Quarantine Control #136: Zootopia of the Banana Fish
The midterm elections in the United States just happened, and… they didn’t go as badly for the non-fascists as expected. It’s possible that Democrats might ultimately lose the House of Representatives and it will take several days before we find out who will control the Senate starting in January, but the margins will be slim. It’s far better than an opposition party electoral slaughter that history and political pundits predicted would happen. It was the ultimate “well, it’s something” election, and that’s okay. It’s fine. It could have been considerably worse.
Geoffrey Barnes
House of the Dragon: Season 1 (2022)
Source: HBO Max
Episodes: 10
I initially hadn’t planned on watching House of the Dragon, because… why would I? I haven’t seen a single episode of Game of Thrones, and despite this series’ status as a prequel, some tend to be made for those familiar enough with the source material to have reference points. But that’s where curiosity came in. The part of me that’s long been curious about the hype around GoT for years wanted to check this one out, just one episode to see what it was like. It should tell you how much I enjoyed it that I’m now here giving my impressions about the entire first season.
HotD takes place about 200 years before the main GoT series, and focuses on the initially-prosperous House Targaryen, the ruling house of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, along with its allies and subtler enemies. The drama kicks off in earnest when King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine) chooses his daughter Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock at the start) to succeed the throne of House Targaryen following his death, alone enough to create discord considering how men are typically chosen to succeed as Kings and not women as Queens. The series introduces plenty of characters at the start and along the way, including Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey at the start), Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), and the members of House Velaryon. It’s perpetually clear that news of Rhaenyra’s impending succession will rub several families the wrong way; the question is when this will come to a head.
Despite not watching GoT, I was more than aware of what kind of story this is. It’s a dark fantasy that takes place in a world full of grey and gray morality, where even those thought to be heroic after being introduced are capable of taking underhanded actions to further their own interests. That said, it’s the hallmark of a good series when it does a fantastic job of making the viewer care about the characters and their plights despite all of them being capable of doing something underhanded.
It’s similarly skillful on the part of the writers to do the actor switch well. Emma D’Arcy takes over the role of Rhaenyra Targaryen from Alcock halfway through the series, as much time passes over the course of a few episodes, as does Olivia Cooke take over the role of Alicent from Carey. D’Arcy took a bit of time to convince me as Rhaenyra thanks to Alcock’s excellent performance, though this wasn’t an issue with Alicent thanks to Cooke exuding charisma (though Carey is still good). I’m hesitant to say too much about the story developments thanks to not wanting to delve into spoilers.
Paddy Considine’s performance of Viserys was also excellent, as was Matt Smith as smug snake Daemon, both of whom own the scenery when their presence is even in the vicinity of the screen. I also enjoyed Steve Toussaint as Corlys Velaryon, for a literal added bit of color. The acting is incredibly solid throughout.
The show sinks its teeth into the viewer by having solid pacing, with at least one major character driven event occurring in every episode, something a certain competing fantasy show could learn to do. This, combined with the well-done outfit design save a few wigs and overall art direction, no doubt thanks to HBO/Warner Bros. having plenty of faith in its success through giving it a sizable budget, give the show both style and substance. I didn’t even realize the series used the Volume, a unique visual technique that can at times produce inconsistent lighting effects, until an article was posted highlighting it. It’s the usage of it that made the series look far better than the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, though HotD does that through perpetually having the series occur with dusk and moonlight environments.
I’m sure there are specific references to future events that I might have missed, but those fortunately didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the first season. Characters like Rhaenyra and Alicent might be related to characters who come in later, but it’s not necessary to know about them and all the actions and potential atrocities they commit nearly 200 years into the future. That’s good, because I’ve heard plenty of stories about how the GoT series’ quality fell off the rails in the second half, a decline most pronounced in the last two seasons. It’s good that I may not have to watch them with the potential of future live-action installments ignoring most plot developments that occurred after GoT’s showrunners stopped listening to author George R.R. Martin.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first HotD season, and it’s a damned pity that I’ll have to wait until sometime in 2024 for the second season. Who knows whether Martin will seriously finish and release The Winds of Winter by then, a novel originally due for release in 2014, such a long time ago that even the first jokes about it are getting old. (Martin now says that he’s “three-quarters of the way done,” though there remains no release timeframe.) I don’t think there’s much potential for them to redo the final four seasons of GoT, but I’m hopeful the Jon Snow series they’re working on won’t require watching the entirety of the series and will rely on content due to be used in future novels, with how actor Kit Harington has met with Martin. As you can see, I am now fully invested.
