#but the ending bit where ash finds out eiji loves him and dies before he could get to him made me cry hard

[weedle-testaburger]

idk if I'm weird for this but i have this thing where i don't cry or even really get that invested in characters being miserable and bad shit happening to them unless there's some kind of catharsis to it

[madanili]

Thoughts on Brians' (maybe) death

Look Nino was initially what made me stayed watching rp, I thought when Nino went to vacation and Brian comes around "Yeah i don't know, cop rp seems boring with paperwork and shit". But I give it a go. Lo and behold I was fanfic and fanart deep of invested, with Braas being my primary anchor in enjoying Brians journey (okay his other relationship is good too, but you know braas is just superior all around lmao)

So.... Today Divine shot him and Brian probably dead. Mehdi actually made him opened ended by ICU, but to me he died. Brian was always a strong fella, he took every injury and scar in his time of serving, he knows too well the pain even numb to it. But this time it's different, he saw Baas. Dying laying flat face down on top of the tower where Brian breaks the news to Divine about Baas' death. In pain he saw Baas laying beside him. I could make a fic over this section alone lol. To make it (sorta) short Brian wasn't a quitter by nature, in life and in his work, he wouldve been fine with injuries no matter how serious or life threathening it is, but Baas appeared on his death door. Brian definitely did took his hand, he soul left with Baas even before ems arrived... and before Eve's sigh of relief finding out Brian survived.

Damn... what a joy following Brian's story, admittedly my thoughts and feelings is largely based on 3.0 and a bit of here and the 2.0 Brian (look I didnt have time to rewatch all the vods okay, mehdi is a crackhead strimmer and fomo is real). Honestly lmao, yeaaaaa it feels so weird but for me Baas and Brians death really felt like losing someone irl (but the difference is this grief is short lived bcs theyre not real, in case anyone forgot). But this time I'm not as shocked as when Baas died, it's apparent that Brian is already withering away the moment Baas died, heck it would be a wish come true coming home with the person he loves the most. So yeah what a ride, trials and tribulations, effort and time to keep the city safe ultimately for nothing, i hope Brian actually dies, and released from the purgatory called Los Santos.

What I am actually trying to say is Braas definitely yoinked the crown of best soulmate from Banana Fish's Ash and Eiji EZ Clap

[kuro-ayame]

I’m done re-reading and rewatching Banana Fish and, after many years, somenthing about the ending is still bugging me (expecially in the manga, yes, I’m speaking of “Garden of light”).

There will be lots of ramblings and personal opinions, despite my attempt to be objective. So don’t come at my throat, at the moment I’m just trying to get rid of some thoughts. If not interested don’t read. 

(Spoiler alert under the cut)

First of all I need to say that I understand why Akimi Yoshida killed Ash, he is a criminal in the eye of the law and logically it’s right to pay for his actions. Anyway, I keep thinking that there were other ways of punish him… as a reader I don’t feel “rewarded” by seeing him die, beacause in first place Ash never actively receives a substantial reward after everything he’s been through and there are a few things that i can use as example to support this opinion: 

Golzine? He died and not by Ash’s hand, so no revenge . 

Banana Fish? The samples are destroyed and no one will pay before the law for the lives destroyed by this drug . 

All the trauma that Ash’s character carries from the start? All the violence suffered? The series is a rollercoaster of emotions and events and he never takes a breath longer than a couple of pages. 

And Eiji ? If we consider only the end we see in the anime I have no complaints, since I consider it quite open to interpretation, but in the manga with the chapter “Garden of light” we find his character emotionally devastated, and I ask myself: is this some kind of punishment for loving someone like Ash? Not to mention that in this chapter the same character of Ash comes out as selfish for dying and leaving Eiji behind. In my opinion this is too unfair for both.

So, in conclusion, the thing that bother me the most is that narratively speaking I don’t find a meaning or a message to Ash’s death, just a lot of melancholy... we, as readers, know he chooses violence only if provoked (this is stated at some point in the series), so the death seems a bit pointless as punishment. In addition we also know all the brutality to which he is subjected, so, where is the reward I was talking about? Eiji’s letter seems to little to me, especially counting all the events of the plot....

Okay, this is all, I babbled enough... I repeat: These are just my personal (and maybe inchoerent) opinions written on impulse, so please don’t be bodered by this silly post of mine.

[cosmicjoke]

Further commentary on the ending of Banana Fish (Spoilers):

Look, I understand the controversy and upset surrounding the ending of Banana Fish.  My last post on this topic seems to have pissed some people off, which was never my intention.  But I think maybe I could have worded things a bit better, so I’m going to try again to explain why I feel like the ending of Banana Fish was so perfect.

It’s not a happy ending, and I don’t think anyone, anywhere, will try to tell you that the ending was meant to make anyone happy, or satisfied.  That’s the point.  It’s not MEANT to please the reader.  It’s meant to remain true to its narrative realism.  And in that realism, it’s meant to break the readers heart.  And boy does it do both.

I don’t think anyone would tell you, anyone with any ounce of feeling in their heart, anyway, that Ash didn’t deserve a happy ending, or that he deserved to die after all the awful shit he went through.  I think we can all agree that we would have wanted, if we had a choice, to see Ash have a happy, hopeful ending with Eiji in Japan.  We all agree that Ash DESERVED a happy ending, because he was a good person who was dealt about the shittiest hand in life a person can have.  And despite all that shit, he retained that innate goodness of heart that made him who he was.  He never became a monster, like the people who used him up and abused him over and over again.  That’s what makes him such an extraordinary character that’s deeply loved by so many people. He absolutely deserved to be happy.

But that’s the thing. Banana Fish is a story that deals in reality.  Everything that happens in the story, despite the often extraordinary, larger than life circumstances, is dealt with in a way that is, very often, brutally, painfully honest and realistic.  It doesn’t give us what should be, it gives us what IS.  And that makes perfect sense in accordance with its relation to writers like Hemingway and Salinger.  They wrote stories that dealt in brutal honesty and reality too, and both writers are referenced throughout Banana Fish.  And it’s Banana Fish’s commitment to that brutal honesty and reality that makes it an authentic piece of art.  People want a fairy tale ending, where Ash gets to ride off into the sunset with Eiji and live happily ever after, but at no point in Banana Fish are we given any indication that the story is, at any point, going to delve into the realm of unreality and fantasy, and give us such an ending.  To do so would have been a betrayal of the genuine nature of the narrative. It would have ultimately robbed it of its authenticity as a piece of art, and the story, as a result, would have been left hollow and lacking.  

Banana Fish, throughout its narrative, shows us that terrible things happen to good people, and that good people are often forced into doing terrible things.  It never shy’s away from that cruel, heartbreaking reality, and the ending is no exception.  

It affects us so deeply, and leaves us so upset, because it’s so REAL.  It feels genuine to us, it feels real, because it refuses to betray its honesty for the sake of a happy fantasy.  It remains loyal to the harsh truth of reality, and the harsh truth of Ash’s reality in particular.  Ash is a deeply damaged, broken person, who’s experiences in life are the very definition of cruelty.  Here is a boy who, since the age of seven, has experienced sexual, mental, emotional and physical abuse repeatedly and on a scale truly unfathomable to almost all of us. A boy who was forced into a life of prostitution in order to simply survive on the harsh streets of an unforgiving city.  A boy who, again out of a necessity for survival, has had to kill other human beings. A boy who, out of a desperate situation in which he was forced to choose either to save his soulmate or watch him be murdered by his best friend gone berserk in a mad, drug induced insanity, had to kill his best friend by shooting him straight through the heart.  A boy who, each time in his life that he’s tried to build real and meaningful relationships with other people, Griffin, the girl he liked when he was 14, Skip, Shorter, Eiji, he’s had to watch those people he allowed himself to grow close to either die or almost die, over and over again.  All of that combined creates a level of trauma that’s so far beyond the normal scope or understanding of a regular human being, so far beyond any discernable mechanism for coping with trauma, that to expect Ash to just get over it, for it all to magically be okay just because he moves to Japan with Eiji, is the height of unrealistic, and, again, would be a betrayal of the authenticity the story marries itself to from start to finish.  

Ash’s death is a tragedy, as his life was a tragedy, and the story is a reflection of that.  It stays true to that narrative, and never compromises on it.  That’s the point.  Life doesn’t always have a happy ending.  People that have suffered severe, irreversible trauma don’t always recover, and can’t always heal from it.  People who have suffered in the obscene and brutal ways that Ash has aren’t always going to be alright.  Sometimes it’s just too much.  For Ash, it was just too much.  Too much damage.  Too much heartache.  Too much pain.  Too much loss.  Sometimes we can’t overcome our damage, and that reality presented in this story scares people, I think, because it’s so nakedly honest and unapologetically expressed.

