#what if yut lung had found someone who loved him

[emeraldeyes23]

I know is been a while but those headcanons set me in the mood... do you think that if Yut-lung had someone important to him just like Ash with Eiji he would have stopped with messing with Ash? Also... fucking Ash not getting his injured ass to a hospital so he could see Eiji again like... dude, his letter says it all, he loves you, why choosing death??? 😩💔

Thank you for asking and welcome back✨

Sorry my answer has taken so long, but I wanted to write an answer that would be helpful and would make sense to you🙂 And I’ve never analyzed Banana Fish characters myself, I usually just read analysis or interpretations of other people. But I’ve tried my best and hope you’ll like it.

I hope you’ll find the time to read all of that because short texts aren’t my strong suit😂

Would Yut Lung have stopped messing with Ash I’d he had found someone important to him?

I think if Yut Lung had found someone important to him, like Ash did Eiji, he’d have stopped playing games with Ash. And he would have stopped trying to kill Eiji.

If Yut Lung had found someone who loved him unconditionally, he’d have probably stopped all of that because he’d have learned how to feel again. Like Ash. He would have experienced how it feels if someone truly loves you, wants to take care of you and protect you without asking for anything in return. Without ulterior motives or hidden thoughts.

Then, he’d finally understand why Ash would kill himself to protect Eiji. Such an act of selflessness, to give your life to protect someone else, is something he wasn’t capable of understanding in the anime/manga. Because he had never experienced such a selfless love himself. That’s why he was so surprised when Ash just pulled the trigger without the slightest hesitation.

If he had found such a selfless person, he would have understood why Ash went to such lengths to protect Eiji and why he had started to open up to him. Why he’d even die for him. And why he wanted to change his life. Because Eiji made him a better person. And if he had found someone special himself, Ash wouldn’t have mattered to him anymore because he would have found a much better reason to live, a greater fulfillment that would make his life worth living. A selfless person who truly loved him would make him feel alive, happy and special for the first time. Loved. Then he would probably think about his life and would try to change it. To lead a more peaceful life far away from crime and violence. And he’d also start to protect this person with his life. To become a better person for his special someone. He’s pretty smart, so he could have done many great things with his life if he only tried.

Regarding Ash’s death in the library😭

Firstly, I don’t think that Ash had realized at this point in time that Eiji truly loved him. With his mother abandoning him, his father not caring for him and his brother leaving him, he had never experienced how it felt to be loved unconditionally by someone. All the people he had cared for had left him eventually. So he thought Eiji would leave him, too. Not now maybe, but eventually.

So he would probably need more time to realize that Eiji would never leave him. (Eiji didn’t leave voluntarily by the way, he left because his visa had run out. Staying without a visa means , if caught, you cannot return to the US for at least 10 years as far as I know. So for Eiji it meant he’d never see Ash again. Since Ash would never come to Japan on his own thinking he put Eiji in danger by bringing the violence to Japan.).

Eiji had never mentioned the word “love” (he told him he loved him in other words, though), but I don’t think Ash had realized that Eiji’s words or his farewell letter were love confession.

Ash probably realized that he loved Eiji, but not necessarily that his love was returned. Ash could never understand how Eiji would be able to love someone like him. A monster, a killer, a male prostitute. Because that’s how he sees himself. He thought of himself that as a ruthless criminal he wouldn’t be worthy of love, that he wouldn’t deserve love after all the heinous crimes and evil deeds he had committed in his short life.

He’d also think that Eiji should find someone else who is not as damaged and traumatized as he is. He’d feel that he’d just be a burden to Eiji, that he’d put him through many hardships. Eiji would never see it that way, but Ash would.

That’s also the reason why he doesn’t want to say good bye to Eiji. Firstly, if he went to the airport, he’d put Eiji in danger again. The police was looking for him as well as the Corsican mafia. And if Ash would see Eiji again and would look into his caring, warm and comforting eyes, Ash wouldn’t tell him goodbye, but he’d ask him to stay or not to leave him alone.

So staying away from Eiji was his way of protecting Eiji. Eiji probably knew that because he wasn’t surprised that Ash hadn’t come. Knowing Ash and his stubborn personality, Eiji had expected this behavior from Ash.

But when he had read Eiji’s farewell letter, all of Ash’s resolve of stubbornly ignoring Eiji’s departure was shattered into tiny pieces. The first thing he had noticed was that Eiji had even bought a plane ticket for him. The plane ticket made him realize that Eiji had really been serious about taking him to Japan. Ash had never believed that Eiji really wanted to take him to Japan. That changed when he saw the plane ticket. That wasn’t just a plane ticket, it was a promise and to Ash a solid proof of their bond.

And the letter showed him that Eiji really understood his pain and suffering, worried about him and wanted to stay by his side. Even if he hadn’t understood it was a love letter, he had realized that Eiji accepted him the way he was and wanted to be there for him and protect him. Someone who’d do anything for him. That he wasn’t alone anymore. That there was someone who would never abandon him or give up on him. Who was always by his side and was always thinking about him, even if they were worlds apart. That they would always be connected soul to soul and share a bond that can never be broken no matter how far the distance.

