Maybe I've just run out of patience. After fifteen years of seeing/reading queer-adjacent stories that think this kind of subtext is good writing, that refuse to just spit it out and make it official, that's a distinct possibility. But even with that taken into account, Banana Fish is one of the most extreme examples I've ever seen.

I started watching this anime because drug mystery intrigue with gang wars and two guys falling in love among the chaos? Sign. me. up. However, around the halfway point I started to get the feeling that they were either A. heavily delaying the inevitable, or B. never plan on turning the subtext into text. So I looked up what to expect (even though I'm violently anti-spoiler) and I'm extremely happy I did. Because if I had to watch gun shooting lessons draped in sunsets, declarations of "I'll wait for you forever," super zoomed in closeups of deeply affected reactions to what the other was heroically doing, tongue kissing for strictly plot purposes, tearful confessions of guarded secrets in the dead of night, "one of them thinks the other is dead" tropes, etc etc etc with no actual romantic payoff, I would have been livid.

At some point, calling it a 'friendship' becomes irresponsible writing. If you're treating it like a romance, developing it like a romance, and giving it all the emotional cues of a romance, but don't turn the corner and make it a freaking romance, that is bad writing. That's setting up viewer expectation and not delivering. At all. May as well pull the rug and yell 'sike!' while you're at it.

And what's more, apparently the original manga (that came out in the 1980s for crying out loud) called a spade a spade! They actually called them gay! So why not the anime?

The whole thing is baffling, especially since the rest of it is damn compelling. Sure, some of the twists and turns aren't terribly surprising or imaginative, but it's sourced from the 80s. As a whole it keeps you engaged, keeps things moving, and throws more obstacles at the main characters than they know what to do with. (Ash got hit with the Tragedy Porn in particular, but again...80s).

They had a solid, entertaining, captivating thing here, all of it cheapened by robbing the core relationship of the show of its due.