Banana Fish
tv·TV-MA·Jul 6, 2018·
Banana Fish keeps its 3/10 woke score by sticking to a raw story of crime, revenge, and survival centered on Ash Lynx and Eiji Okumura, with zero identity politics or modern activist angles.
Banana Fish follows 17-year-old New York gang leader Ash Lynx and Japanese photojournalist assistant Eiji Okumura as they investigate the mysterious drug Banana Fish while navigating gang wars, mafia conflicts, and Ash's history of sexual abuse by a powerful figure.
Drawn from the 1985-1994 manga, the core premise emphasizes crime, revenge, and survival without centering identity politics or social justice themes. The intense emotional bond between the leads includes homoerotic subtext but is framed as a profound platonic soul bond with no explicit sexual relationship shown, and the story remains unaffected by modern activist reinterpretations. This focus on traditional narrative elements rather than contemporary ideological framing underpins the show's overall woke score of 3/10.
Methodology: Each score synthesizes audience discourse, critic and aggregator reception, and press coverage — weighed against the work itself, not any single source.
See how this title scores across all 5 woke subcategories with detailed explanations.
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We've run a full content analysis on Banana Fish and scored it 3/10 on the woke scale. Read our detailed breakdown above to see exactly what we found.
Our analysis checks for themes like identity politics, race-swapping, gender ideology, environmental activism, anti-religious messaging, and other progressive agenda elements. The score breakdown above shows which specific categories were flagged and how heavily they factor into Banana Fish's overall score.
Wokeometer focuses on ideological content rather than traditional ratings (violence, language, etc.). Banana Fish is rated TV-MA. For a full picture, combine our woke analysis with the age ratingto decide if it's right for your family.
We evaluate media across multiple ideological categories on a 0–10 scale. Scores of 0–3 mean story-first, 4–6 have moderate elements, and 7–10 flag heavily agenda-driven content. Learn more about our methodology →
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