Dobes Zone

 I'd reviewed this series briefly on my Letterboxd already, but I wanted to talk a little more in depth about the show.         In late 00's (or perhaps it was 2010?) a couple fansubbed episodes of Stop! Hibari-kun popped up on Youtube. I'd discovered them quite accidentally, I think via someone on twitter mentioning the show, and right then and there I was hooked. At that time, I wasn't really encountering a lot of trans media and hadn't yet started to think of myself as trans, but it definitely caught my interest. Sadly, it was only a few episodes and the updates stopped. I'd also found the manga, but it was also in a state of only partial fan translation. Flash forward to the present day, where I was happy to learn that not only was a full fansub completed, but the whole series is now available in a good crisp quality. It looks gorgeous and I'm so glad this odd little slice of queer anime history has been preserved. I'd love for there to be an offici...

 Content warning: discussions of rape and CSA. Also spoilers about the series and how it ends. If you don't care about spoilers, give it a read.        Where to begin, really? I finally finished my watch through of Banana Fish, a series I'd started on some years prior but hadn't watched in its entirety until recently. I'd also read through a good portion of the manga and it's interesting to note that the anime is fairly faithful in its adaptation- just updating the setting to the contemporary and swapping the Vietnam war for the gulf war in the backstory.     At its heart, Banana Fish is a tragic romance between two teen boys from vastly different worlds- Ash Lynx, a former child prostitute turned gang leader who'd been groomed by a mafia don to be a successor, and Eiji Okumura, a gentle Japanese boy accompanying a journalist as an assistant. They meet on a story focused on Ash's gang and their lives get turned upside down as Ash is caught up in a...