The ending is so god awful painful too because we see, in that moment after Ash reads Eiji’s letter, hope bloom inside him.  For an instant, this belief that maybe he can have a happy ending, when he thinks he’ll catch Eiji at the airport, and maybe go with him.  And in the next instant, he’s mercilessly reminded of that hope’s falsity. Hope springs eternal, but not always true.  Hope and happiness were never meant for Ash.  The chance for that was taken from him before he could even understand what those concepts were.  The thematic arc of the story was telling us from the start that it was going to end in tragedy.

People weren’t meant to LIKE this ending.  It wasn’t meant to make them feel good, or okay with what happened, or fulfilled.  In fact, I’d say, it’s meant to make you feel completely devastated.  As the story reflects reality, so often too does real life end in a way that leaves us feeling lost and confused and heartbroken.  Banana Fish is so good because it stays true to that sense of reality, right until the very end.

The ending doesn’t leave us feeling happy, but it sure does leave us FEELING.  Like any real piece of art would.  The emotions it conjures are immense and, for some I guess, too real. That sense of loss and hopelessness and pain it leaves us with is so effective because, again, it’s so honest. And I guess that because those emotions are so real, and felt so deeply, and with such intensity, it leaves some readers and viewers feeling angry.  Lashing out at a reality which they don’t want to accept.  The irony, of course, is that their hatred and rejection of the ending is testament to just how deeply the ending touched them.  It didn’t leave them feeling nothing, it left them feeling too much, and they then go into a state of denial, which is really just a stage of grief.  A refusal to accept.  You know Banana Fish is a true piece of art for that, in how it conjures sincere feelings of grief and mourning in us for its lead character in Ash.  We CARE about him, deeply.  We want him to be alright, because we love him.

But real art isn’t concerned with placation.  It’s concerned with truth.  So many great pieces of literature have unhappy endings, because that’s the truth of the human condition, and the condition of life in general.  Real art won’t shy away from those painful, awful truths, nor is it afraid to conjure the feelings which go hand in hand with those truths in its audience.  

With all that said, the tragedy of the ending doesn’t demand a feeling of meaninglessness or desolation at all.

Eiji’s love for Ash and Ash’s love for Eiji is still so pivotal and, ultimately, essential in how the story ends.  It’s what allows, maybe not a feeling of hope, but a feeling of peace.

You sense throughout the story that Ash knows he’s going to die.  Like he senses that his life is too fucked up, that he’s been through and had to do too many horrible things for it to last very long.  It’s like the saying of he who burns brightest burns twice as fast.  Ash is burning, and he knows it.  He’s already accepted it as an inevitable conclusion.  He doesn’t actively seek death, but he doesn’t fear, nor fight against it.  At points throughout the story, even, he asks for it, when the horror of what’s happening to him becomes too much.  He knows death is coming for him.  The only thing keeping him from giving in so easily I think is his lack of agency in how he will.  Everything has been taken from Ash, and he doesn’t want to give this last thing away. This choice in how he dies.

Eiji’s love is what finally gives him agency in that decision.

Ash died knowing Eiji loved him, and that knowledge, that certainty that he was loved, genuinely loved by another human being, without any strings or conditions attached, simply loved for himself alone, is what allowed Ash to finally find the peace in death which alluded him in life.  He no longer feels like he has to keep fighting, or struggling on through an endless malaise of misery and pain, because he’s finally found the calm and acceptance which comes with knowing he has this one, pure thing for himself, which nobody, none of his abusers, can ever touch or take away.  With everything else that’s been stolen from Ash, his innocence, his sense of agency, his own body, his own mind, Eiji’s love for him is the one thing nobody could ever steal away.  And that’s, I think, why Ash dies smiling, because it’s that knowledge, that he was worthy of another human being’s true love, that at last shows him that he was a human being himself.  Not an animal.  Not a monster.  He was a human being worthy of love.

Ash’s death is heartbreaking, and brutal, but there’s deep consolation to be had in knowing he spent his final moments with the feeling of Eiji’s love for him alive inside his heart, allowing him at last to feel like a person deserving, worthy of love.

It’s that which allows Ash to finally let go of his struggle, and let’s death’s embrace take hold of him.  It’s his own. Eiji’s love, and his choice to let go of life.

It doesn’t make the ending any less heart wrenching or brutal.  It doesn’t make us any less devastated by Ash’s death.  But it gives us a sense of peace, in knowing, even if we are left feeling lost and heartbroken, Ash himself left life with the fulfillment of knowing he was loved.

[lia-nikiforov]

Fall Anime 2018 Watchlist

We’re about halfway into the season so this is probably kinda pointless by now, but here’s a quick rundown of the stuff I’m watching this season.

Dropped

Jingaisan no Yome: This is a 3 minute show and I won’t spend longer than that writing about it (I’m timing myself). I didn’t know it was a short going in. I’m not really into shorts, Saiki kun being the only exception and the story was less MahoYome and more... i don’t even have an apt comparison, it just was maybe more serious about the “marriage” thing than something with a giant floofball character should be.

Tokyo Ghoul: Re 2: It’s simple. I watched episode 1 and realized I had no fucking clue of how any of this related to the ending of the first season, no idea of who half the characters were and where did they allegiances lie and what is Kaneki even trying to do. Although not loyal to the manga, the first two seasons of Tokyo Ghoul had a story that could be followed and made sense, this, however, is just jumping over plot points with no rhyme or reason and there’s nothing but confusion.

Bloom Into You: There’s nothing actually wrong with this show and I was kind of looking forward to a yuri romance that wasn’t rapey or incesty bullshit, but something about this one just didn’t click with me. Like Touko fell in love with Yuu too quickly, and given Yuu’s ace/aro identity, it would feel weird for her to do a 180 and suddenly fall in love with Touko. I kind of want more fun and emotions in my romance stories and this one didn’t have much of either.

Chopping Block

Given a few things the past two weeks that didn’t go according to plan, I fell behind on my anime watching after keeping it in control for the first third of the season and i’m quite annoyed. And because of this, and my upcoming research trip to Japan at the end of the month, I might end up having to drop a couple of series.

Bakumatsu: Objectively speaking, this show is really bad. The production values are poop, the story is a wacky mess that takes itself a bit too seriously and the characters are flat and uninteresting, the villain is egregiously boring. This show also has Matsuo Basho as a secret tive traveling ninja, and that puts me at quite the predicament. I want to see more of this utterly bonkers historical reinterpretation, but boy do I wish they could make it more exciting.

SAO Alicization:  The only reason I, a notorious SAO hater, is watching SAO is because I hate myself. With that out of the way, boy is this SAO boring. We’re four episodes in and the only thing that’s happened is they cut an old tree because nothing can stop Kirito and his new friend, Yellow Kirito. This show needs to start getting offensive and/or stupid soon or i’ll die of boredom.

Karakuri Circus: I hear this one’s from the same mangaka as UshiTora? I love UshiTora and I can see the resemblance between giant guy whose name I can’t remember and Tora. His character and his schtick are so far the most interesting thing to me, with the kuudere puppet girl whose main purpose seems to be to get paired with him  having yet to make an impression on me. I’m also still not really certain what the overall plot is. I do love stories about found families, so hopefully I can stick with this one

Hinomaru Sumou: If my watching schedule were normal, this wouldn’t be in this section. Whilst not the best sports show of the season, and chock full of some of the most eyeroll worthy aspects of sports shonen *cough cough* toxic *cough cough* masculinity *cough cough*, Hinomaru Sumou has the fire and passion for an underrepresented sport that’s usually enough to hook me. I just don’t have time, and if push comes to shove, I’ll prioritize other shows over this one.

Banana Fish: Yo, okay, before you lynch me for being a hater or whatever, let me tell you I have zero issues with Banana Fish. I don’t hate it, I don’t think it’s Bad Representation(TM) whatever the fuck that means, I definitely don’t think it’s fujobait or just another BL. It just doesn’t make me happy. This probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I’ve never been a fan of tragedy. It’s also part of the reason I’m dropping Tokyo Ghoul. I don’t like hopeless stories and tragic romances. I’m somewhat spoiled on how the manga ends and each time I find myself less and less inclined to watch the newer episodes because the descent into misery is just not enjoyable for me. It’s not the show’s wrongdoing, it’s just not the kind of story I like. I’m probably too far along to drop it at this point, but also I kinda wish I could drop it because I get so little joy out of it. Also, my main hook is of course Ash and Eiji’s relationship, but 15 episodes in (I’m behind, as is evident) the time they’ve spent together is so minimal, I can’t even appreciate that a whole lot.