That’s when Ash realized that his feelings were returned and that’s why he started running. I don’t think he wanted to go to Japan with Eiji, but he at least wanted to say goodbye to him. Or have him an answer to his letter. Maybe he would have taken care of some things and would have joined him in Japan at a later point if he hadn’t been stabbed.

So he started running without watching his surroundings for the first time. That Ash wasn’t paying attention and didn’t think five steps ahead calculating any possible worst-case scenario shows how much that letter meant to him. Nothing else but Eiji, his feelings towards him and seeing him one last time mattered to him.

When Lao injured him, he knew he’d never make it to the airport in time. Ash probably thought it was fate. That it was the fate he deserved as a killer, a monster and a merciless criminal. After committing so many sins. Remember the scene in the anime after Eiji got shot? Afterwards, Ash pleaded to God not to let Eiji die. To take his life instead. Maybe he thought that was God’s answer. Eiji survived as Ash had wished. But to grant that wish God would take his life instead. Ash accepted that because it meant Eiji would survive.

Furthermore, Ash knew that Eiji was safe, that he’d fly to Japan where he could live in a peaceful world and have a normal life far away from him and the danger he would drag him into again. That was all that mattered to him: that Eiji was safe.

Knowing Eiji was safe, nothing else was important anymore. So he didn’t look for help. He’d have known that either the police would arrest him or the Corsican mafia would find him eventually and finish him off. He knew he couldn’t outrun both of them. And he didn’t want Eiji to be part of that. So he thought dying would be the best solution for everyone. He wouldn’t end up with a life on the run or in jail. That’s why he went to the only place he felt safe, his sanctuary, his safe haven. Because he wanted to die at least in a place where he had always felt safe, where he felt comfortable and protected. Remember that the Rose reading room is on the third floor (as far as I know, I’ve never been there.) To go all the way up to the third floor with such a wound must have caused Ash agonizing pain. That’s how important and special that place was to him. Eiji’s safety was all that mattered to him. More than his own life. He was probably just tired of fighting, especially since he achieved his goal: he’d killed his abusers (directly or indirectly) and had survived them. So he had achieved the only goal he had had in his life, the reason he fought so desperately all the time and had never given up. So he saw no reason to keep on fighting. He’d reached his goal after all. By doing so, he’d also lost his will to live. The only reason to continue living would be Eiji, but he was gone. Maybe, after all he had gone through, death was just the easier option for him. After all the suffering caused by yearlong rape and abuse, all of the pain, his nightmares and his physical injuries caused by all the violence surrounding him, death would be the easier option. Death would finally take away all the pain as well as his awful memories. When dying he could finally rest in peace and get the quiet, peace and freedom he had always wished for throughout his life. And that’s why he died with a smile on his face.

Unfortunately, Ash had never realized how much Eiji would suffer when hearing about Ash’s death. He honestly thought that Eiji would be happier leading a normal life without a troublemaker like him by his side. He had never realized how much he had hurt Eiji with his final decision. Because he had never realized that Eiji loved him. Ash had probably never noticed that there were people he’d leave behind. People who’d grieve for him. Like Eiji, but also Max, Sing or even Ibe. I think the ending is beautiful and devastatingly sad at the same time. I’ve read many great interpretations regarding the end and countless justifications for it. And I respect that the author wanted the end like that. But I don’t like that ending. An ending where a traumatized character’s only option is death is just wrong. Giving a traumatized character like Ash the chance to slowly heal and to be with a character who shows him that he’s worthy of love, trust and comfort will always have a much deeper meaning for me. Still, Banana Fish is one of the greatest stories ever created and will always have a special place in my heart. No story has ever moved me to tears like this.

[catching-bananas]

Headcannons If Banana Fish Crossed Over with other BL Animes

*Warning: Major anime and manga spoilers ahead

1) No.6

You better believe Ash and Nezumi are going to hate each other

Not like “Hate, hate” but like “we’re so much alike I would kill you in a heartbeat.”

They would also brag about who’s life treated them worse, and which one has the better boyfriend.

Meanwhile Shion and Eiji would bond over the fact that their bfs are high ranking wanted criminals

And the fact they learned to fight because of them

“Oh, you shot someone” “Yeah in the shoulder” “I shot a guy in the heart”

Then they will bond over how they beat up their bfs after the stunts they pulled (Nezumi leaving and Ash being stabbed)

Ash and Nezumi might hate each other, but Yut Lung and Nezumi would despise each other

“Shut up you Asian femboy” “Oh f*ck off you dress in drag”

Yut would hate Shion just as much as he hates Eiji, but that wouldn’t stop the white head from baking him a batch of cookies and inviting him over to meet his mother.

Yut secretly likes Karan.

Blanca meets Rikiga. Imagine that.

