye”, “Islands in the Stream”. All of them are names of stories written by the writers Ernest Hemingway and J.D Salinger. Hemingway was a war correspondent with Salinger's division and met with the young writer multiple times throughout the war. Hence, both of these writers often criticized the postwar materialistic era of America.

J.D Salinger's short story, " A Perfect Day for Bananafish"

Banana Fish is a reference to J.D Salinger’s short story called “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”. This short story is about a man returned from war, named Seymour Glass. The story mainly follows his frustration with the materialism of everyone around him and his search for innocence that he had lost in the war. Just like Seymour, Ash was also scarred from all the horrible experiences he had to live through and all the people he is forced to kill. They will never be able to go back to the time when they did not have blood on their hands.

Eiji and Ash from the anime

Many people argue that his partner (platonic or not, we still do not know) Eiji Okumura does not seem to have any kind of personality in the show. But in my opinion, Eiji’s character was required to be like that. Because of Ash’s traumatic experiences he had gained a better understanding of people and their superficiality. Eiji signified his lost innocence and hence he could only talk to Eiji without any fear. He felt like the last hope that had not been corrupted by the world of materialism and violence.

Now coming on to the name, what is bananafish really? Not spoiling too much, but in the anime it is the name of a drug, whereas in the story by Salinger, bananafish are imaginary fish. They go into a hole and eat a lot of bananas and become fat and are then unable to come out of the hole. They then eventually die inside that hole. This is again a metaphor for Ash’s struggle to re-engage with the society after seeing and living through so much violence. And well, we all know how it ends.

The tragic part with the anime is when it came out, a lot of people just labelled it a Yaoi genre whereas Bananafish has a much more complex story that cannot be defined by one kind of genre. While the anime does lack in a lot of things, it is still definitely worth watching. With amazing openings and one of my favourite anime endings, Red by the band Survive Said The Prophet, it is an incredible watching experience. While the show often deals with dark themes, it also has humour placed at the right moments so as to not make it too heavy on the mind. And with studio MAPPA animating the incredible fighting scenes, it just elevates the story. If you still haven’t watched the anime or read the manga, I highly recommend that you do.