I have seen this view cropping up lately, and I think this is an interesting and potentially important conversation to have. I am here with the hope of bringing more context (in the form of Japanese scans!) and a more nuanced view of LGBT representation and gender politics within the manga.
TL;DR (because this is a long-ass post)
I like to read Banana Fish as a mystery/crime/thriller/action story with queer leads and a particularly incisive critique on the patriarchal male gaze; unfortunately, due to the author’s chosen literary device, the latter often comes at the expense of the portrayal of LGBT characters within the series.
Disclaimer: I am a cis female working on experimental evolution and yeast genetics. I am, like, one of the least qualified individuals to talk about this. I would love to hear your opinions on this matter.
Marvin the Gay Paedophile
It is rather disquieting how the subtitles and the official English translation have Shorter describing Marvin as a “fag” at the beginning of the series. The usage of his sexual preference as an insult is hurtful enough, but it is made worse by its casual linkage between Marvin’s villainy and his status as a gay person. However, I have to emphasise that this is a translation artefact.
Shorter: “He’s a terrible pervert. He likes blond hair and green eyes.”
Marvin’s sexuality does get explicitly stated here:
Skip: “He’s a homo. He has a thing for Ash.”
I have kept the word “homo” from the original Japanese text. I don’t know enough about the Japanese LGBT scene and the Japanese language to declare with authority whether this is a slur or not. I think it is a loaded word, but again, I am not willing to say with certainty.
Hence, Marvin’s sexual preference is not used as an insult at the opening of the manga, but a potential slur is used to describe his homosexuality and to explain to Eiji why he is willing to negotiate alone with Ash. This obviously doesn’t change the fact that the first explicitly LGBT person introduced within the series is Marvin, who makes a terrible representative for human beings in general.
Plot-wise, I don’t find the existence of a character like Marvin surprising or gratuitous: Ash was a male child prostitute, and characters like Marvin sound exactly like the scums a reader would expect to be attracted to Golzine’s line of business. Personally, I think Ash’s background makes a rather unfortunate and unsuitable setting for positive LGBT representation.
Does Banana Fish equate homosexuality with sexual assault?
Here is an example that can be interpreted as a “yes”. In this scene, Ash and Max walk into a gay bar. A particularly lenient reading of this scene is that the gay bar is run by one of Golzine’s men — one who actively participated in the child sexual abuse — and probably attracts seedier and less savoury characters from the get-go.
Ash: “Don’t be scared with just some butt-groping.”
Ash: “There have been many occasions where I was just walking down the street and almost got raped.”
Ash: “That’s why I re-eally understand how a woman feels.”
Max: “Yeah. Now I re-eally get it, too…”
Max: “Being viewed as a sex object (lit. sex target) is such a pressure… I’m going to the toilet for a bit.”
Ash: “Be careful. If you don’t stay alert (lit. if you show any gap), you might get raped.”
On the other hand, here is a scene where Ash explicitly states the fact that rape is all about power. This is one of my favourite scenes. It is very harrowing, because this happens right before Ash gets raped by Foxx, a guy who has shown zero sexual and romantic attraction towards Ash beyond his appreciation of Ash’s extraordinary mental and physical ability. To Foxx, sexually assaulting Ash is not about desire. It is a matter of dominating and subjugating another human being. Ash verbalises this well:
Ash: “You guys are all the same. You use power to tread on other people. You say you don’t care when (we) struggle, and dominate (us).”
(I find the last sentence personally hard to translate, and have opted to keep it as literal as possible.)
Here is my purely personal takeaway on these two scenes. They — and, if I dare say, Banana Fish in general — are not about LGBT representation at all. These are critiques and commentaries of the male gaze and its effects on the psyche and the physique: the “pressure” that comes from being viewed as a sex object first (and maaaaybe an individual second if you are very, very lucky), the real physical dangers that it carries — ranging from butt gropes in the bar to random street assaults to full-on rape, and the fact that it is rooted in the need for power that comes from dehumanising another human being — something baser, grosser, and more evil than the biologically rooted sexual desire. Women have unusually intimate knowledge of this particular “pressure”; so intimate that sometimes it is taken as a way of life. What Yoshida Akimi has done with Banana Fish is to force us to read these scenes and re-examine these interactions through a simple re-framing: what if the target of this male gaze is also a male? What if the victim of this patriarchal abuse of power is the hero of the story?
The conversation Ash and Max have in the gay bar won’t disturb a hair or produce a niggling thought if it happens between two girl friends in a bar; at the very least, I know I would read the scene as a random filler and just gloss over it — after all, it’s just the way of life. By making Ash, a male, the object of the male gaze, Yoshida forces the reader to stop and reconsider: is everything truly all right with the world? The first time I read it, that bar scene shook me to the core, because it seems to grab me by the chin and say, “Do you see now?” And I am talking as someone from the #MeToo generation, a theoretically more emancipated place than the 80s and early 90s during which this manga was published! I can’t even pretend to imagine the effect these scenes might have on her readers at the time.
We cannot ignore how this literary device of re-framing provides effects at the expense of the portrayal of LGBT characters. It is a hammer, not a rapier. I think nowadays many people have and can come up with better portrayals of the damages the male gaze incurs, without the need of crippling the portrayal of the LGBT community. However, we also have the advantages of 30 to 40 years of discussion and progress on our side.
(As, well, crude as it may be, I have to admit that I can’t condemn the re-framing technique: I have seen and felt its impact a little too well. Atticus said, “ You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” Ash dons the traditionally feminine skin of the victim of the male gaze and forces the male audience to contend with the implications. A male friend stated that he literally could not bring himself to watch Banana Fish alone; it was “too disturbing” to see another male being the target of unwanted sexual attention and being portrayed as palpably suffering from it, a stark difference from the “unwanted attention” from harem girls and the main character’s half-hearted denials that usually populate male-oriented anime. But that’s not all: as a woman, sometimes I have got so used to this skin of mine that I no longer recognise that something is not right. Seeing Ash don my skin and walk in my shoes has made me realise wrongness that goes back in terms of decades. Banana Fish confers truths that have impacted my real life, which is why I am willing to sit down and type literal essays about it. I don’t think I am ready to talk about those truths and realisations yet; I don’t know if I ever will. However, I do wonder: is anyone out there experiencing the same thing that I have experienced while reading/watching Banana Fish and observing Ash’s experience and struggles?)
Is there any proper LGBT representation in Banana Fish?
Yoshida has given so many conflicting interviews (whether due to things lost in translation or her actual yoyo-ness, I do not know) regarding the nature of Ash and Eiji’s relationship. I am going to ignore everything (yes, including the sexually suggestive postcards and art book) and focus on what the main series tells me. The bulk of the storyline has nothing explicitly romantic going on between Ash and Eiji; their interactions can definitely be interpreted as “best friends” and it will be hard to refute. However, the epilogue The Garden of Light provides Sing’s perspective of their relationship:
Sing: “For your information, nothing sexual happened between them. Feelings like romantic love…probably did exist (between them).”
He goes on to describe their relationship as something more akin to soulmates than anything else.
I think Sing is a smart dude who knows Ash and Eiji pretty well, so I tend to take his word for it.
I like to read Banana Fish as a mystery/crime/thriller/action story with queer leads and a particularly incisive critique on the patriarchal male gaze; unfortunately, due to the author’s chosen literary device, the latter often comes at the expense of the portrayal of LGBT characters within the series. Also, if you managed to read this entire thing, kudos to you and I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR OPINION, no matter how brief. The between-cour break is killing me, so I am trying to fill the void in my soul and schedule with Banana Fish discussions.