I guess I’m watching this? 

Dakaichi: Me: Man I really want a yuri anime without rapey bullshit. Also me: watches BL anime with rapey bullshit. I have literally no excuse. I think the basic setup lends itself really well for a romcom and Takato is a very likable character, it’s a shame it’s the same old rapey bullshit. In my defense, episode two was really sweet and I’ve been hoping for more stories along that line, even though the show has failed to deliver them since. Episode 5 may have pushed the line even beyond what I’m willing to tolerate, but it’s unclear. I might end up unexpectedly dropping it after episode 6. HEY JAPAN WOULD IT KILL YOU TO MAKE A BL ANIME THAT WASN’T RAPEY BULLSHIT? JUST ONE?

(honestly, Takato deserves better)

wao episode 6 was maji disgusting i might drop it after all

Fairy Tail Final: I just want closure man. This adaptation retains all the worst attributes of the previous season, terribly slow pacing (what for?! the manga is over!!) minimal animation, recapalooza. The color palette is slightly brighter than before, which I appreciate. Fairy Tail’s last arc wasn’t as bad as Bleach’s, but it was still pretty bad in the manga; still I hope seeing it animated will make it feel less messy and slightly more coherent. The FT anime has also in the past filled in some blanks that existed in the manga, so hopefully they can make the best out of it here.

(Erza is still my wife)

Tsurune: No, this isn’t the best sports anime of this season either. Although that’s hard to judge given how it’s barely on its second (third, i’m behind) episode. Technically, I feel more compelled to drop this than Hinomaru, but also I want to give it a fair chance. That said, the first episode was.... profoundly underwhelming and borderline upsetting, with how everyone put Minato on the spot in spite of his having an actual psychologic condition that drove him away from kyudo. I’m all in for stories about growing and surpassing your own obstacles, but I hope they go about it in a less mean-spirited way. Also, the characters feel pretty shallow so far. I’m not even gonna pretend the main reason I want to keep watching isn’t gorgeous guy with the ponytail-san, because I’m now old enough that I immediately gravitate towards the senseis rather than the teenage protags.

i am so weak to long hair  _(:3」∠)_

welp he cut his hair right next episode, thanks for nothing kyoani

In spite of everything, Anime is, in fact, Good

Golden Kamuy: Like with many split-cours, there’s nothing much to say beyond “if you liked the first one, you’ll like this one”. The production values are still tragic, but I think the pace has improved, and the dynamics between the different factions are so fluid and constantly changing they make the story very enthralling. It also continues to have the Best Reaction Faces.

Gakuen Basara: Listen, listen. You all knew I was gonna watch this. And I love Basara so much I still think this show is a masterpiece even when it’s objectively atrocious. I do not reccommend it to anyone who isn’t already a fan (and I mean a blind fan willing to consume anything from this franchise, even in its cheapest, dumbest, worst looking incarnation). That said there are a couple of interesting things, namely the power rivalry between Hideyoshi and Nobunaga, this never happened in the original series because Nobunaga died before Hideyoshi was introduced. Anyway, just shoot that Masamune x Kojuuro fanservice straight into my veins please and thank you

Zombieland Saga: One of the two biggest surprises of the season and one that was nowhere near my radar. An original production by studio MAPPA with perhaps the wildest premiere episode of the season that’s somehow making me like idols?! It’s also giving us the most Miyano Mamoru has ever Miyano’d and it’s amazing and histerical. The characters are also very charming, specially bikegang leader Saki and the always legendary Yamada Tae and the show isn’t scared of letting its cute idols get gross and silly and dirty. There’s also a feeling of mystery that I find very appealing. Definitely didn’t expect this one to be one of the highlights of my week, yet here we are.

SSSS Gridman: Just when I’d vowed a giant fuck you to Studio Trigger, in they come with one of their most quiet productions yet, with characters that speak their lines in soft, leveled voices, tragedies that feel palpable, emotionally climactic battle scenes and a sense of tension and mystery that makes it impossible to take your eyes away. It does have the caveat of oversexualizing the female characters, specially the villain, and not giving Rikka virtually anything to do, but past that, it’s been a very pleasant and intriguing surprise. Also of note, I have no background knowledge of the Gridman tokusatsu series but that hasn’t really been an impediment to enjoy this series.

Double Decker: Doug & Kirill: A spinoff to the 2010 superhero hit Tiger & Bunny, we have a less superpowery buddycop comedy with a cool and diverse cast, whose main character wants to BRING DOWN CAPITALISM, okay, put an end to economic inequality and classes, but that’s basically the same thing. The show is pretty far along because it premiered early for some reason, and so far it’s been mostly one-shot stories very thinly connected to the distribution of the illegal drug Anthem, with our main plot having only come up two episodes ago with the fantastic Zabel and Bamboo Man twist. The dynamics between the main duo are great and Kirill is a riot as a protagonist. 

Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru: Or Run with the Wind. Now THIS is the best sports anime of the season. Brought to you by the studio behind Haikyu, based on a novel by the author of Fune wo Amu. Firstly I love that it’s set in university, because it gives the cast a lot more variety in their interests, ages and personalities, their goals, their baggage, and it makes the process of bringing this team of misfits together even more interesting to watch. The characters feel very human in the way they speak, their worries, their relationships, their actions. The show’s done a great job so far in building the characters and making them worth cheering for. Also Ouji is my spirit animal. If you ever wanted a show to motivate you into running, this is what you’ve been waiting for! Another great surprise of this season for sure.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo: Finally part Five is here! And in it we get perhaps the most interesting Jojo protagonist right off the bat, with troubled Giorno and his difficult past and his wonderful Stand ability. His new set of allies is also quite eccentric and interesting and every scene and dialogue has that special Jojo flavor of crazy and ridiculous and always a load of fun. This one will have 39 episodes, so we’re barely getting started and I’m already loving all of it.

Thunderbolt Fantasy 2: Urobutcher’s favorite puppets are back with a vengeance! Every bit as fun, insane, cool and over-the-top as the first season, with the added value of the rapport between the characters, evidenced by how brilliant the few scenes in which Shang and Lin share the screen are. With a brand new story that expands the world of our favorite puppets, and even more new gorgeous puppets added to the mix to make Shang’s life a mess, this show is definitely my favorite this season and potentially of the year. Let Urobuchi keep doing puppets for as long as he wants!

ooof i’m finally done. It’s midseason so probably nobody cares but do hmu with your favorite shows of the season and if there’s anything worth hatewatching that I may be missing ;)

[http-eiji]

Do you think Eiji knew he could not be able to save Ash from anything in the end, as in preview 24, he just wants to be with Ash? He always felt like a burden to everyone, and noticing what Ash spent in Golzine because of him, and the letter, elam of other moments in history. In the closing song he says that life only tortured him and injured him. And he looks good in NYS. 

I’ve never really thought about it before but now that you’ve brought it up; I think Eiji always thought there was hope.

He’s the kind of person who would probably internalise is worry and only express his more optimistic thoughts. Perhaps there was a large part of him that thought “what if I can’t save him?” but I don’t think he ever thought “I can’t save him”.

He always had hope. No matter how small that hope was, he always had hope. In his letter he basically spills his heart out. He shows Ash how much Ash means to him and he seems as though he’s trying to convince Ash that he has a chance. Especially once Dino was gone.

Eiji probably blamed himself a lot for Ash’s death. It was less a “I couldn’t save him” and more a “I should have done this”. It’s difficult though because Eiji is pretty closed off about his feelings regarding Ash’s death in GOL. A lot can happen in 8 years. He largely blamed Lao but he blamed himself too.

I don’t think he ever thought “I couldn’t save him” though.

I don’t know what to say about the second part of your first ask. I’m sure there were definitely instances were Eiji felt like he was a burden. It was cut out of the anime but he did start learning how to shoot to help Ash. Even if he felt like a burden, in most instances, he was the one who chose to stay despite Ash sending him away. He wanted to protect Ash. He may have felt like a burden but he tried his best to not be one. (I don’t think he ever was one.)

“In the closing song he says that life only tortured him and injured him. And he looks good in NYS.” I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean by this.

I think it’s more than plausible that Eiji never got into a serious romantic relationship. He may have tried, maybe even had a boyfriend for a bit but I agree that they’d always be second to Ash.