Joseph Daniels
It sort of feels, to me, that the Zootopia fandom has been acting entitled since the release and success of the movie in 2016. Talk and speculation of a sequel pretty much began the day after the movie debuted in theatres. When the movie made over a billion dollars, it felt like a sequel was going to be an inevitable thing. Disney wouldn’t turn its back on something that would so obviously be a money maker for them, right?
Given past experience, it does seem like any kind of follow up to Zootopia is an inevitable thing. Wreck-It Ralph got a sequel even though the original movie didn’t even make half a billion dollars. They did more with Frozen and Tangled as soon as they were able to (a sequel and a television series, respectively). And looking back at the past, The Lion King shattered box office records for animated films in 1994 and got a television series the very next year, with a sequel movie released in 1998. Looking at how Disney is currently treating the Star Wars franchise, it definitely shows that if there’s more money to be made, Disney is right there to make it.
So the dearth of new Zootopia material is especially baffling. We’re not used to Disney making a billion dollars off of something and then saying “Yeah, that’s enough, we’re happy with this.”
In a way, though, Zootopia is dodging so many bullets right now. Ralph Breaks The Internet was not received well by fans. The television show and first sequel to The Lion King were both of pretty low quality, the television show in particular (the movie has some redeeming qualities), and I’m surprised the franchise wasn’t killed off completely. If anything, Disney sometimes has better luck if they hold off on a sequel until they have a good idea for one. There was a thirteen year gap between the first and second Rescuers movies, long enough that an entire generation of children exist who saw the second one and didn’t even realize there was a first one until after. The Rescuers Down Under was a fantastic film and didn’t require anyone to watch the first one to understand it.
If there is to be a second Zootopia film, hopefully the sheer amount of time it’s taking to make is an indication that Disney wants to do right by the franchise, and not an indication that the project is in development hell and just isn’t working. Unfortunately, that’s a possibility.
This brings me to Zootopia+, the series of shorts that were released yesterday on Disney+.
Zootopia+ (2022)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: 6
Tigers?: The judges on So you Think You Can Prance; other background characters
Fans who were hoping for a full television series, or even any kind of continuation, were disappointed by Zootopia+ being a series of shorts focusing on minor characters in the franchise. However, if there might not ever be another movie to continue the story of Nick and Judy, it’s great that Disney has released several short animations in the original style instead of a television series with a much cheaper to produce style. Instead of Tangled: The Series, this is another Dug Days.
Creating a series of shorts gives the writers additional freedom to tell shorter stories that might not always work in the same way that a full length movie or television series would. Fans on Reddit have been pointing out plot holes in several of the shorts, like the distance Bonnie and Stu would have to have driven in episode one, or problems with the times of day in episode six, but I would argue that the rule of funny is a good enough shield from those kinds of criticisms. What this does mean is that it’s questionable whether this series fits in the canon of Zootopia, but I’m not really bothered by that. It does feel like the series tries a bit too hard to fit the episodes into specific parts of the movie, with episode two suddenly taking place during the Duke/Judy chase scene for a brief moment, for example. In fact, several episodes re-use scenes from the movie, and I feel like this is meant to hide the fact that they didn’t actually get everyone back to reprise their roles. All of Nick and Judy’s lines are archived from their original performance.
That’s okay, though. This allows for smaller characters to shine, especially original characters. The breakout star of Zootopia+ is probably Sam, the otter waitress in episode six who finds herself having to serve Flash and Priscilla (the sloths from the movie) on an evening she already has plans for and which require her to be able to leave work on time. It’s a story most people in the service industry know well. On a night you really don’t have time to wait around, everything goes wrong and delays you. It also renews my interest in the role of sloths in Zootopian society. This isn’t the first time sloths have been portrayed in this way in popular media, as people in slow motion. In fact, long time readers will note that I’ve also mentioned Seton Academy uses the joke as well, and that they weren’t the first to do so either.
I can’t help but wonder how recently sloths integrated into Zootopian society. I can see Judy not knowing how to handle them, being a sheltered country rabbit who found herself out of place in a big city like Zootopia, but I assume Sam has lived in Zootopia all her life, or probably isn’t a recent arrival like Judy was. The restaurant clearly hasn’t been set up to accommodate sloths, and Sam’s other customers don’t seem particularly interested in anyone’s needs but their own. However, I’ve begun to form an alternate theory, one that unfortunately doesn’t fit all of the evidence but which still might go a long way towards fixing the sloth problem in Zootopia a little bit.