Ibe becoming friends with Karan and sitting in the bakery with her and Little Shion

Max, Shorter and Inukashi hanging out and getting into a load of trouble with the law. Of course it would be Inukashi’s fault and Max was trying to stop them, while Shorter cheered them on

Jessica tags along with them, but she also talks with Karan about the “troublesome boys they ended up unofficially adopting”

The two siblings that Shion would read to play with Skipper and Michael, just for a wholesome touch

2) Given

Let’s start the heartbreak shall we

Eiji was friends with Sato back in middle school and knew about Yuki

He was the first one Sato called after finding out about Yuki’s death

Because of this, Eiji spends a lot of time with Sato, and barely made any friends in high school.

Shorter is good friends with Haruki and knows about his withering crush on Kaji

He is also good friends with Kaji and knows about his toxic relationship.

Shorter tries to bring the two together but Kaji is a dense as a rock.

Kaji helps Ash with discovering his sexuality and his crush on Eiji.

Max helps Sato with the death of his ex, like how he needed when Griffin died.

Uenoyama and Ash are friends from middle school and neither knows about the other’s sexuality.

So when Uenoyama and Sato gets together, and Eiji with Ash, the other’s expressions are priceless.

“Ash you only ever dated girls” “Dude, I’m bi, but you flipped the switch completely” “Oh”.

Eiji (again) bonds over his bf with Sato, and the two have sleepovers occasionally. (They never invite the others. That’s gossip time)

Ash and Eiji met through Uenoyama and Sato, but they didn’t really talk.

One day Sato asks Eiji to help with writing the lyrics of the new song, Shorter and Sing were asked to help with Kaji’s drum kit and Ash was asked to help with guitar.

They ended up playing together, liked it, and banded together.

Eiji is guitar, Ash is vocals, Shorter is drums and Sing is bass.

Yut Lung and Sing go to the same school, and once Yut insulted a friend of Sing (Eiji), and Sing hated him since

But you know they’re gay for each other.

Yut’s brother is Murata, Kaji’s ex, and he keeps trying to talk to him about fixing things with Sing.

To which Yut calls him a hypocrite, and tells him to end things with Kaji properly.

Both follows the other’s advice in the worse way possible.

3) Classmates

Similar to Given, but with less angst

Ash and Kusakabe are of course bandmates.

Ash realized Kusakabe was gay the first time he mentioned Sajou.

“Dude, is he your boyfriend?” “Huh? No!”

Eiji is the most popular athlete in the school, while Ash is a musician.

Eiji couldn’t sing and needed Ash’s help.

They fall in love.

Ash was so stubborn about it at first, he avoided Eiji.

Until the concert.

Where, instead of going onstage, Eiji drags Ash to the back of the building and relentlessly questions him.

And they kiss.

The relationship is virtually a secret, but the whole school is curious anyways.

It’s an all boy’s school, what do you expect?

Remember the teacher, Harasen? He and Dino, the principal, goes after Ash and Sajou.

Both gets clocked by Eiji and Kusakabe.

Shorter is Ash’s friend and supports him in everything 100%.

Eiji’s family was very accepting of Ash.

Griff and Max basically adopt Eiji.

4) Yuri on Ice

Yes I know there are a million headcannons between these two, shhh~

Ash is Russian, and the older brother of Yurio.

Being much more laid back than the latter, Ash teases him constantly.

“Hey pretty ballerina” “Shut up you stupid doorknob”.

Both have an unhealthy obsession with wild cats, Ash with lynxes and Yurio with tigers.

Ash isn’t a skater, but cheers on his brother when he competes.

He is a fan of Yuri, out of pure spite.

But he is secretly a big fan of Victor as well.

When he travelled with Yuri to Japan to meet Yuri, Eiji and Victor, he contained his happiness well.

Reality: he was super excited.

Victor trained Yuri, but since Yuri and Eiji were good friends, Eiji was allowed to watch.

Eiji didn’t really skate after an injury he had.

Victor found it amusing when Yurio came to challenge Yuri while his brother backed him up.

Ash started calling his brother Yurio, much to the younger’s detriment.

Eiji was very awkward, but they got along well.

So well Ash decided to tag along with him during the competition.

They share a hotel room.

Which went as well as one would expect.

Ash learned about Eiji’s fear of the ice, and with the help of a reluctant Yurio and a supportive Yuri, they help him start skating again.

Que rainbow ending.

