Banana Fish – 16 [Lo, the Poor Peacock]

Another week, another episode of Banana Fish. This time we have a quality escape, an expected murder and some odd comedy. Let’s dive in!

This week Banana Fish managed to, just barely straddle a very fine line. Being an escape attempt, Banana Fish had to make it both difficult, yet possible. I felt that Banana Fish straddled that line rather well. The security came off as competent, with good coverage, yet sabotaged from the inside by Dino. The fact that Ash and Co were routinely found and chased/captured really made the chase much more engaging than the guards also just barely missing them. Combine that with things like the infrared cameras giving Ash away and shutting down the elevator, and Banana Fish accomplished a good escape sequence. My only gripe is that, at parts, the felt out of place. I will get into more specifics on this later on, as quiet a few of the jokes worked and none were bad. It was just a matter of timing to me.

As far as specifics go, I want to start with the escape. I went in to a bit of detail earlier in how competent it felt. I think Dino, Max and Ibe really helped on this. Max and Ibe provided a set of characters that are allowed to be caught, because they do not have a characters built on being geniuses. They give the security credibility in this. Meanwhile Dino provides a valid reason for any mistakes or inadequacies. Those can all be attributed to his refusal to help, or almost active hindrance towards catching Ash, without impacting the actual security quality. Really Banana Fish did a fantastic job setting up and justifying all of it. Had Ash not already been constantly labeled as a genius, I think this attempt would have worked perfectly.

Onto the characters. Max and Ibe’s bit was nice and improvised, though I wish they had managed to do more. They mostly ran around randomly, stumbling into guards and making Ash’s life more difficult. I don’t get what their plan was here, since they had no idea about layout of anything. Had the alarm not gone off when Ash escaped, how were they even planning on getting around these camera laden areas? It seemed horribly unplanned to me, which knowing Max seems out of place. The guy is a military vet, which we saw with some of his takedowns, so he should have some strategy. Meanwhile Ibe was just sort of… there, weighing him down. Really, why bring Ibe at all? He can’t fight, he can’t sneak or hack. He’s just that “guy” you bring cause fuck it.

After that we have Dino and the Baron, whom I have already partially talked about. I mentioned earlier I loved Dino’s presence because he justifies a lot of the inadequacies in the security. His interactions with the Baron were always great, as the Baron got more and more unraveled. What I wasn’t expecting was for him to just straight up murder the man though. I figured he wanted him discredited in front of the mob, so he could get his position back. With this though I wonder how Dino is going to spin it. Because right now it looks like he just spat in their faces and is about to have a collection of mafia’s after him. A bold, and dangerous, move. Hopefully there is some fallout from this, as I want to see how its handled.

Lastly, the comedy. I mentioned how it was hit or miss earlier, and there are clear examples of this. The nurse gag near the end, as they were escaping, was great. It lightened the mood with the case over. I could have done without the tryst in the storeroom closet, but hey it was an unexpected setup. The part of the comedy that missed for me was when Ash found Max and Ibe. We were still mid escape at this point, and the sudden tone shift with the cartoony style bothered me. It just felt out of place, compared to the more narratively relevant comedy of Ash dressed as a nurse. That said, it is funny how much trouble old people cause Ash, even though with how young he is most people are old.

So all in all, Banana Fish did good this week. The comedy mostly worked, the escape was balanced well and it was all a singular focus on Ash. It was like a sort of episode piece, since there was a single narrative the entire episode, instead of trying to balance multiple at once. In my opinion, a good base rule is an episode should always have a singular self contained story or plot point that gets resolved in that episode. That way it feels like progress is being made and each episode can build on each other, while being satisfying in their own right. There are of course exceptions to this, with cliffhangers and 2 parters and the like. But in general, for individual successful episodes, I have found this rule to hold true.

But what did you think? Ready for Ash to be back in the jungle of the city? Or did you want more time in the hospital? Personally I am glad we are out. Let me know below and I will see you next week!