Here’s the thing. Sloths couldn’t possibly function in a society that’s built to support the fast paced life of literally every other mammal on the planet. Look at the movie’s DVD menu sometime and you’ll see Flash try to step off the train, but he’s too late and the train carries him off, well past his intended destination. You would never be able to make it to work on time if you were a sloth and relied on public transportation like that. The movie went to great lengths to show that even rodents were accommodated, with their own section of the train and their own neighbourhood in Zootopia, but somehow there’s nothing for sloths?
This is one of the jokes that I don’t think really landed that well in Zootopia, even though it was fun to watch the scene play out.
My theory is that sloths actually don’t move at incredibly slow speeds, they’re merely stand-ins for situations where speed and efficiency are appreciated but not met. They could even have lent their species’ name to a popular Zootopian slur, kind of like how we use words like “gyp” (derived from “gypsy”) or “jew” to talk about how we were cheated, or we cheated someone else, during a transaction. Why did it take so long at the FMV? Oh, I had to deal with a sloth today. Why did my shift last forever at the restaurant? I had to serve a couple of sloths tonight. Notice, for example, that after Sam stopped stressing out about how long it was taking to serve Flash and Priscilla, the rest of her evening went smoothly. I don’t think sloths are as slow as they’ve been presented to us, they just seem that way depending on the situation.
If Zootopia+ is the direction Disney wishes to take this franchise from now on, I don’t think I’ll be too sad. I have both wanted more Zootopia and thought that there wouldn’t be a good way to really make another movie without it turning into what the first movie was not. The first movie, despite fully embracing the tropes of a police procedural, was not one at heart, but a second movie following Nick and Judy would have to commit to becoming a buddy cop film. Zootopia+ avoids this by following different characters. By making Fru Fru the main focus of episode two, for example, it turns the episode into a reality show, and episode three’s focus on Duke turns it into a musical for some reason (it actually does work). It wouldn’t be a bad thing to make a buddy cop film, but the current political climate in the United States surrounding the police makes it a bit harder to market such a thing.
Instead, I’m hoping for more Zootopia+ shorts in the future, even if they’re not an annual thing, and I wouldn’t be opposed to having a full movie starring Sam. You don’t necessarily have to follow the same characters to tell compelling stories, as this series has proven. In fact, maybe that was the point of this project, to test the waters and see if fans would be receptive to such a thing, with episodes one through five following characters from the movie and then the final episode being secretly a test run for a potential starring character in a hypothetical second Zootopia movie. If so, then well played, Disney. Well played.
Angela Moseley
Mid-term elections are over in the United States. The results are mixed, but it wasn’t the overwhelming shift toward fascism many of us feared. This is in large part because people turned out to vote, especially Gen Z. In short, democracy can work not because it’s a self-perpetuating machine, but people must actively strive to keep it alive– it’s hard, but important work.
Banana Fish (2018)
Source: Amazon Prime
Episodes: 24
Banana Fish is a series that slipped under the radar when it aired in 2018. At least compared to other series that year. Devilman Crybaby, Golden Kamuy, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, and Megalo Box were all stellar series that stole the spotlight. Sure, Banana Fish should have and did easily stand among those heavy hitting shows, but being locked behind Amazon Prime didn’t help. Anime Strike as a service was dead by the time this series aired, but I’m sure a lot of fans were soured by the Amazon experience overall. Had the show streamed on Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu, or Netflix it would have done much better.
I actually learned about Banana Fish thanks to episode 189 of the Anime World Order podcast back in 2020. When I finally decided to try Amazon Prime thanks to a household account I added this show to my watch list. It wouldn’t be until this summer that I actually got around to watching it. In the two years between hearing about Banana Fish and actually seeing it for myself, I’d forgotten about much of the plot AWO went over, especially this being a boy’s love flavored crime drama. This series is excellent overall, but it does have glaring flaws in places.
During the height of the Iraq War, a group of American soldiers take a break from their duties. Suddenly, a solider named Griffin Callenereese strung out on drugs and armed with an M14 rifle begins to gun down his fellow soldiers. After Griffin is subdued, the only words he can mutter are “Banana Fish.”
After the incident Griffin was discharged and is now in the care of his younger brother, Aslan Jade Callenreese, aka Ash Lynx. Ash is the leader of a teen gang in New York City. In his free time he takes care of his older brother who was ultimately left with a broken mind after the war. Ash has had an extremely difficult life as he was both raised by and sexually abused by Dino Golzine, a Corsican mafia don. One night, he comes across a fatally wounded man whom Golzine ordered to be killed. Before the man dies, he gives Ash a vial of white powder and utters the words “Banana Fish.” Knowing they’re the same words his brother said, the gang leader uses his connections to investigate the substance believing he may find a way to help his brother.
