#anyway reading max's memoirs made me just burst out sobbing. again.

[hella1975]

BANANA FISH SPOILERS!!! like big ones don’t even THINK about reading if you haven’t watched it

So i’ve recently been going through the banana fish extra content stories (angel eyes, garden of light etc) and it led me to Max’s memoirs, and i can’t stop thinking about this extract.

The thing with Ash is that his death is so agonising that it’s easy to lose sight of the impact on those around him. We have this teenage boy who has suffered so much pain in his life, and the moment he is finally given a chance at happiness, a chance at this freedom he’s always chased, it is torn from him within seconds. And i do think it was this reminder that led to Ash doing what he did. He didn’t have to die that day. The knife is said to have missed all his vital organs and we have seen him survive worse wounds before; he could have been saved. But he chose, instead, to die, because he thought it was genuinely what he deserved. He saw himself as a killer, a monster, ‘the devil himself’. He thought he didn’t deserve Eiji and would only bring him pain. And Eiji’s letter, as much of a declaration as it was, reminds me a lot of that quote from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous in reference to its impact on Ash; “sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined”. Eiji’s relentless love and admiration and faith in Ash only made him realise all that he thought he couldn’t be for Eiji, and in that moment, it was enough to just know the other boy loved him, even if he thought he could never be worthy of loving him back.

He thought he was doing the right thing by removing himself from Eiji’s world, but we see from Max’s letter here a new angle on it, one not from Ash’s perspective, but on those around him. Eiji literally never gets over it. All the innocence and childishness that made Ash fall in love with him to begin with is gone, and years later, he is still waiting, because whether Ash asked for it or not, Eiji gave him forever.

Ash died, and that was a tragedy, but what makes it worse is that his death was completely in vain of what he hoped to achieve. Eiji was better off with Ash, because for how dangerous it was, he was happy with him, they were happy together. If they had just been able to work it out, just been given more time, then they would have been happy. They would have got their forever.

Instead, they ruined each other.