In stories I will often find couples where I think “they’re cute, I feel like they’ll be together for a long time.” but couples that are so emotionally intertwined and couples that are joined basically at the soul, that’s harder to come by. Ash and Eiji had something beautiful and incredibly rare. I don’t think Eiji would be able to ever truly move on from that. Of course he’ll always love and cherish Ash, that’s a given when someone you love dies.

I can see how someone might think that after years of healing he may be able to learn to love someone equal to how much he loved Ash. Or loving someone enough to be in a committed relationship even if they’re always second to Ash.

I personally think he’d try out going back to dating but would ultimately stay single. Even if he learned to love someone enough to be in a long-term relationship, I think they’d always be second to Ash and Eiji would feel guilty that, at the end of the day, Ash would always be first and that’s not fair on the other person.

These are all just my own opinions and interpretations.

[cat-at-dawn]

IN DEFENSE OF THE DEATH OF  ████████ , AND AN ARGUMENT AGAINST SUICIDE

This one’s for the manga readers! Post-volume 19 meta, spoilers aplenty! read at your own risk

Though the literal iteration of the death of Ash Lynx can be viewed as a purposeful shuffle from this mortal coil, a specific decision made with weight to return to the New york Public Library to live out his last moments dwelling on Eiji’s letter only to intentionally fade away, here stands a lonely argument; out of the entire cast, no one person deserves death in the same capacity more than Ash Lynx does, and his death is not a suicide. Let’s break it down.

Out of all of the MANY problematic elements of Banana Fish, not even trying to hazard which offense is worse than the next, we can all simultaneously agree that one of the most heartbreaking twists of the series comes at the end of volume 19, when after receiving Eiji’s goodbye letter, which essentially amounts to an incredibly pure love declaration, Ash allows himself to be mentally distracted long enough for Sing’s brother Lao to deliver a killing stab to his intestines. Though Lao dies shortly after Ash’s retaliation, Ash continues to linger in a liminal place. The question hangs in the mind of the reader, if Ash approached a happy ending, why would he not seek hospitalization? Why would he allow himself to bleed out? The manga strikes back hard at the reader with a quite prolonged death sequence, in which Ash retreats to his favorite place to be alone, the New York Public Library, where, with a smile on his face, he falls into a peaceful sleep and dies at a reading table while clutching Eiji’s now bloody love letter. What is the nature of his mindset which dictates this course of action? Why, with Eiji hale and hearty, would Ash choose death instead of medical treatment and a possibly much happier ending to this tale of woe? At this point, I can only wonder if we, the readership, have read the same story. The ending of Banana Fish is hotly debated, and even though as a queer storyteller myself I fundamentally have trouble with gay death as a narrative element, I can’t help but question why people can’t empathize more with Ash’s decision. When judging the manga as a standing piece, I can’t think of a more satisfying, or simply more correct turn of events.

Directly out of the gate, Ash’s death is foreshadowed in the title of the series. A Perfect Day For Banana Fish is a short story by J.D. Salinger which follows the last day in the life of mentally ill World War 2 veteran Seymour Glass, who befriends a little girl while on vacation at the beach. He invites her to catch bananafish with him, and explains that the greedy fish enter holes to gorge themselves on bananas, but become too large to escape again and instead perish in the hole. Later, Seymour returns to his room where his wife is sleeping, and he kills himself. Salinger relates this as a metaphor for his own personal experience in the war, specifically to his time at the Battle of the Bulge and in Nazi concentration camps. He is quoted saying Seymour is an iteration of himself, and has gone so far as to say that he “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”  The point of the story has always been to examine the irreversible damage done to the human psyche by war. The Perfect Day referenced in the title is exactly that; the quest of a broken man lacking the power to overcome his trauma to find exactly the perfect day to die. So it also is with Ash, we understand from the very beginning that making this direct analogy to Salinger means the manga will be the slow disclosure of someone who is irrevocably damaged by their circumstance as they come to terms with the moment of their own death. From the very first panel you see him, Ash’s death is already fated, and truly the most heart-rending struggle of the series is watching him grapple with this identity, up to nearly the very last second. As a reader, we continuously keep hoping and praying that he might, against all odds, find salvation despite literally every piece of contrary evidence suggesting otherwise. We have violent affection for Ash as a hero, and we want him so badly to live on, to make it to the other side. He both finds salvation and doesn’t find it, because like everything else about this manga, Ash operates thematically on contradictory levels all the way through the story and on to the bitter end. Let’s break it down even further, by considering exactly just how fucked Ash really is.

Ash is born Aslan Jade Callenrese, and then quickly discarded. He briefly experiences a short period of normalcy with the love of his brother and distant father before Griffin is drafted. Almost immediately after, Ash is raped by the Bluebeard of Cape Cod and then blamed for it, and from then on, his life is a progression of non-stop horror. He is kidnapped by Marvin who repeatedly rapes him over a period of years. He is sold into sexual servitude at Club Cod. He somehow  manages to avoid getting addicted to the opioids that all the child prostitutes were fed to keep them tame, and when Ash escapes, it is only because he is instead personally taken under Papa Dino’s wing, who specifically sexually abuses him while simultaneously not knowing or caring that Marvin continues to rape Ash, among presumably a handful of other people. Blanca is a small, bright focal point for Ash at age 13 when Ash lets himself briefly believe he has autonomy, and he is released to start his own gang. Ash’s fundamental humanity and inherent leadership magnetically draw people to him, and for the first time in his life, Ash briefly entertains the idea of having a private romantic relationship of his own. He is attracted to a girl he likes very much, but she is murdered almost immediately due to her association with him. He afterward throws himself into the business of his gang without ever fully extracting himself from Papa Dino’s hold. It is only with the discovery of the capsule containing Banana Fish that Ash for the first time in his short life discovers a bit of real leverage he can actually use against Dino. The subsequent drug war sees him beaten, sent to jail, raped many more times, and sent on a cross-country mission on the lam from the law, as well as from Dino’s goons, both Corsican and Chinese. Yut-Lung proves to be a worthy adversary in LA, and his teaming up with Arthur sees Ash murdering his best friend Shorter in cold blood who is forcibly high on banana fish in order to save Eiji from an especially savage disembowelment. Ash is later declared legally dead, sent to a private insane asylum to be experimented on, tortured with the mangled bits of Shorter’s brain, and then after escaping yet again, still forced into a corner when Dino tricks and threatens him into becoming officially adopted, once more in order to prevent Eiji’s death. Ash is drugged, literally blinded, beaten, and emotionally and physically torn down. He nearly dies from intentionally wasting away, and is hospitalized. When he eventually once again manages to escape, it is only to regroup long enough to prepare to engage with his men in actual guerrilla warfare. The mercenary Foxx kills nearly all of Ash’s remaining gang, and once AGAIN, Ash is raped.  Ash is ultimately deprived of his revenge when he then has to witness Papa Dino’s death by the hand of someone other than himself. These are the major plot points, and don’t even touch on the myriad of lesser cruelties Ash has dealt with over the course of his short life, of which there are many, many more.  (See: The death of most of his friends, that fucklord Arthur, everything about Cape Cod, the pain of using his sexual wiles as a weapon, the pain of knowing if he opens up to others that the lives of his friends will be in danger, the pain of being unable to give his loved ones proper burials, his one hundred issues with classism, his complete inability to trust others with important tasks, the list goes on.)

Around volume 10, I started, in a serious way, feeling like Ash deserved death. Not in the way that a dog is put out of it’s misery when it is sick, but more in the way that when the path is this hard, the reward at the end should be equivalent to the struggle. Being a CSA survivor all on its own demands a certain level of understanding, especially when approaching volatile, sensitive subjects like suicide. The act of taking one’s own life is so deeply personal and hotly debated that there is no true narrative argument legitimate enough to address it’s purpose. All of it is too subjective. However, in the case of Ash Lynx as the thematic hero, the case stands that he never, except for perhaps the small corridor between the ages of 0-7, lived a life anywhere remotely near average, so his many brushes with near-suicide are chillingly understandable. At one point, when forced to either shoot himself in the head or watch Eiji die, Ash even goes so far as to grab the gun and immediately try to blow his brains out. When the gun is proven empty, instead of breathing a secret sigh of relief, Ash only demands that Yut Lung give him a bullet. 

Though this emphasizes Ash’s near fanatical devotion to protecting Eiji, whose innocence he both disdains and canonizes, it also represents his constant readiness to die. This flirtation with the reaper is emphasized over and over in the official art, where a sexual element is often present in his interactions with death. Ash wishes for death to embrace him, he literally desires it. This is mostly on a subtextual level, but other times his desire is stiflingly surface-level.