At the same time, Shunichi Ibe is a Japanese photographer who’s working on a magazine story about New York City teen gangs. He is accompanied by his assistant Eiji Okumura. The two have an interview with Ash. Because of their relative closeness in age, Ash and Eiji get along well. The interview is cut short when Golzine’s mafia comes looking for Ash to get their hands on the drug they know he’s hiding. The pair is kidnapped, but eventually escape. Ash and Eiji become fast friends even as they’re caught up in a huge mafia and government conspiracy surrounding “Banana Fish.”
Banana Fish might be one of the best anime series I’ve seen all year. That said, several things really bothered me about this adaptation. The first would be the time period change from when Akimi Yoshida first wrote the manga in 1985. The manga itself ran from 1985 to 1994 in Japan. The series is very much a product of the 1980s and the 1990s. This tumultuous period in the United States saw rampant crime in major cities, especially in New York City. Outright gang warfare and drug crimes were problematic for a variety of complex reasons. The anime itself has been updated to take place in the 2010s, and except for the addition of smartphones, newer computers, and the internet, the show very much has a 80s/90s vibe. It is as if a separate timeline happened where the war on drugs and crime wasn’t declared a failure, and an anti-corruption figure like Rudy Guiliani wasn’t elected major of New York City in the mid-90s. (To be fair, the manga ended before his election– and no I won’t be touching upon Guiliani’s own ironic descent into corruption.)
In addition to the rampant crime and corruption, the fashion wasn’t updated much for the anime. This is a minor complaint.
A bigger issue I have is that progressive attitudes about homosexuality also weren’t updated to match the 2010s. Again, this show was released in 2018. Everyone who’s openly gay is very much shown as a sex-crazed monster. In a bitterly amusing twist, the show portrays racism pretty well. There’s the casual racism that gets tossed about, especially toward Eiji. Then there’s the larger issue of race and if someone is trustworthy just because they’re the same race. (And thankfully, the show gets this answer right.) Nevertheless, I’m astounded on how other than Cain and Skipper’s brief appearance, few black characters played a major role. Sadly none of them were fully explored characters in this anime. I’m also shocked at the utter lack of latinos and South Asians in Banana Fish. I’ll emphasize it again, this story takes place in New York City. Even if it was adapted from a manga penned in 1985, more racial diversity shouldn’t have been an issue.
My biggest issue with this anime remains Ash himself. The dude is just too perfect. He’s too beautiful, too smart, and too desirable. If this was a shonen anime, his looks and brains would be a superpower. In this realistically styled anime it just feels so out of place. Especially when antagonists trip over themselves to spare Ash just so they can have his beauty and intellect for themselves. In a way, Ash really is like a mythical cat in how many lives he has for the most part. Dino is so obsessed with Ash that attackers hired by the mafia boss go out of their way to make sure he’s not killed. This happens in every major story arc. By extension these rules also apply to Eiji, as many recognize the two boys’ fondness of each other. Or in some cases, Eiji is just damned lucky.
On the upside, Ash’s trauma from the abuse he suffered was portrayed well. It was refreshingly shown as something he couldn’t just “get over,” and it affected him deeply. At times, it led him to lose his normal cool and fall into a blind rage. Other times he found himself in a state of shock and withdrew from others. In this way, some of Ash’s issues are balanced out. Still he feels way too overpowered in an anime that has a realistic bend.
Ash and Eiji’s dynamic was an area of enjoyment for me. There was nothing sexual about the relationship, despite the boys clearly having romantic feelings toward each other. I’m not saying sex in a relationship is a bad thing, but in way too many boys love shows sexual romance is fetishized. It’s nice to see two people enjoy each other’s company and still be young adults when they’re alone and able to drop their guard. The only issue is that Ash lives in a violent world he’s adapted to and Eiji does not. This is in addition to them being from two different countries. I won’t spoil it, but ultimately, the relationship ends on a bittersweet note.
Despite my issues, Banana Fish is a good series. Sure, it both showcases and lacks diversity, and contains outdated stereotypes from the 1980s and 1990s. That said, the writing and animation are excellent. The conspiracy was gripping, and I did like how it commented on some darker aspects of American life. This is doubly true in terms of violence, government conspiracies (the MKUltra program is a direct inspiration for this series), and corrupt authorities. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but the elected government officials caught up in the conspiracy were all Republicans. I guess some things really are timeless. Anyway, I’d suggest giving Banana Fish a try. It’s not perfect, but it is a rare, mostly grounded show that only comes along every few years.
The midterms may not have been as bad as feared, but it’s a good time to get the new vaccinations and boosters for COVID-19 before the inevitable winter surge, and the flu shot alongside it considering how reportedly bad the strain is this year. Never forget to protect yourself.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