[forever-lynx]

so yut-lung’s a very misunderstood character right and someone on insta asked people to comment reasons why they should empathize with him and i’m gonna post my response here too bc this is where i dump all my analysis so yeah

i can’t empathize with yut-lung but i do strongly sympathize with him. his mother was assaulted by his brothers - his bloodline, people whom he should be able to trust -  right in front of his eyes at a very young age. they murdered his mother without a second thought in cold blood. that’s where his hatred for his brothers came from. his hatred and need for revenge is what kept him going; it was his reason to live. when he met ash, he thought of himself as his equal; they both had childhood trauma, both sought revenge, both played along to their given roles, etc. so seeing someone he perceived to be similar to him find love caused him to suffer. how dare ash lynx, a man supposed to be ‘the devil’, a ruthless killer, find salvation and not him? they are the same after all.. are they not?

yut-lung grew up with hatred and learned nothing of love and was alone majority of the time. ash lynx was similar in that sense except he did have someone with him (shorter - though he did keep shorter at arm’s length but that’s not the point) and then he became acquainted with a certain japanese man who taught him everything yut-lung desired.

yut-lung’s actions towards ash were caused by jealousy; he was jealous because ash had something he did not: someone who truly cared for him and did not want something in return. furthermore, ash was also able to somewhat escape from his abuser. ash found a way to escape from dino, though it lead to consequences, he was still in pursuit of his freedom and found a new reason to live (eiji). in contrast, yut-lung had to get his hands dirty to attain freedom. by killing his brothers he found a way to escape their filthy grasp. however, this in turn lead to yut-lung losing his reason to live. he did not have to avenge anyone. no brother to further fuel his hatred. he was completely devoid of a reason to live unlike ash. so if they were so similar, how come ash got everything he ever wanted?

yut-lung’s actions were the cause of jealousy, selfishness and the inability to form emotional connections with others. 

in other words: yut-lung had a terrible coping mechanism. but all he needed was love, for someone to connect with.

[eijispumpkin]

some musings about yut-lung, inspired by a post i saw on the dash earlier today:

if the story of banana fish were to be reframed with yut-lung as the protagonist, ash would not actually be the primary antagonist of the final arc. eiji would.

why? because yut-lung’s issue was never really with ash. it was with his own lack of happiness after he got his revenge on his brothers. we can see this in episode 24 when he tells sing that his entire life’s purpose was to hate his brothers, and now that they’re gone, he’s empty.

now, obviously, during the beginning of this retelling, none of the characters we really care about from canon would matter. the primary antagonists would be the lee siblings, particularly wang-lung as head of the family. most of yut-lung’s actions in canon are behind the scenes, but in this retelling they would be front-and-center. i’m not gonna linger on that point because i think it’s fairly self-explanatory, but ash and eiji would not really be relevant to yut-lung’s story until after yut-lung’s plans are well underway (i.e. until hua-lung is drugged and has already become his puppet).

so, what is yut-lung’s relationship to ash?

i would posit that he latched onto ash as someone he saw himself in. someone that had been through similar trauma, someone who should have been as broken, unlovable, and unable to heal as himself. (or at least, as he saw himself.) that was the root of his fixation on ash: the belief that if yut-lung himself couldn’t heal and be happy, even after getting his revenge, why should someone else?

and, when we analyze why ash was more capable of healing in the timeframe he did than yut-lung, obviously there’s eiji, but eiji is not the only person to care for ash. there’s shorter, nadia, max, ibe, alex and the other gang members, etc; while ash has had an undeniably hard time, he has also found a support network.

yut-lung has not.

in fact, the whole thing is so foreign to him that he completely discounts the entire network, and decides that ash’s sole support is eiji. now, ash and eiji are definitely important to each other, but it would be remiss to say that eiji is the only person important to ash or the only person to care for him. this is a misinterpretation of ash, caused by yut-lung placing him on a pedestal as “the only one who understands”, so to speak, and it’s why yut-lung fixated so hard on eiji as the obstacle to remove in order to bring ash to his level.

ash’s actions towards yut-lung are not actually antagonistic. ash tells him he’ll kill him one day, but he never tries to actually act on it, or do anything else to hinder yut-lung’s plans in general. frankly, ash doesn’t really give two shits what yut-lung is doing, until ep 20 when yut-lung has eiji, alex, bones, and kong. that is (iirc) the second time ash and yut-lung even see each other after shorter’s death.

now let’s contrast that with eiji.

in episode 9, yut-lung says that eiji really annoys him, because he’s too innocent. he echoes that in episode 14, when he says that people either want to protect eiji, like ash, or they want to “tear him up and destroy him”, and that yut-lung himself is one of the latter. putting his idealization of ash aside for a moment, it’s pretty evident that this hatred is motivated by jealousy (a common theme in yut-lung’s story): why should eiji have had a happy childhood, when yut-lung didn’t? 

in fact, that whole conversation in episode 14 is pretty telling. yut-lung tells eiji that he’s stupid for thinking he’s ash’s friend, because “ash has no need for friends [...] all he needs are those who idolize him, and those, like arthur, who defy him. he doesn’t need anyone else. especially not you, who is only a burden to him.”

yut-lung isn’t talking about ash. he thinks he is, but really? he’s talking about himself. or, rather, what he wants himself to be.