 The extent of Ash’s damage is so severe and was inflicted on him so early that his ability to live a normal life was only ever subject to his situation. An argument can be made that his unusually high IQ kept him from the brink of emotional destruction for the majority of his life, but in spite of his incredible virility and strength of character, Ash’s prospects as he aged were always bleak at best. Ash the adult is almost unfathomable. He was literally never allowed to be a child during a key developmental period, and even the manga infers that Eiji’s presence as a romantic element is strongly tied to Ash’s desire to return to a time of innocence. Ash is permanently trapped in a never-neverland of sorts, sexually defiled to the point where his own sexual awakening has been completely obscured beyond his own recognition. His relationship with Eiji is painfully asexual, one, because literally everything about Banana Fish is painful, but also because it is unclear if Ash may have been naturally asexual in the first place or if he was made into an asexual as the result of his childhood trauma. Either way, he certainly doesn’t have a lot of choice about the way that he is, and that way is, fundamentally, morally, and spiritually exhausted. It is only his tenacious spark, his survivors grip to life, and his affection for others in his life whom he loves that are weaker than him, that keeps him stubbornly clung to his own mortal vessel until the very end.

Eiji’s presence as a guiding light is, in THE definitively heartbreaking turn, the permission Ash needs to allow himself to finally die. He has always known that he would die, probably even thought that he should have already died, many, many times over. He is permanently and irreversibly damaged by the course of his life, and though we scream and cry and pray in the hope that Ash can make it, that he can still pull through and come out on the other side living and thriving in love, he was ultimately just never meant to make it that far. Even when Eiji tries to convince Ash that he is not the leopard, that he can come back down from the mountain, we are distantly still aware that this is not true, despite how difficult it is to accept. This difference of character is most clearly seen in Ash’s foil with Yut-Lung; both boys are the savant products of rape-and-murder-riddled childhoods. However, where Yut-Lung lacked anyone to give him acceptance and affection as he grew, Ash ended his time knowing love. Where Yut-Lung survives to the end and goes on to an even higher position of strength, he still has an emotional arc to complete. Yut Lung must discover for himself the value of human life. Ash already knew this value from the beginning, because his moral compass, which sometimes admittedly became scrambled, more or less always pointed true by the end of things.

The argument can be made that as the embodiment of the concept of Salinger’s short story, Ash is fated to die. Eiji, who in many ways is the window through which we experience this world, refuses to bend to fate. He insists in innocence again and again that Ash can change his fate, and for a moment, when Ash finds the plane ticket to Japan in Eiji’s letter, we really, really want to believe him. So, of course, because this manga is singularly cruel, it is here that Ash is stabbed. Of ffffucking course, after everything, death comes for Ash in a fashion which is completely mundane against the grandiose, bombastic scale of the story. An old grudge settled by someone Ash didn’t even have the time to hate in the first place. Ash let himself believe in a real life with Eiji for a single moment, and that proved to be his downfall. When he let his guard down, he let death in. He realizes his destiny immediately, because he is not stupid. His death is not a suicide, it is an understanding. 

 According to Akimi Yoshida, fate always wins out, but what the manga adds to this sad experience is this; despite everything, unlike Salinger’s broken Seymour, Ash’s heart in the end is full of love. His perfect day to die is the day he reads Eiji’s letter, the letter that declares them permanently bonded. Falling in love allows Ash to let go of himself gently, instead of the infinitely more brutal end he would have met at a villain’s hand otherwise, if he hadn’t fought tooth and nail for his very last scrap of autonomy up until that moment. Eiji’s love as an act of compassion is most perfectly realized; because Ash’s Perfect Day is one of is own making. All the circumstances together form a perfect conclusion. He didn’t see the knife coming, and he didn’t need to. After Papa Dino’s death, after Eiji is gone, Ash can finally stop. He can accept that his trauma is greater than even him. In a life spent being forced back and forth according to the violent winds of his circumstance, he chooses to, (and that’s important, he chooses to,) retreat like a cat to a quiet place of safety to live out his last moments. In this way, Ash’s death is merely a setting down of something unbearably heavy. Because he is loved, because Eiji is safe and far away, Ash is at last released from the prison of his life.

Other Banana Fish Meta: CAPE COD AS PURGATORY AND ASH’S BREAK FROM INNOCENCE

[weakeninghope]

my thoughts on the banana fish ending

Heyo! I’m here because I’m sad, angry and wanted to rant. I’ve been wanting to post this for a while, but decided it would be better to wait for the anime to end since that way anime only fans would be able to read this too. As you can guess from the title, I’m going to write about the Banana Fish ending. This post is going to be pretty spoiler-ish so I’m putting the meta after the cut. Please stick with me and read it if you’re interested!

The ending is unfair. I could end it here, but I prefer to explain why I think so, and I have many reasons. First of all; Yoshida’s attitude towards Ash. In her interviews, Yoshida mentioned that Ash deserved to die because he’s a villain, because he’s killed people. Do you really hate your own characters that much that you’d kill them just because you made them kill people FOR A REASON? Ash didn’t kill because he wanted and Yoshida is the first one to know that. Hell, she created him. Killing someone because “all killers need to die” is pretty irresponsible and an excuse to kill a character you don’t like. If Ash hadn’t killed, he would have been dead before the start of the series. I really don’t understand Yoshida, she’s really contradictory in her interviews. She also said that Ash likes women, that he isn’t gay and that had he lived, he would have parted ways from Eiji anyway.

Now this is another point; I think she was afraid to create a happy ending for Ash and Eiji because the romantic nature of their relationship was too explicit to ignore already. We have to take into consideration the time and where she wrote the story, but take your time and think of it; all the gay characters in BFare bad people.

Look, I understand people saying that a happy ending just doesn’t add up because Banana Fish is a tragedy by nature, but I don’t find your point in defending both the ending and GoL. The ending’s message is basically “don’t try to escape your abusers” “if you’ve lived a life of misery, you will die surrounded by it.” Ash deserved better. And I’m not saying it because of the meme or because of pure sentimentality, but because he does. And Eiji too. This ending is too heart-breaking for me to put it into words, too sad, and too unfair. 

His abusers are dead and suddenly, pretty much a random person (how many moments of protagonism has Lao had? 3?) kills Ash out of a suspicion of something that was never going to happen. It sounds pretty half-assed to me and pretty counter-productive. Ash is a great character, his depth can’t be described by words. You can justify your death if you think that he chose this and that’s why he died smiling, but THIS kind of death? (Well, I don’t justify his death at all). I don’t quite think he died defying his fate. I just think he could have felt overwhelmed. 

And let’s talk about Eiji. Eiji came to America after having suffered a lot and ended up broken forever. Because he’s lost the person he loved the most. Yoshida created one of the best romances I’ve ever seen, and LGTB representation on the media. And don’t get me wrong, I love Banana Fish! I think it’s a masterpiece that Yoshida nurtured for years, but even if you like something, you sometimes have to recognize that it can also have its “bad” bits.

But in the end, “Ash is a villain, and all villains have to die.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand that.

Thank you for reading and excuse my poor English, I’m just a Spanish dork trying to vent.

Btw, you can find me on twitter @/Shirotxpoison if you want to discuss!

[trashayfanfiction]

Blanca+Ash: Feelings of Loneliness

SPOILERS

I think it needs to be edited a lot more before posting on AO3, but with the new ep that just came out FUCK I need to post this. The hospital scene in BF is more heartbreaking than the ending to me. No words, no touch, only longing for what you can’t have. I cry.

...........................

Lost Souls, Salted Wounds

Feelings of Loneliness

               He couldn’t stay. He knew he couldn’t stay. Escaping with Eiji was a good dream, but an unrealistic one.

               He took the offer of ‘retiring’ in the Caribbean. He didn’t want to die yet, with that memory to keep him warm, the heat, the sun, and chocolate skinned women did nothing for him. Eiji would be safe away from him. The plane ticket was tempting, but naïve…. Just like the rest of the sweet man. There was no way he could escape himself and his fate. If he stayed, violence would follow him. He wanted to keep that friendship.

“You will always be my friend,” He tried not to cry while reading that letter. He’d thrown the plane ticket away to not be tempted. The thought of escape was too painful. He kept the letter. He read it over and over.

               He felt better when he didn’t read it. Tears stained the page, and now he didn’t know if they were all his own. Maybe there were tear marks on it when he first received it… he didn’t quite notice then. He was shocked and in awe, and his heart fluttered. His heart ached. His heart had never ached and wanted like before that letter.

