Mistaking Trauma for Tragedy: On Banana Fish, and the ending that broke me.
I must admit, agony is extremely difficult to talk about. Partly because it’s not just personal with the undeserved shame that comes with laying your feelings bare for someone else to hear — it’s also quite individual. Not one heartbreak is the same from person to person, from instant to instant. In fact, even referring to the same thing that hurt you so much is quite hard to do because the intensity of it differs from day to day. One day, the pain feels like it’s holding your heart and soul tightly within its fists; the next, a passing face on the street you otherwise wouldn’t give much regard to. Sometimes it keeps you up out of bed at night. Sometimes it keeps you in bed during the day.
Sometimes, it’s just sometimes. Sometimes… it feels like it’s all the time.
Without sounding too dramatic, this particular brand of agony has a particular name, as well as a particular date for me. The name? Banana Fish. The date? Thursday 20th December 2018. If you haven’t already guessed by the title or quickly Googled what exactly is so special about this date, I’ll tell you plain and simple:
this is when I died.
Or, at least, a part of me did.
To elaborate, this was when the final episode of Banana Fish aired. It trended on Twitter, tweets and pictures abound: why did the ending have to be the way it was in the manga?! A lot of us exclaimed — me included, but only silently, in the discomfort of my own dark room through a flood of tears. I didn’t just watch the episode and be done with it: I went back to the last 5 or 6 minutes a few times, crying harder and harder each time it finished. After all, isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome?
Yes, around this time 4 years ago, Banana Fish would have started airing. Now, with some courage, I will ruminate on how it ended. By the end of this I want to be able to show you why I felt like it hurt me so much. It wasn’t painful for me because it worked — it was painful because, as far as the narrative arc goes in my opinion, it didn’t.
Disclaimers: Because of the subject matter explored in Banana Fish, I will reference themes regarding sexual violence such as sexual assault, rape and child molestation, child sex trafficking, and violence in regard to gangs and organised crime. Please read at your own discretion.
Additionally, This analysis is going to look at the ending in depth and thus, will contain spoilers. If you are information-sensitive, I will advise you now to return to this article once you have watched the anime/read the manga yourself… if you choose to do so.
a brief synopsis
In the aftermath of an unfortunate encounter where a man’s dying words is “Banana Fish…”, as well as the murder of his older brother, Ash Lynx, a teenage gang leader in New York City, goes against the forces of the mafia, rival gangs, and their respective leaders to figure out the mysterious drug ‘Banana Fish’. While doing so, Ash develops a relationship with Eiji Okumura, a Japanese photographer’s assistant, as well as navigate the trauma from being molested and raped as a child to being groomed by the head of New York’s criminal underworld: Dino Golzine.
Long story short: Ash doesn’t make it. By the end of it all, once Banana Fish and all its evidence has been destroyed, Ash runs to the airport from New York’s Public library when he realises Eiji feels the same for him as he does for Eiji, represented by Eiji’s handwritten letter and a one-way ticket to Japan. However, Ash is stabbed on his way to the airport by a previous adversary. He walks back to the library to finish reading the letter and, content with the knowledge that Eiji’s soul “is always with him”, he passes — with a smile on his face as if he was sleeping and “having a good dream” as noted by the librarian.
And there you have it. Banana Fish: the story in a nutshell that became my fifth business almost half a decade now. Why has this story affected me so?
tragedy, catharsis, and trauma walked into a bar…
In drama, Tragedy is defined as a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character; tragic events being events, situations, or other phenomena causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe. This ancient concept has original ties to the theatre scenes of Ancient Greece, with Aristotle being one of the genre’s most important progenitors. I mention Aristotle because it is here where we find an important element of Tragedy: catharsis. In her reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, Eva Schaper perfectly defines what catharsis means, or at least, what we assume it to mean seeing as Aristotle never provided an explicit definition of the term:
In one sense -usually regarded as the more literal one- ‘catharsis’ means ‘purgation’, and this meaning derives from the medical context of healing and curing through expulsion and evacuation of harmful elements; it means getting rid of disturbances by removing their causes. In the second sense, ‘catharsis’ is said to mean ‘purification ‘, and this meaning derives from a religious context of cleansing the spirit and sublimating the emotions in order to prepare for or to achieve a state of exaltation. This meaning has obvious moral overtones, whilst the medical one can be said to be morally neutral.
Does that make sense? From my understanding, catharsis, in effect, is that moment of relief, that come down from the high of all that heavy emotion. It is the purging of feeling, the processing of what just happened and why. However, what you have witnessed does not destroy you or hurt you indefinitely. Schaper goes on to say that,
“The emotions are not superseded or left behind; they are transformed into aesthetic emotions, that is, emotions in which being involved and being through understanding are held in balance.”
Transformed. That is the key here. You, or at least your emotions, are transformed by the experience. Catharsis allows you to understand and compartmentalise the very tragic events you have just experienced and able to put it into context. And, by putting it into context, you are then able to accept what has happened. You are able to ascribe meaning and morality to the tragedy in order to learn from it. Those steps, I feel, is the true essence of catharsis and the cleansing or purging of emotions summoned by tragedy.
Now, trauma has been taken to mean so many things. It is a broad concept with an ever-expansive of artistic meaning and interpretation despite it not being a mode or form of art. It has gone on to validate so many things about psychology and emotion despite it being the very imbalances within the two. To cherry pick one of the musings on trauma that is relevant here, Roger Lockhurst defines trauma as a fragmenting force: ‘it is, by definition, ‘anti-narrative’; meaning becomes ‘disarticulated’, identity is fractured and the trauma itself ‘can only be conveyed by the catastrophic rupture of narrative possibility’.
