#70: Bananya (2016)

From https://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire4/88913f32510892
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Director: Kyō Yatate

Screenplay: Kyō Yatate

Voice Cast:

Yuuki Kaji as Bananya/ Black Bananya/ Calico Bananya/ Daddy Bananya/ Long-haired Bananya

Ayumu Murase as Baby Bananya / Bananya Bunch / Bananyako / Mackeral Bananya / Torabananya / Mice

Yoshikazu Ebisu as Narrator

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: The life of a bananya, a tiny cat who lives in a banana skin, with his relatives and friends, also bananyas living in a Japanese home; all with our faceless narrator our amateur anthropologist to the world of these creatures.

Will this be the shortest review possible?

Well, hopefully not, but three minutes per episode and based entirely on cats being cute Bananya is going to be difficult to elaborate on. It's another, growing example of bite sized anime that's become very popular now streaming is a commonplace way to see anime. It's also for me however developing into an issue of what to think of "casual" anime, meant to relax in front of rather to engage with as a programme. Bananya is entirely the cutest of cutest things, with a silly edge, but I'd be damned how to elaborate on any dramatic circumstances that take place barring when the fridge is left open in one episode and all the bananya clan find a world of frozen wonders inside it. That's practically the closest thing here to a mid-season plot twist here...

In this case, you also have to bear in mind animals have always been popular online. Cat and dog videos on YouTube, images of people's own pets on Facebook, so a series which not only has the main story but also always ends with people's real life cats having their own spotlight is appealing to this. (Trust me, I've lived with dogs all my life, it's infectious to see pictures of other people's dogs). There is the issue that, particularly with a potentially funny show like this, I have to be the sour puss (and I apologise for the awful pun) who wished it was a bit more substantial or ran with its strange premise further than it did. More so as, yes, it's actually a funny and weird idea you could've spun out further.

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With voice actor Yoshikazu Ebisu, or anime writer/producer/Discotek Media collaborator Mike Toole for the English dub, as our somewhat clueless David Attenbourgh type trying to document these peculiar creatures it vaguely considers taking this as a literal document on these creatures, at least providing us with an appropriately dawdling narrator constantly excited and bemused by his subjects' behaviour. The main Bananya, voiced by Yuuki Kaji, is happy-go-lucky with potentially creepy aspiration for becoming a chocolate sprinkled covered bananya, even though the question of them being part banana, a food eaten by people, never is brought up thankfully throughout and is a disturbing aspiration goal for the lead if you over think it. Amongst friends and siblings are stock archetypes, my personal favourite the vain pretty boy whose mews with his long uncombed hair flailed about are practically pornographic in its narcissism. In fair due to the series, that's it is built on only three voice actors is an accomplishment to Yuuki Kaji, playing most of the male bananya, Ebisu  just the narrator, and Ayumu Murase playing the higher voiced/child/female bananya and the mice. Yuuki Kaji, voice and singer, particularly has the greatest shifts in voice performances which has to be praised; fans of the Attack on Titan anime adaptation, where he plays the protagonist Eren Yeager, will probably get a kick out of Kaji meowing in a variety of voices as I did learning he's doing most of the feline cast with only one other voice actor here.  

Theirs is a curious life living behind the humans' backs, playing and mucking about in a scenario not dissimilar to the premise of Toy Story. They are curious about the television and using the remote buttons as a trampoline. Night time escapades are a source of frights where shadows scare them. The final episode is them mucking about on a table full of birthday food and making an utter mess of the mother's hard work. And, slightly morbid, there's bananya's relationship to a mouse which is documented in a few episodes, between friendship when he gives him cookies to chasing and trying to eat him at other times. It's colourful, economically made. Even as short form animation, it's imaginative. A refrigerator left open becomes a winter wonderland from conventional food substances being larger than the cast. A bathroom sink a place to use the hand wash as a foam to play with. As cat-fruit hybrids, they act like cats in real life only with a surreal touch that, living in banana skins, they hop around vertically and are the size of bananas. That and the father one has glasses and a comb over.

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The obvious issue for me is that Bananya, whilst fun to watch, is very quickly slipping away from my mind with little to cling onto now. This is this issue with this form of time killer anime which is meant to help you de-stress from the busy world - for those who want it, it's great, but it proves somewhat anticlimactic if you are someone like myself, no matter how tired or stressed, actually finds more reward in material that forces you to have to think about it or has a good story. This'll be an issue, with good exceptions, to both a lot of this casual anime and short form series for me. As much as its cute, and the end theme as a seconds long earworm is stuck in my head still, (over the bananyas on holiday or coming out of a baseball game), the show's not going to stick in my memory for long.

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