He felt loved. It was returned.

He tried to maintain his appetite. He’d wrote a letter of his own, letting Eiji know why; that they needed to be realistic. It couldn’t happen. Eiji would probably forget about him in a couple years anyways. Hopefully.

               He hoped Eiji would forget him in a couple years, because he wanted everyday the other’s presence. He knew what he was missing. It was hard to go back.

“It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” - Alfred Lord Tennyson

               The Japanese man’s presence owned more than a small part of Ash. He always would… He shouldn’t have added his feelings in that letter. Eiji was sentimental enough that a small part of him would never forget that note even if he choose to move on.

               He remembered the first time he met Eiji….

Not shy in the slightest, too excited to know he should be scared. The kid was charming. He was definitely still a kid at nineteen when they met, by the time he was twenty-one he was more of a man. He had seen Ash’s horrors and some of his own. Ash hated that seeing horrors was what made you an ‘adult’.

“I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty…you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.” J. D. Salinger

He knew Eiji didn’t exist to make him feel better, but it was nice to have someone ease his pain. Ash chased that feeling. It was crushing him. He wished he didn’t know what it was like to feel better.

“To be able to say: I loved this person, we had a hell of a nice time together, it’s over but in a way it will never be over and I do know that I for sure loved this person. To be able to say that and mean it, that’s rare.” -Hemingway

He was a monster that knew love. It was hard going back to being just a monster. Here in the Caribbean he was supposed to be leaving even the monster behind, or at least running away from those who knew what he was. He didn’t know how to live. He was here with one of the men who fed into him being a monster, despite wanting a normal life for the both of them.

“The heart was made to be broken.” Oscar Wilde

  He told Blanca to go shove it with the literature. He’d had enough of people telling him about human experience. “The true loneliness, my ass.” Telling him that others felt the same didn’t make him feel better.

He threw the books all over their large library. He found no solace in them. His former teacher looked surprised but let him have his explosive tantrum while looking on from his green leather reading chair. Ash knew it was immature to have this kind of hair trigger, but this made it feel better, at least for the time being.

He stood in the room fuming, frozen, breathing hard, choking, before sinking to the floor with aid of one of the hardwood pillars. His face was wet. He hid in his hair, the blonde he always hated…. What gave him the attention to have the life he did. His hair, his face, his eyes…. He wanted to rip them out. But he would be a victim anyways, no matter how he looked. People just wanted power. They all did. He remembered being harshly punished when he gave himself a buzzcut when he was 12. Dino had hated it. When they found he needed glasses, he wanted the thickest ones so he could to hide his face. Dino picked out stylish slim wire frames. They made his hair look more golden.

Eiji had liked his hair and eyes, but had never prized him for it. Eiji prized his company…. Any kind of company…. His friend, not his only friend, but even Shorter revealed that sex was a motivator with him at first….. Eiji was genuine curiosity.

Sergei slowly put the books back on the shelf.

“Imagine how you’d feel if he died,”

Ash didn’t want to think about it.

“You’d feel worse. And you’d have known it was coming,” Soft thumps of the books sliding back into place, the only sound in the room aside from his sniffling. Sergei was probably making the sound in an attempt to be courteous,

“It’s going to hurt for a while, but it’s the right call. When I first lost my wife-“

“Don’t you think I fucking know! I know! Alright?! That’s why I’m here with you! God! I know what can happen to him, that doesn’t mean I don’t fucking miss him okay!?”

Choking, sobbing again, but more subdued this time. “I almost lost him so many times. Each time……”

Less anger, more pain, before the roles switched and venom was back. “I still don’t forgive you.” Barbed wire curling at his throat, “You could have helped me from the beginning,”

Blanca shook his head, “I didn’t know what it would do to you after accepting. I regretted taking that job,”

“But you’ve carried out all of them. How many jobs have you regretted?”

The older man smiled at him, “None,” ….Not reaching his eyes.

Ash growled, “….Don’t lie through your teeth,”

“Just because I haven’t liked jobs, doesn’t mean I regret them,”

 …………………………………………………………………….

 These outbursts didn’t happen like clockwork. Sometimes they were provoked, sometimes not. Blanca offered counseling with his psychology degree and shared experiences, but Ash declined.

Blanca told him he didn’t approve of avoiding problems, but to let him know the option would stay open for if it was ever needed. “I don’t like seeing you like this, and I don’t want you blaming me,”

…………………………………………………

Ash would come around in his own time. He was a wild animal after all. If there was nothing to fear, he could become bold and allow himself assistance.

…………………………………………………………………….

“Can I sleep here tonight?” Ash asked. He sat on the edge of Blanca’s bed, toing the carpet. His face was still salty. Tears had dried into uncomfortable crusts. He hadn’t asked much. Hadn’t opened up much, but it as a start.

“This was always easier when I slept next to him,”

“You’re an adult. You don’t need anyone to sleep next to you,” Ask for help, not a crutch.

               “Yes I do,”

“I’m not a substitute for your lover,” Eiji was a crutch. Overall good, but Ash seemed set that the Japanese man would heal all his wounds. Experience told him it wasn’t true. You healed yourself. Other’s helped, but it was you who made the decision.

“He wasn’t my lover!” Ash protested and flinched. He did his best to hide a blush. Not his lover, his friend… He had other friends, but Eiji was different. He let Eiji in. He wouldn’t mind if it was Eiji.

“Perhaps not, but given time you would have got there. I know you,”

“No you don’t! If you did, you’d know this would help me! I need sleep,” He pleaded, “I haven’t slept in so long…,”

This hurt child next to him. Young man, at least he should be… Sergei wanted to help… “I don’t think this is a good idea,”

“I trust you, I can sleep next to you,”

Sergei bit his cheek, sighing one last protest.

“This is…. Strange,” He wouldn’t say wrong.

“You will owe me for this, just so you know. I find it appalling that pajamas are needed to appropriately to share a bed, especially in this weather,”

Ash laughed. Eiji made similar horrible jokes.

What the man found for pajama’s was as dorky as Ash had imagined. Proper pajamas. Orange and ivory vertical stripes. He made sure to tease him about it. Ash wore gym shorts and a T-shirt. … one of Eiji’s old shirts.

               It no longer smelled like him, but the thought was there.

               “You shouldn’t have that,” Blanca told him before they lay down, poking the little skeletal fish on the left breast. It wasn’t something Ash would have picked out on his own.

Ash clutched it protectively, curling up in the sheets as the other opened his book.

               “It’s fine,” Ash grumbled,

“You’re not letting go of the past, how do you expect to move forward?”

“You still have pictures of her,” Ash accused him. He was given a sideways glance.

“I know, but I don’t dwell on them. I try to live in the now,”

………………………………………

Asleep they didn’t touch. He hadn’t expected to be held anyways. It would be weird from his teacher. This wasn’t like sleeping next to Eiji, but maybe the presence……

 ………

 He tried to strangle Blanca in his sleep. Getting himself quickly pinned. The ex-hitman had bolted awake, but anyone would have been roused by the screaming insults. The blonde’s breathing quickened, it caught in his throat. His asphyxiation woke him, eyes wide in terror. Flashbacks of being pinned under so many other men. He gasped. A nightmare he said. The men were back.

The older man nursed his bloody nose. A lucky hit.

“….I’m sorry….” Ash whispered quietly.  

“Are you tired now?”

“Yes,” The adrenaline had worn off and he slept soundly.

But he didn’t sleep in Blanca’s bed after that.

………………………………………………………………..

They were not alike. Ash regretted the people he killed, but it was the people who chased him who tormented his thoughts; living people. The dead couldn’t hurt him anymore. He was only haunted by the innocents that were killed in the crossfire. He worried for his soul because he didn’t regret killing the bad men …. Not often anyways.

Sergei was the opposite; Many of the people he killed never wronged him. He tried not to debate whether they deserved to die. He didn’t worry for his own soul. That might have meant Ash had more soul to save than he did.

Ash was more solid in his convictions. Almost everyone he killed, he did so venomously. He didn’t regret. The regretted the fringe effects, the violence that twined around him and the people he loved. ….Killing in anger was something Sergei related to, but often didn’t practice.

Ash was in tune with his feelings, he didn’t know how to accept feeling numb. He had no vices such as drugs, booze, partying, or sex. He might have adjusted better to daily life if he knew how to escape and have fun.

Eiji was his only vice.

………………………………………………………………

   ………………………………………..

 “Gh-Get out!” Blanca sat up in bed, woman quickly following him, clutching his arm. The blonde was standing at the foot. He had robotically walked into the room. Cold green eyes stared him down. Expressionless but judging.