in ep24, we see him breaking down because he doesn’t know what his life purpose is without having an enemy. that combined with how he thinks that someone like ash (i.e., someone like himself) “doesn’t need friends”, the fact that the heart of his quest for vengeance is his mother, and his jealousy regarding eiji’s happier childhood, all comes together to suggest to me, at least, that at his core, yut-lung craves companionship, and at the same time desperately wants to deny that he wants it.

this conflict is the crux of his character. yut-lung’s story is ultimately a man-vs-self battle; he has an image of himself that he wants to be (cold, calculating, alone, satisfied), and he’s trying desperately to force himself to fit into that box, but he can’t actually do it. he’s hurting, he’s lonely, and he’s scared, and he lashes out and gets petty, bitter, and vicious.

so how does eiji come in?

eiji is the antithesis of everything yut-lung wants. he’s evidence that ash (i.e. yut-lung’s mirror) can heal and be loved, and yut-lung doesn’t want to see that, because it shatters his worldview that he’s on a path no one else except ash and those like him can walk. he doesn’t want to accept that people like ash (i.e. himself) can need love and support and friendship. eiji threatens to undermine his entire outlook on life.

and how does eiji respond to that? 

eiji responds by loving ash harder. by insisting that yut-lung won’t ever understand, but that he will stay by ash’s side. that they understand that they both care for each other. yut-lung kidnaps him after ash is stabbed and reported dead, and eiji refuses to stay put. tries to escape many times, until he finally does. 

and when he does, yut-lung says that he’s just decided that he will be ash’s enemy, for as long as eiji is his only weak point. this is just a thinly-veiled attempt to make eiji leave ash, because eiji’s presence threatens yut-lung’s entire delicately-balanced view of himself. 

so yut-lung’s plan to get blanca to blackmail ash via eiji? meant to prove that eiji is nothing more than a weakness. really, he has no need to force ash back to golzine--he’s gotten his revenge, he could have done it without golzine’s involvement, he didn’t have to do this--but to him, it’s necessary to prove that he was right all along, that eiji is ash’s weakness and not an asset, that having eiji around was a detriment and he was right.

because if he’s wrong, it means he could have been healing, could have been loved, could have been less alone... and he wasn’t.

so yut-lung decides that ash has to fall back into hell in order to make himself feel secure in his own previously-established patterns of thought. unfortunately for him, eiji brings people together--as eiji is wont to do, like yut-lung said in ep14--to rescue ash, and turns everything on its head again.

this is why he goes to the museum to attempt to dupe golzine. it’s not really about ash. it’s about his view of himself, and the threat to that that eiji poses.

eiji is the real antagonist to yut-lung’s protagonist. ash is someone he puts on a pedestal and sees as a mirror of himself, and while ash is important to his story, eiji is the one who primarily acts in contention to yut-lung. he’s the one who thwarts so many of yut-lung’s plans, who tells him he’s wrong, who tries to stand in his way. 

overall, the main villain in yut-lung’s story is his own trauma. he developed many irrational thought patterns as ways to cope with what happened to him while he dealt with it alone, and wound up projecting them onto ash and eiji’s relationship (honestly, in a way blanca did as well, but that’s an essay for another day). however, within the bounds of that projection, eiji shows much more active opposition to him than ash.

[norisquared]

Love your blog! I wanted to discuss Yut Lung. I find them highly toxic and just a bad person but people in the fandom seems to be fond of them. Can you help me see what others see and not hate Yut Lung? Or do you also find them to be an asshole? Thoughts?

of course! personally when bf first released i found him one of my favourites - not because of him or anything, he’s definitely an asshole, but because of his character. 

i love that he’s a narrative foil for ash: they grew up with similar backgrounds, they both rely on what they’ve learnt over the years as tools to get their way, and are a similar age. the main difference is that ash has eiji, someone who’s there for him no matter what, proved time and time again over the series. 

yut lung has no one, especially at first - even when blanca enters the scene, he’s more focused on ash than yue, and sing is a tentative, can we even say friend? one key difference sets both of them apart, and it’s interesting to think that ash very well could’ve turned out like yue - one of the main antagonists - if it weren’t for eiji. 

personally, i think the fandom likes him because despite being so cruel towards eiji, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic, especially after his motives and backstory is revealed. 

the parallels between him and ash are very prominent - i don’t remember if they’re a theme in bf or not, but they are there. i think it’s also the reason yue&eiji is such a popular friendship in fics. he’s a very lonely character, in the end, and if had had someone like eiji, there could’ve been a real chance at redemption.

all this doesn’t excuse his actions and frankly he is a bit of a petty brat, but it does explain it.

in the end, it’s perfectly fine to not like a popular character! they’re all just fictional and i doubt yut lung would be offended, since he’s not real >:)

tl;dr - yeah he’s an asshole but he’s an asshole that kinda makes you feel sorry for him. also his hair + fashion sense is pretty neat

[ssaphxc]

Why Banana Fish’s ending was really a happy ending:

This is going to be a rant about banana fish and especially its ending and also some elements from Yasha so MAJOR SPOILER WARNING for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet... RUN!

