Banana Fish – Episode 10

This episode certainly left me in a better place mentally then the last one. I wouldn’t say things are in an upswing for our heroes, but they are looking less grave anyway. I think Yut-Lung speaks for all of us at the beginning of the episode when in relation to the events of last episode he says “I didn’t want to see that.”, my near exact reaction to that subtitle was ‘Same.’ though now that he has seen it he seems to have a better idea of what Golzine is up too.
I wish I had a better idea of what Yut-Lung it up too. I don’t see what he gains to benefit by giving Ash a means of escape from Golzine. I generally get that his goals are to take down his family in revenge for killing his mother but how does Ash play into that? Ash makes it clear that he has no intention of letting Yut live. Yut accepts this and says they will meet again, probably when Ash comes to kill him. What does he stand to gain from this play? I suppose we’ll find out later.

Ash uses the key that Yut-Lung planted in his pants to make a daring escape at the time that Golzine and Arthur leave the house for the evening to meet up with people higher up in the Government and show off the power of Banana Fish by killing off a presidential candidate. At the same time that Ash, Max and Ibe are making their escape, Ash’s gang and the Chinese gang break into the manor in an attempt to free Ash and Shorter.
Unfortunately, it’s too late for Shorter. As the Chinese gang finds out by getting information out of Golzines men.

Ash drops Eiji off with his gang and has them help smuggle Eiji out. The two of them promise to meet up again, no matter what, even if Eiji has to wait forever. It’s honestly kind of cute how they treat each other. Ash can’t leave with them though, there is something he has to do first. Which is go pay his final respects to Shorter and hopefully kill Abraham for what he did.

Speaking of Abraham. He gets cornered by Yut-Lung and told point blank that Ash is going to kill him. To Abraham right now, Ash is the devil. He also points out what an absolute coward he is “You made a drug of death and now you’re afraid of dying.” what an absolute fool, a mad scientist with no morals. Yut paralyzes him and steals the samples of Banana Fish, leaving Abraham to be found by Ash and taken down by the only person who has any right to take him down.
Ash guns him down with no remorse after seeing what he did to Shorters body. Though after what he did to Griff and what he did to Shorter, I can’t imagine Ash would of had any mercy on him without having to look at his best friends corpse being defiled like that. It’s still oddly chilling to see the look in Ash’s eye as the gun runs out of bullets and he curiously keeps pulling on the trigger, trying to shoot more. As if the entire clip of a machine gun wasn’t enough to kill this monster in front of him. Then, he sets fire to the lab.

The leader of the Chinese gang runs down and discovers this, and sees that Golzines men weren’t lying. Shorter is dead, and while Ash never outright says that he killed him. He never denies it either. Sing Soo-Ling, the leader of the Chinese gang blames him and in the end knows that he will get revenge. Though he doesn’t know the truth of what happened and when he finds out, will probably end up allying with Ash. For now though, he gets sort of captured by Yut-Lung, who uses his family to make an escape.

Eiji is safe with Ash’s gang, Max and Ibe are free from the manor, Ash is on his way to Manhattan while Golzine is back to look in on the mess that has become of his manor. Banana Fish is in the hands of the Lee family, or at least, some of it is. I am not sure if Yut stole all of it or just the samples that were on hand. This episode was amazing to watch actually, the action in it was just fantastic and while I shouldn’t be happy to see someone gunned down…it was Abraham. He kind of deserved it. Wait, speaking of Abraham though…what happened to his brother? He wasn’t part of this escape party, in fact, I can’t recall if it was ever clear what happened to him.
I am curious if that’s going to come into play later or if it’s one of those plot threads we’ll be expected to forget.

Well anyway, like I said this episode wasn’t really an upswing for our heroes but they are in a better place then they were an episode ago and at least I’m not in tears this time.