The girl next to Blanca giggled at the young man, sheet slipping lower on her naked form.

“Who’s he? He’s booold, and cute,” She pinched her partner’s stubbly cheek, bright and begging. He skin was flushed. She was topless.

“Do you think he should join?” She whispered in the hitman’s ear.

Slick tan skin. His teacher was blushing. Maybe from the girl, maybe his presence.

“What are you doing here?”

Ash quickly looked away, giving the window a death glare. Straight face. Why was he here? Why was he compelled…. He knew what Blanca was doing in here…. What he was always doing.

  Those distant pretty eyes looked like jewels in the sunbeam from the window, watching particles of dust floated in the room as his body was jostled.

 Ash got up and left when it was over. He’d stayed silent the whole time with the exception of a few grunts that might have been just for show. He and Blanca touched once when they were in bed; Large hand attempting to guide Ash’s in a more practiced way to touch a woman. The younger flinched away. Perhaps frightened, embarrassed… Blanca couldn’t tell. He could usually read these things.

Ash had came to his bed looking for attention.

 He left when the woman was pressed between them.

……………………………………………………………………..

This wasn’t fun. This was high anxiety.

……………………………………………………………………..

  She made him feel large. He wasn’t used to that feeling, especially during sex. …someone so much smaller than him, under him….. This would hurt. He shouldn’t like this. ….he did kind of like this though. It felt good…. Kinda. Warm around him. Slick. Gripping him, urging him closer to the edge of pleasure.

Did she want this? She basically threw herself at him. ….but he threw himself at many men.

 He wished it was Eiji.

Eiji never did anything he didn’t want to do.

Ash admired that. Standards to the point of being stupid. Stubborn. Unwavering, unable to be budged. Sure of all the decisions he’d made. Unapologetic about them.

Eiji……..

He wondered if there was anything about him Eiji regretted.

Eiji was so strong. He admired him. Loved him. He wanted to stay. Stay forever.

……………………………………………………………………..

  …………………………………………………………………………………………

“I have a gift for you,” his teacher stated, standing at the counter making breakfast. He looked comically domestic in his blue apron, hair pulled back into a much too casual ponytail to be classified as ‘pristine’.

“Nnnggh?” Ash slumped against the table. His morning head was fuzzy, but Sergei insisted on keeping a regular sleep schedule. Breakfast at eight-thirty was seen as ‘reasonable’.

A mug of black coffee was pushed to him. “That’s not the gift though,” the other stated, “this is the gift,” A small piece of paper was slid in front of him. Square, torn on the corner of a page. Easy to be lost.

Okumura Eiji

A phone number

Izumo, Japan

He blinked up at his teacher. The sad concerned gaze looked down on him.

“Give him a call sometime if it’s what you need,”

Ash wanted to ask if he would monitor that call.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

He kept the note on his mirror for a few weeks. He didn’t look at it; he didn’t use his mirror. He didn’t like seeing his pale skin, green eyes, blonde hair….. objects of lust.

               Only Eiji didn’t lust after him. ….well, he guessed Blanca didn’t either. He had thrown himself at the other man, seeking validation. He used the other’s weaknesses to get what he wanted. …but Blanca let him use those weaknesses. ….Maybe Sergei wasn’t strong. Ash bit his lip.

He just needed to know what it was like to have sex with someone he liked. What he was missing…. He wanted to be in love again. He knew Sergei and sex wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t a patch.

               He was self-medicating…. Being self-destructive about it. He knew this…. But he just wanted to wallow in it. There was nothing good. Nothing that could make him happy like Eiji. He was throwing a tantrum.

A tantrum like a child.

   One night he called that number. It was a reasonable time in Eiji’s timezone, he’d checked. He didn’t know how much he wanted the other to answer.

               His fingers trembled as he stood in the kitchen, dialing the numbers. Every click of symbol pressed echoed through the room. He huddled around the phone on the snackbar. His toes played with the rungs of the barstool.  Anxious. What would Eiji say? They hadn’t spoken. He didn’t know Eiji’s reaction to his letter.

 The phone rang. It rang so many times Ash almost hung up. He was trembling.

“Moshi moshi?” A young girl. Eiji’s sister. He smiled at the memory. Eiji wasn’t alone.

“Okumura Eiji?” He tried to hide his accent. To sound normal.

She said something in Japanese before covering the receiver and yelling across the house. He smiled lightly. She was young, or at the very least carefree. After a few seconds there was chatter in the background. Male chatter.

Ash’s heart began pounding. He was shaking so badly. He clutched the receiver to his cheek.

“Hello?” Light confusion, inquiry. An English response. The sister’s voice in the background. Snickering, teasing.

Eiji’s voice. Eiji’s breathing.

He opened his mouth. No sound could come out. He didn’t know if he was breathing. How he wanted…. Everything. To see him. To hear his voice. To hold him. To apologize….. and no sound would come out. He felt moisture drip down the receiver onto his hand. Sweat. Tears. He couldn’t take it.

Something. He needed to say something. Eiji would hang up.

“…..Ash?”

He needed to say something. A…..

“Are you there Ash? Is it you?” Relief. Hope. Disbelief. Joy.

……………All things he didn’t deserve.

He hung up.

He couldn’t be with Eiji again, he knew that. He wondered what the Japanese boy thought of the line going dead.

……………………………………………………………………..

 He didn’t know how much time passed. If Ash started counting the days, the days would never end.

  …………………………………………………………………………………………

“Hey kitten!” Booming voice echoed across their front room to where Ash was laying in a sunbeam. The window was warm, the beach was beautiful. “The phone’s for you,”

He grumbled, shifting, stretching out of his comfortable nap. He padded over to where Blanca was holding the phone against his chest protectively. “Now be nice. He told me what you did last time,”

Ash gave the older man a sour look, “Who the fuck is it anyway?” He unceremoniously grabbed the receiver.

A knowing smile, “You really should work on getting a better attitude. Maybe I should ask him to change that,”

“Ash!? Ash is that you! Thank gods you are safe!”

Green eyes went wide. He dropped the receiver. It clattered to the floor, shell cracking sending a small bit of plastic skittering across the surface. The phone was still working, he could hear Eiji’s frantic words muffled. They would be clear next to his ear. ….why?

He turned to Blanca in anger.

“You don’t want me to see him!! Why?!”

 Eiji could probably hear them.

  When Ash left, Sergei picked up the phone, brushing the shattered plastic into a pile and throwing it away. Before putting it back in the cradle, he checked it against his ear. Dial tone only.

“I’m sorry little bunny. Perhaps I’m too distressed to help. He is a handful isn’t he?” The room was silent.

Exiting the room he was met with an angry blonde franticly pacing the lounge. Lanky hands ruffling and pulling his hair, as if messing it up would help solve his emotions.

“You’re leading me on! Giving me his number! And then you do this!”

“I don’t know how to help you Ash. I want to, believe me,”

“You’re a psychiatrist, you shouldn’t be fucking up this bad!”

“I know,”

“Is it because you see yourself in me? Huh? Is that it? Because I think it is. Big difference though, Sergei, your wife is dead!! You can’t see her, even if you wanted to! Eiji is alive and I want to see him! I want to see him every day, so much it hurts. But I can’t because if I do THEN he’ll die. I can’t have him dying because of me. I can’t have him and I know that! You know that! You knew what would happen when you married your wife. I’m not that selfish. My own happiness is not worth hurting him!”

“I want you to be at peace,”

“Then let me fucking die already. You tell me to stay away, you tell me to get rid of his things, and then you do this!! You keep your wife’s momentos. You don’t move on. You don’t want to move on!”

“I understand death is tempting. You can hold someone in your heart without forgetting them,”

“It’s different when that someone is actually dead,”

“I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re stronger than this,”

“No I’m not. I’m tired of being strong. I’m so fucking tired,”

 ………………………………………………………..

“I want to know what it’s like to do it with someone I like,”

“Then you should have done it with him,” The comment was calm but biting. Another wall for Ash to fight. More and more of Blanca’s comments seemed to be biting. Ash was getting to him.

“You’re a psychiatrist. Shouldn’t you be able to help me?” Snide comments.

“It only works for those who want help. You don’t. You want to throw a temper tantrum because you faced the reality that you can’t be with your boyfriend without him getting hurt. You are blaming me for the option you chose,”

“Then give me what I want!”