And then possibly go watch it bc its a masterpiece.

Ok so now that it’s just us people who’ve been traumatized by the ending, you may be thinking I’m crazy, but that’s okay, just let me explain; the first thing I wanna discuss is why most people found it so much sadder than your usual main character death.

This is because Ash hadn’t completed his narrative arc in almost any way if not by getting revenge on Dino (and even then by the end he’d lost so much he just wanted it to be over and didn’t really care about being the one to kill him).

But he’s not the only one: observing all the characters, were they were at the beginning of the anime and where they are at the end, one can notice that there have been almost no significative changes in their character arc. Eiji comes back to Japan, to his normal and quiet life, Yut Lung continues not opening up to anyone and dies assassinated not much later (as we find out in Yoshida’s sequel manga Yasha), Sing goes on with his life as a boss, Blanca retires as planned and so on.

What’s really depressing (at least to me) isn’t just that Ash died, it’s that he died in vain. He dies and we find out that he was right all along: he’s far too deep into this world of violence and death and much like the frozen leopard in The Snows of Kilimanjaro he looks down to where he started and realizes there is no point in even trying to go back.

One of the elements that really broke me is the librarian’s comment in seeing him dead, who thinks he’s sleeping, serene, and comments “oh, must be a nice dream.”

That, to me, is a perfect summary of the whole series and especially of Ash and Eiji’s relationship: a nice dream between the nightmares that are Ash’s whole life at this point. A nice dream, yes, but still a dream nonetheless, made with time stolen to a could-have-been life that was never really his.

However I believe that there is a also a happier, less fatalistic moral to the story, and this is shown by Yut Lung’s death and the end of his character arc more in general. This may sound nonsensical at first, but bear with me: as I said before the end is pretty much the same as the beginning, but there is a huge difference between Yut Lung’s final scene and the way he dies off-screen, alone, in the comfort of his own house and Ash’s death. They both die the way one would expect them to die: alone, of violent desrh, killed by someone for revenge or power play. But there is a crucial difference.

Because as clever as the leopard metaphor is, it’s inaccurate, since Ash is not a beast as Yut Lung, Dino, Blanca and many other character think, he is a living, breathing (well not anymore lolz) human and that time spent with Eiji changed him for the better, whilst Yut Lung (as far as we know) never understood that and died like he had lived: bitter, alone and filled with hatred.

In a world where changing our destiny is impossible the only way we can influence our lives is with the connections we make and that’s why Ash dying quietly in a library, knowing that he is loved, is not only a happy ending but the only happy ending he could have ever aspired to.

[cosmicjoke]

Ash and others perception of him:

This is gonna get long, and I keep amending it, sorry.  It’s difficult for me to work out what I’m trying to say, but here it goes.

One of the things I find most interesting about Banana Fish is the recurring theme throughout of what the other characters think of and how they perceive Ash, and how, almost all of them to the letter are completely wrong.  All, of course, with the very notable exception of Eiji.

Almost everyone speaks about Ash as if he’s some sort of otherworldly being. They often use terms such as “devil” or “Satan”, or “demon”, or “angel” when talking about him.  This occurs with Dino, Yut-Lung, Blanca, Foxx, and any number of other characters.  Even Ash’s friends, like Shorter, Sing, Cain, and his gang, talk about him like he’s almost inhuman.  And, more important still, there seems to be an across the board notion between all of the former characters that Ash will eventually, one day, become like them.  That he’ll become a monster.  A “Prince of Darkness”.  There’s even a notion among readers/viewers of Banana Fish that seems to buy into this notion.  That without Eiji and his influence, Ash would eventually succumb to the dark side, as it were.

But I think it’s something a little different than that.  Because, deep down, that isn’t who Ash is.  It isn’t what he has inside him.  Ash never cared about money, or power, or control.  He never had the desire or wish to dominate people, the way all of his abusers wanted to dominate him, and control him.  Despite the perceptions and beliefs of all of these characters regarding him as this incredibly dangerous, wild beast, what Ash actually is, is just a young kid who’s been horrifically abused and who is struggling every moment of every day simply to survive.  And the only one who seems to ever really understand this about him, the only one who ever really sees this about him, is Eiji.  Eiji even has that moment of internal dialog where he’s talking about how Ash has had to put on this facade of an ice cold heart, but that he knows it’s only, in reality, a defense mechanism.  To keep himself from losing his mind.  To keep others away from him because he’s been repeatedly hurt and betrayed by everyone in his life, especially adults.  To simply keep himself alive.  Ash shuts down when he kills, not because he doesn’t feel anything, as he keeps accusing himself of, but because he feels too much.  The very act of killing is so horrific to him, he’s naturally so repulsed by it, that he’s had to learn to shut off his own emotions in order to simply survive.  We know that killing has always been a terrible thing in Ash’s mind from Dino’s own words, near the beginning of the story, when he’s talking to Ash, and he reminds him about how he used to always cry with every “job” Dino gave him.  One can easily infer from this that he’s talking about forcing Ash to take out hits on people, to kill people.  Ash cried about it then because he hadn’t yet learned to detach himself from the act for his own sanity.  Of course, as this continued, as Ash was made to do more and more terrible things to survive his own, horrific situation, it gradually and consistently eroded away at his own self-esteem, until we see how he regards himself throughout the course of the story.  His deep self-loathing and disgust at himself.  The tragic irony, of course, is that Ash’s own self-hatred is proof in itself of his good heart. He hates himself for killing because it’s always been something he understood to be bad, to be wrong.  He’s never had a problem understanding the nature of killing.  He’s never had difficulty understanding what it is, or what it means to to kill.  He’s never had a lack of empathy or sympathy.  He was never a sociopath, or a psychopath.  He doesn’t care what the reasons for it are, or that he’s justified in it.  It still tortures him, to know that he’s taken a life.  It haunts him and eats away at him in the worst ways.

