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Banana Fish is an experience of a lifetime. It's been days since I've watched it and I'm still affected by its last episode. Right off the bat, for people who come here expecting a typical BL story, this show is not that. Banana fish contains extremely triggering subject matters and traumatic moments, so it's not for everybody. There's a deep connection between two male characters that is the heart of the show, but the nature of this love is up to interpretation. But if you're looking for a soul-wrenching crime-drama thriller, this show is a really good one.

Without spoiling too much away, this series tells ... a story of two contrasting worlds that under normal circumstances should never have merged. It's a simple coincidence that lets two entirely different people meet under the most cruel circumstances. Our main character Ash is a heavily traumatized individual who finds hope in his life through a Japanese student named Eiji. Ash gets involved in a dangerous situation involving a drug called 'Banana fish' and the story is about his personal fight with the mafia boss who tormented him throughout his whole life. It's a tale full of suffering where a geuine humane relationship symbolizes the light in Ash's dark and corrupted world. While Ash's innocence was taken away from him at a young age, he desperately wants to protect Eiji's pure heart.

There are many stories of different people in this work. Most of them are dark and hopeless, and it never truly gets better. In contrast to the corrupted world Ash lives in, his mutual love with Eiji is a pure connection of two souls, no matter how you choose to interpret it. What you can take away from this work is that there are things that can be more important to us beyond our existence, like a bond we share with someone else and what it teaches us.

Spoilers for the ending.
This is the perfect example of a story that started with huge potential and had one of the worst endings I've ever read in manga. Where did it go wrong, one might ask? Signs were all there from the beginning, ever since the female protagonist, Nino, started to burst out singing in the most cringe way anyone could imagine. Or how her childhood crush was always on her mind, even years later without any contact with the guy. But no, the most unforgivable part of this manga is its terrible ending and total disrespect of its best written character, Yuzu.

Yuzu had the ... most compelling storyline in the whole series. He was hospitalized as a kid, but his passion for music was so strong he started to draw music sheets in the sand. After meeting Nino she became his voice, a new inspiration, a new hope. Yuzu's singing was the emotional climax of the entire series because we rooted for his dream. As opposed to his journey, Momo, the childhood friend of the FL was absent for the majority of the manga. Yet, for whatever reason, Nino had to mention his name in every sentence. Honestly, if you let another guy kiss you and say that's your happiest moment in your whole life in the very last volume, and declare you will tell him your true feelings, how on earth can you start dating someone else in the very next chapter?? It doesn't make sense?? I feel like even the author felt how the endgame couple had no chemsitry so they were given one awkward moment in the last chapter, while the whole series ends with the other two singing at the beach where they first met. Please make it make sense??

But if someone thinks I'm exaggerating, majority of the JP fandom hated the ending, even the live action had a different conclusion. If you want to piss off your readers, than sure, it was successful. Platonic soulmates do exist, but here it didn't make sense why they didn't become romantic when the other couple had nothing in common except their love for music. And they didn't have a lot of interactions, either, and even if the guy had family problems, it didn't justify his rude behaviour. I don't know why authors still make their female characters choose the rude first crush over the person who supports them through everything and have a very natural and healthy chemistry. Meh.

I liked Charming Junkie, but I will never touch another work of this mangaka, please don't waste your time with this one or just imagine a different ending.

Ghost Hunt is a horror manga, although by today's standards I would call it a thriller with great comedy and a hint of romance. The plot is relatively simple, 16-year-old Mai encounters a group of people who deal with ghosts. We have a young man who owns a ghost hunter agency, nicknamed Naru by Mai because of his narcissistic tendencies; a priestess with heavy makeup who wants to get a boyfriend, an ex-monk/band guitarist, a TV persona who's a psychic medium and a young exorcist from Australia who believes the Kyoto dialect is the polite form of Japanese language. After experiencing how they work and ... destroying Naru's camera accidentally, Mai becomes his assistant at his agency and they all work together to solve paranormal cases.

If you haven't guessed from my synopsis yet, this is a very fun story with an eccentric cast of characters. The story has an episodic nature, but every case is interesting because of all the new information we get about the paranormal and also the delightful interactions of the cast. They all play off each other very well and you never feel like they shouldn't be a part of the narrative. Although I said that the story is episodic, it doesn't mean that it's repetative. Through every volume, we always get new additional info about the main characters and that's how the main mysteries of the plot slowly come together.

And I cannot finish my review without talking about the art. It's absolutely gorgeous, the inking, the shading, they all just look so good while the characters are distinctive and you can easily tell them apart. It was such a pleasure looking at every page. I cannot recommend this series enough, it's a hidden gem if you like a good old msytery series.