“I care about you, but I don’t exist to make you feel better,”

“I fucking know that,”

“Then stop using people as crutches. Stand on your own two feet,”

Ash’s eyes met the floor. “I-I can’t.” He toed the marble floor…. He always hated the bougie places the men around him prided…. “I’ve been on my own for so long. I didn’t know how hard it was to be alone until I had him.”

He knew it sounded pathetic. Like he was giving up. He wished he could say he wasn’t always alone. He had Skip, and Shorter, and Blanca. Alex and the guys. He wasn’t alone before Eiji.

The Japanese man just had the uncanny ability to see through his bullshit.

…….his teacher also had this ability, but his teacher was centered in a harsh reality he’d rather forget. Eiji was naïve optimism, Blanca was well-worn reality.

He had always lived in reality.

  “I would like you to start calling me by my real name then,”

..……………………………..

    Ash curled against him. Sex had never sated his body before. For the time being it was nice. He didn’t know how many days it would last, but it made him feel connected to something. Someone. Someone who liked him.

But….It still felt dirty and wrong, just like all the other times he did it. His skin prickled. He wanted to scrub it off. Disgust. Even with someone he liked….. it would have likely been the same with Eiji, but maybe it would have been different.

               It was a strange feeling. He could see why people chased that feeling, the first half of it anyways.

                 For the first time, this feeling made the older man sick. He had rarely felt the second half of the feeling…. Regret.

……………………………..……………………………..

  Days passed, they never spoke of it. Ash never came looking again.

  ………………………………………………………………………..

The blonde ruffled through the boxes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

The tired man stood at the door. “You shouldn’t be so quite, Kitten. I saw you leave for my room, not making a noise can be suspicious too, remember.

Green eyes looked up at him.

“You didn’t keep her wedding dress?”

Natasha’s sundress. Yellow floral. Quaint buttons down the front. The young man held it in front of himself as if to try it on.

“Put that back,”

Ash had never heard that tone from his teacher. Almost panicked. ….good. He took a step closer, skirt swaying around his thin but no longer girlish knees. His shorts were hidden behind the fabric, it was almost as if he was wearing it.  He was still slim, he could still look good in this.

“I look kind of like her, don’t you think?” Evil. He saw it. Intent to slice to the core.

This one was not his wife.

“She was nothing like you,”

“You wouldn’t hit me and risk hurting it would you?” He hiked the skirt up, showing off his smooth thighs…. A disgusting gesture.

Natasha’s mother had made her that sundress to celebrate her acceptance in to university. Her family who would never see her again…..

“You need to put that back,” he repeated.

……………………………

 He was hit in the face and knocked to the floor. Not like combat training. Driven by an emotion.

“You’re not the only one who can feel pain, you selfish prick. Salt your own wounds,” Ash had never heard venom in the older man’s voice, “Leave mine out of it.” The emotion was only for an instant. A breaking point, quickly covered up by time and composure.

He felt good to know that Sergei had a breaking point, even when Blanca was untouchable. He reveled in that knowledge. He wanted to dig his fingers into that sore spot. As always, Blanca read him like a book.

“Don’t aggravate old scars, or I will kill you too,”

“Maybe I want you to kill me….” Still challenging.

He laughed to himself. This was like the stores his teacher gave him.

…………………………………………………………

They didn’t talk for the next week. Blanca barely looked at him. He felt a different kind of ache in his heart than before. There was still the yearning for Eiji, what he’d lost. But his gut told him it was disappointed in his actions. He had hurt someone, intentionally. He liked it. He could have chosen not to. He wasn’t supposed to like it. This man had just tried to help.

Would he take this out on Eiji someday?

 …………………………………………………………..

A few days later Sergei spoke. Worn, unkept. Mirroring Ash.

“You can’t stay here anymore. I’m sending you to Japan.”

[ladyosen]

Banana Fish Volume 4, chapter 1

CW: once again CSA

-the scanlation has the pages in reverse for some reason so this was slow reading.  Right away we learn that some of Ash’s dad’s bitterness is related to the fact that his second wife just dumped the kid on him, which sucks.

We then get more into Ash’s tragic backstory and why he doesn’t want to go home which surprisingly isn’t entirely about his douchy dad.  A popular little league coach sexually assaulted him and his family couldn’t get justice for him.  Ash was accused of seducing his attacker and his dad, for whatever reason, told him that if it happened again to not fight back and demand money.  Which is a bit screwed up but wow...

 Said abuser was eventually shot by Ash after assaulting him again and revealed to be a serial killer.  Which wow... this is a bit ridiculous almost in it’s awfulness.  Apparently the only reason Ash didn’t die was because he took his dad’s advice and asked for money.  While Ash wasn’t charged with a crime because of his age, he was the center of unpleasant gossip, so his dad had meant to send him away, which is when Ash ran away.  This explains a bit more about why Ash was stuck with Dino though.  He probably was afraid to go back to a difficult father and a town that looked on him unkindly already. 

Shorter seems pretty shocked, having known Ash for a long time.  I get the impression that he really doesn’t know the full extent of the violence Ash has been through at all.  Eiji is impressed though, noting how amazing Ash’s spirit is in the face of this.

-We see Jennifer ask Ash’s dad exactly why he treats Ash the way he does even though he does love him, earning only an angry dismissal.  And then what are probably Dino’s men walk in.  Oh no... :/  Also Ash’s spider senses are tingling.

-Ibe reveals his relationship with Eiji to Max.  Eiji’s talent in High Jumping was causing the college he’d won a scholarship from to put such immense pressure on him that it was ruining Eiji and his ability to jump.  Ibe basically stole him away from all of that in the hopes of allowing Eiji to jump again.

Max sagely notes that Ibe wants to be Eiji, comparing him to Amadeus’s version of Saleri... which is pretty harsh man.

-Ash and Shorter go to find Ash and the violence starts with everyone involved in a surprise gunfight.  Dino’s hitmen have Ash’s family hostage and it’s dark out, making things complicated.  The hitmen, getting impatient threaten to kill Jennifer, causing Ash to give in to their demands and surrender himself.  

Ibe and Max manage to throw off the hitmen by pretending to be the police, but Jennifer and Ash’s dad both end up being shot.  Ash and Shorter killed the hitmen, but Jennifer has died.  Ash’s dad shows some quick thinking despite bleeding out, getting Ash to wipe the prints off the gun and a knife used in the fight, telling him to put the knife in Jennifer’s hand, likely planning on making it look like the hitmen were robbing them and Jennifer died defending herself.  He even gives Ash money, demanding that his son run to safety before the cops get there.  Dad is a jerk but man, it’s hard not to respect him here.

The gang escapes and Ash is very distraught the whole time, with some great sad faces.  Like all his expressions have been great in this story arc.

-Meanwhile Lee and Dino are having a polite dinner full of tension.  Dino tells Lee that he wants to clear up a “misunderstanding about Ash,” and says that Ash has taken a poison meant for assassination from him.  He then reassures Lee that it’s not at all a drug meant to threaten his market.  

He also asks Lee to not interfere in exchange for letting him sell more heroine in Europe.  Lee is boggled and asks why Ash is worth all of this.  Dino says it’s not about getting back at Ash but about the reporter who is with him, fearing being exposed on the news.  So now Ibe is in danger...

But Dino asks for Lee to assist him in finding Ash and Lee promises him the aid of a Yut Lung, the dragon of the moon.  Interesting.  So Lee betrayed Ash much quicker than anticipated.

-Meanwhile Ash and Shorter steal some chickens for the gang to eat in what is one of the most bizarre scenes ever, biting the critters’s necks.  Like wtf dudes.  Max tries to ask where the chicken’s came from as they’re eating later and just gets snark for his trouble.  

The gang has been traveling for a week and are utterly lost.  Fortunately a stranger comes and informs them that actually they are in LA and camping illegally in a park.  You dumb dumbs /facepalm.

But overall a lot happened.  Ash’s past is put into even more tragic context.  It almost comes off ott, but that’s more a feature than a bug in this kind of work.  I also like how his father is both a douchebag, but also sympathetic and complex in his own right.  I like that many of the characters are layered like that.

I didn’t quite expect Lee to turn that fast honestly.  I also have to think that Dino is half lying about the nature of Banana Fish, because why go so far for an assassination drug when there are many other, easier to acquire options?  But we’ll see on that front.

I also can’t believe these guys just... accidentally traipsed into LA and didn’t realize it.  Amazing.  But I like the bits of humor here and there, some of it fairly dark.  It makes things feel more rounded out.  I am also excited for the change in location and the fact that all of our heroes have broken the law.  There’s a lot of promise in this plot line and I feel like the series does a good job of pacing itself.