Ash relaxes around Eiji, because Eiji is the only one who knows that Ash isn’t this wild, out of control, vicious animal that everyone else seems to think he is. He knows that the cold, frightening facade he puts up is just that.  A mask, used to protect himself and those he cares about.  And because he knows that about Ash, he treats him just like a regular boy, which is all Ash has ever wanted.

The thing about this notion that Ash would become like Dino, or Yut-Lung, or even Blanca if Eiji hadn’t come into his life is, I think, wrong.  Eiji doesn’t give Ash his humanity.  Eiji gives Ash a sense of normalcy and a sense of what it’s like to be treated like a normal kid.  He makes him feel human, because he treats him like he’s human.  But even before Ash really knows Eiji, we see how deeply he cares about and is willing to sacrifice for those he loves.  When he goes after Skip after he gets abducted, and willingly gives himself up to Arthur and Marvin.  We see he’s formed deep and loving connections to people, like Skip, and Shorter and of course his brother Griff.  We see him show genuine, anguished emotion over all of them when they’re killed.  He cared about them deeply, and it wrecked him when they died through their association with him. That isn’t the reaction of a monster.  That’s the reaction of a human being who’s lost someone they love.  It hurts him to his core.

We see him go out of his way to spare the members of his gang who moved against him by working for Dino, telling them to get lost instead of shooting them. He spared Arthur even, during their turf war, when he took over all of Arthur’s gangs.  All of those acts of mercy eventually came back to bite Ash, because all of those people then turned around and betrayed him and tried to kill him.  And that really informs the one moment in Banana Fish in which Ash’s morality seems to waver somewhat, when he’s taking out members of Arthur’s gang in systematic fashion.  Even during this point in the story, Ash gives those guys ever chance to save their own lives by telling his own gang to get the word out that if they skip town, no one will come after them.  Ash and his crew will leave them alone, as long as they don’t join forces with Arthur against him.  After that, those who fail to heed his warning or accept his leniency, yeah, Ash goes after them without mercy.  But that, again, ties back into what we see earlier, with how Ash’s previous acts of mercy towards Arthur and others resulted in the situation he then found himself in.  The fight he has with Eiji, when Ash screams at him that if he shows any of Arthur’s gang mercy, they’ll just kill him, is founded in Ash’s own, brutal experiences.  He knows that if he lets those guys go who beg for their lives, that they’ll just run back to Arthur, regroup, and attack Ash and his crew again, not only risking Ash’s life then, but those who have placed their trust in him as their leader.  Ash’s actions here, as harsh and merciless as they may seem, are actually based on his own past experiences and logic.  He isn’t killing Arthur’s gang because he wants to.  Or because he’s trying to gain power.  Or because he thinks it’s fun.  He’s doing it because past experience tells him if he doesn’t, him and those who follow him are going to pay the heavy price of their lives.  It’s not even really revenge for Shorter’s death.  It’s defense through offense, protecting the lives of himself and his gang because he’s been forced to take action by Arthur’s refusal to leave him alone.  Even then, Ash is willing and wants to simply fight Arthur one on one to end the war, so no one else has to die.  He’s willing and even expects to die himself in order to save the lives of not only his gang, but Arthur’s gang.  That shows a strong moral conscience.  That shows goodness of heart.  It’s only again when Arthur betrays him and has his entire crew try to gun Ash down in the subway that Ash kills the rest of them. That’s pure self-defense.

