Timeline Discrepancies in Banana Fish (manga)
Ooof. This is a big one. As many of you know, I write fanfiction. A lot of my stories (most of them, actually) attempt to be canon compliant. When I get something wrong, time-wise, it bugs the hell out of me, and it's happened in DOZENS of my fics. A lot of that was my carelessness, but some of it was due to a serious difficulty in sorting out the timeline. A couple of folks have done the hard work of building a timeline, but I'm not 100% satisfied with any of them. Heck, I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied that Yoshida herself didn't mess up in some serious ways.
The idea that we got the timeline wrong has been percolating in my head for literal years, and I've finally embarked on a project to sort it out for myself. I'm currently in the midst of volume 9, and when I'm done, I think I'll do a few pinned posts here with the results of my work. (Pinned because I'm doing this, largely, for myself, and I'd like to have a place to easily refer to it when I write.) So far I've seen some minor issues and one MAJOR issue.
MINOR:
Griffin's leaving for Vietnam/Ash's pumpkin story:
It's easily verified that Griffin attacked his squad in Dong Tham, Vietnam on June 30, 1973. (v 1; p 6-7). Now, in the 1970s, the army was spending 5 to 6 months on training before anyone was deployed to their eventual units in the war. Also, Griffin had time to become close friends with Max, so he'd probably been with that unit for several weeks at the minimum. That would mean he'd have to have joined up (at the very latest) at the very end of 1972. However, he met Abraham Dawson in his PREVIOUS unit (v 3; p 171), so that suggests an even earlier sign-on date.
In Ash's pumpkin memory, he says he was "about five" years old (v 7; p 24). Given that he was said to have been born on August 12, 1968, that would've been Halloween of 1973, months after Griff went missing. So let's say Ash misremembered, and he was actually only four? That puts it in October 1972.
He says that he hid "around the time my brother came home from school." That suggests that Griffin was still in school in October. That doesn't align easily with the fact that he'd be joining the army in a couple of months. And if he really had been deployed in another unit before Max's, he woud've already had to have been enlisted.
It's far more likely that he graduated high school in June 1972 and enlisted right away. So maybe this was a final military leave between training and deployment and Ash is misremembering both his age and the fact that his brother wasn't at school? Completely possible, given his very young age. Or it was a timeline error. Who's to say?
Ibe's terrible sense of time:
I think Shunichi Ibe is a doll, but I also think he may not have a reliable calendar in his head. Either that, or Yoshida lost the thread of the timeline herself.
When Eiji and Ibe first arrive in New York, he tells Eiji that he met Max Lobo, saying that his publisher introduced them "last year." (v 1; p 73) To be generous, that can be any time in 1984 or even 1983, because he's telling Eiji this in early March and human brains have a lot of lag.
It should be noted, however, that in March of 1984, Ibe had a photography exhibition in Tokyo that Eiji attended, and he first photographed Eiji in the summer of 1983 (Fly Boy in the Sky). As this was considered Ibe's big entrance into photography (he was rather listless before), I think this suggests that he came to New York and met Max sometime after March in 1984.
However, when they get to Los Angeles and meets Jessica, he tries to diffuse the violent situation in her lawn by letting her know that he's there, reminding her that "you and Max took care of me in New Jersey three years ago." (v 4; p 70) This is, at the earliest, late August of 1985.
Three years ago would have been 1982, while Ibe was still in college and well before he indicated earlier that he'd even MET Max. I'm willing to chalk this one up to a quirk with Ibe, but who knows?
In addition to this, I'm finding evidence of a huge timeline problem centered on Ash.
MAJOR
Was Aslan Callenreese born in 1968? Or was it really 1967?
We have documentation of Ash's birthdate. It's plain: August 12, 1968, both in the manga (v 16; p 6) and in Private Opinion (p 34). But throughout the manga, they all keep getting it wrong!
Jenkins tells Ibe and Eiji that Ash is "about seventeen" (v 1; p87) when they first talk about photographing Ash, in March or April of 1985, and a few days later Ash tells Max the same thing when they meet in prison (v 2; p 79). In both cases, if he were born in 1968, he would have been only sixteen.
Later, in October of 1985, after Ash burns Golzine's mansion to the ground, Jenkins, ordering his men to find Ash, still refers to him as being seventeen. (v 7; p71). He has files with Ash's birthdate listed (even though the manga panel cuts it off), so it's unlikely that's just Jenkins making a mistake. Ash had a birthday in August. If he were born in 1968, he would indeed be seventeen at this point. However, if he was seventeen earlier, as Ash himself already said, then he would be eighteen by this time.
This is CLEARLY a timeline error on Yoshida's part, unless you want to believe that Ash is lying about his age when he talks to Max (which, I guess is valid, if weird).
But then on November 2, 1985, less than a month later when Ash is in the hospital after killing Arthur, Jenkins mentions that Ash is now eighteen, and Ash doesn't dispute it. (v 9 p 103) What the hell, Jenkins? Didn't you JUST tell people he was seventeen?
Other timeline creators explain this with a time skip, saying that it's now 1986 and a year has gone by since Shorter's death. I scoured those volumes and can find absolutely NO PLACE where a time skip could've occurred. A hell of a lot happens, jammed into about two weeks, but I'm 100% convinced that it was exactly that: only two weeks.
When I post my timeline, I'll show all my work (and the manga panels that back me up). In the meantime, I'm leaning toward Ash really having been born in 1967.
I'm having a lot of fun with this project, even though it's making obvious the PLETHORA of timeline mistakes in my fanfiction. But hey, if Yoshida screwed up the birthdate of her own main character, what does it matter if I celebrated Ash's birthday a few weeks too late?
I'm looking forward to finishing the timeline and unpacking it for clarity. I hope I don't find too many more serious conflicts, but I expect I will. In the meantime, let me know what you think of all this. I'm curious, especially, about the time-skip faithful. I'd love to understand what led you all to see that.