This is really interesting. We found a unique process happening with catharsis in tragedy that is not present in trauma. Where catharsis provides the journey of understanding that eventually leads to a sort of emotional enlightenment or moral exaltation in tragedy, trauma is, or at least represents, the breakdown of that journey. Where tragedy via catharsis allows you to define and ascribe meaning, trauma is, in Lockhurst’s words, the disarticulation of meaning.
It is this defining characteristic that separates the two possibilities as to why you may see someone crying in the cinema. Without catharsis, a play assumed to be a tragedy no longer can be considered a tragic work of art.
Without catharsis, tragic fiction becomes something darker, scarier, and more monstrous.
Without catharsis, tragedy is trauma.
analysing the ending
With all that in mind, let’s finally have a look at this ending then — this legendary ending that caused me so much distress.
As mentioned before, Ash succumbs to his injuries in the library, dying with a smile on his face. The idea of Ash dying in and of itself is not what is traumatic about the scene. After all, by following the canon of tragic fiction, no one would necessarily call the demise of Macbeth or the execution of Tess in Tess if the D’Urbervilles traumatic.
In context of the story, the majority of threats that posed a danger to Ash and his loved ones have been eliminated. By the epilogue, Arthur, Foxx, and Foxx (the three main antagonists of the series) are dead; with Golzine gone, the mafia’s influence over New York as we know it has been severely diminished; Yut-Lung decides to stop pursuing Ash and Eiji and forms an alliance with Sing to unify Chinatown. Besides Lao, what adversary could possibly prove much of a threat to Ash? What kind of adversaries are left to even point out?
Going back to cartharsis, context is important as it would at least give some sort of reason or explanation as to why someone had to die. With nigh all enemies gone, what reason is there to kill Ash?
In a review of Banana Fish, Carley Garcia of Otaquest described the reality of trauma, that in the end, ‘it’s measured by lost opportunities, by black holes of loneliness and hopelessness that swallow your voice and take away any future you could see before it happened.’ A fair enough assessment that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, when the future is in fact foreseeable, when the black holes of loneliness and hopelessness shrink away, what then? After all, Ash understood that there could be a future away from all this with Eiji and everyone else understood that is should be a future for Ash like this. It’s all there, represented in Eiji’s letter.
In the end, Ash’s death defies all the poignant messaging targeted to victims of sexual violence. Everything that was hinted at around the healing impact of unconditional love, forgiveness, and vulnerability becomes distorted and weaponised by the same narrative and character arcs Banana Fish was supposedly championing. No catharsis can occur because you are left just wondering why; literally left hanging on a still image of Ash dying with no one around to possibly save him, not even himself despite the fact that he’s been able to do so before when the chances were slim to none. Catharsis cannot begin even if you wanted to — you are left emotionally suspended by the anime’s final moments.
in conclusion… where do we go from here?
Back when I was at university, one of my professors said something about trauma and art. It was extremely poignant, to me both as a creative and as someone who engages with art: “One thing art mustn’t do is traumatise the audience.” The professor then went on the explain why: if the art truly traumatises the viewer, the viewer spends so much time both being traumatised and trying to deal with the trauma that whatever lesson or message meant to be initially conveyed gets lost. In a review of the final episode of Banana Fish, Rose Bridges from Anime News Network stated that ‘for a story that’s supposed to be about how someone can heal from their abuse instead of letting it define them, we never actually get to see that healing happen.’ I agree and would go on to push that sentiment further: not only do we not get to see that healing happen, but we are made susceptible to the trauma conveyed or otherwise implied. I’m not trying to equate the viewing experience to the actual trauma inflicted on Ash; the trauma that has been experienced by too many victims of sexual, gang violence or organised crime. What I am trying to say is that sometimes we forget whether we’re the creators of art or the viewers of it, that art can, in a sense, be traumatic in its own way. When taking art from a specific time and claiming it as ‘modern adaptation’ it has to do more than just include a bunch of shiny new technology and more up-to-date slang. It has to see how we, as both individuals and as a society, has changed from when the original material was first introduced. Our perceptions of violence and the love that can grow in spite of it has changed since the ’80s. In a post #MeToo world we now have developed a lexicon to articulate the nuances and complexities of rape and molestation. MAPPA’s Banana Fish doesn’t have to address all this but considering the timeline has been moved to the 21st century akin to ours, would it not have some meaningful impact on the narrative? I could go on forever with this as I still have so much to say but I’ll leave it here for now. Just like Ash, I’ll just keep smiling — as if I am having a good dream.
Acknowledgements
Whether you read all the way to the end or just the first word, I want to thank you for reading this jumbled piece of mess (haha). I took quite a bit of energy, persistence, and three years of second guessing before I finally released this out into the world. Now that I’ve got it some of these feelings off my chest, I’m ready to take on the next idea waiting for me.
I’d also like to thank the people below as their thoughts have not only helped develop and challenge my own but have given me comfort about this extremely intense series:
· Rose Bridges: 24 reviews on Banana Fish as it aired in 2018 (particularly the review of the finale: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/banana-fish/episode-24/.141153)
· Carley Garcia: The Healing Impact of Unconditional Love on Trauma in Banana Fish(https://www.otaquest.com/trauma-in-banana-fish/)
· Eva Schaper: “Aristotle’s Catharsis and Aesthetic Pleasure.” (www.jstor.org/stable/2217511)
· Chanelle: Understanding Ash Lynx’s Death — Banana Fish(https://chanwrites.wixsite.com/chanelleseuphoria/post/understanding-ash-lynx-s-death-banana-fish)
Please, let me know your thoughts! Until next time, feel free to follow both my Twitter and Instagram @themangaacademic.