Beyond that point in the story, Ash, from beginning to end, constantly displays a deep and powerful moral conscience, constantly going out of his way to help others, and tries very, very hard never to hurt or kill anyone he doesn’t absolutely have to.  We see Ash consistently unable to turn away when someone he knows or cares about is in danger, like Max and Ibe when they get captured in the mental facility Ash had just fought tooth and nail to escape from, literally running back into the line of fire to rescue them, directly putting himself in danger in order to help them.  He’s constantly pushing other characters out of the way of gun fire, putting himself instead in the line of it.  That’s a knee jerk reaction.  It’s just what he does naturally.  The same as Eiji.  He’s constantly into firefights in order to lead others away to safety, sacrificing himself physically to rescue others, sacrificing his own privacy and mental well-being for the cause of others, when he tells Max to use the photo’s of him being molested as a child to spare the other kids who’ve been through the same thing.  Ash only kills either in self-defense, or in defense of those he loves and cares about.  Even in heat of the moment situations, like when members of Sing’s crew shoot Eiji and try to kill him and Ash, even when Ash seems to have lost it, repeatedly shooting their already dead bodies, when Lao comes at him with a gun, Ash doesn’t kill him. He has the presence of mind to simply shoot Lao in the hand.  He isn’t ever an out of control wild animal.  That’s just what people have made Ash believe about himself, which is one of the most tragic aspects about him.  That he’s been manipulated into seeing himself as a monster, when he never was.  When Lao screams “He’s not human, he’s a monster!”, Ash doesn’t even defend himself. He agrees with it, even though it’s so blatantly untrue.  That shows the ravages on Ash’s mental and emotional state from the abuse he’s suffered.  But even with all of that, he never became like those who abused him.  He never tried to hurt anyone who didn’t try to hurt him first.  By contrast, everyone who claims Ash is some sort of demon, everyone who claims him to be this inhuman monster, all themselves tried to hurt Ash and those he cared about when he himself had never done anything to them.  Ash never did anything to Dino, or Yut-Lung, or Foxx, or any of those people.  He never went after any of them until they went after him first, or those he cared for.  Even towards those who failed him so miserably and set him on the path he ended up on, like his father, Ash showed incredible compassion and care towards, despite the awful way James treated him.  When Ash had every right to hate him.  But he didn’t, and in fact was immensely distressed when James was shot.

As an example of how intrinsically Ash differs from the other characters who deem him a monster or a demon, I think comparing him to the character who most resembles him is a good case in point.  That of course is Yut-Lung.  Yut-Lung suffered his own horrific abuses and cruelties at the hands of the people who were meant to care for him, namely of course his brothers.  And understandably, he wanted and was justified in taking revenge on them for what they did to him and his mother.  But here’s where he and Ash diverge from each other.  Yut-Lung has in him a capacity for deep pettiness, jealousy, and resentment.  Failings which he acts on again and again throughout the course of the story, without hesitation, and failings which Ash himself never displays even the barest hint of, despite having suffered similar and even worse abuses in his life.  Yut-Lung tries with absolute commitment to kill Eiji, over and over, simply because he can’t bear the idea that somebody actually loves Ash.  He can’t bear to see Ash have even a little happiness, in a life of otherwise complete sadness and pain, because he himself doesn’t have it.  He can’t stand the idea that Ash might find “redemption” through love.  And so he tries with all of his considerable power to take it away from Ash.  It’s the definition of pettiness and cruelty, which is something Ash, even in his darkest moments, never showed a capacity for.  I don’t think Ash ever had it in him to be so ugly and unkind and vicious.  He can be manipulative, of course.  But he only ever used those manipulative abilities to defend himself and others.  He never used them to hurt anybody who hadn’t first hurt him or those he cared about, or at least tried.  He never tried to hurt someone simply because they had something he didn’t.  He never tried to take something away from someone simply because he didn’t have it too.  He never resented anyone for having a better life than him, or for having love when all he had was pain.  And therein lies the difference between someone like Ash and Yut-Lung, and it means everything.  

Ash sees himself as a monster because everyone’s always told him he is, those people projecting their own monstrosity and ugliness onto him.  Trying to twist him into what they are, trying to force him into a position where he has no choice but to do terrible things in order to survive.  They try to corrupt him because they themselves are corrupted and cruel.  But somehow, despite all the horror of Ash’s life, he never becomes like that.  He never loses that part of himself that recoils at violence and abuse, that agonizes over having to make the decisions he has to to survive.  He never becomes petty, or cruel, or hateful.  He never becomes unable to love.  Like Ibe says about him “He’s such a good kid.  He’s just such a good kid.”.  I think Ash is able to resist becoming like the monsters who abused him because he had in him an innate goodness.  I think Eiji could see that in him from the start, when everyone else could only see a savage animal, or a beautiful commodity.  It’s also why I think Eiji was so profoundly drawn to Ash, because he could see that goodness in him from the start, and why he had the opposite feeling and reaction toward Yut-Lung, because he saw the pettiness and cruelty in him.  It’s why there were so many people who deeply cared about Ash.  Eiji, and Max and Skip and Shorter, and Sing, and his entire gang, and Cain, and why someone like Yut-Lung didn’t really have anyone who cared about him, except I suppose Blanca and Sing to an extent, but not with nearly the level of real love and respect Ash garnered.  Not with nearly the same loyalty.  And that’s also why both Sing and Blanca sided with Ash eventually, against Yut-Lung. As deep a capacity for cruelty and petty envy as Yut-Lung had, Ash had an equal capacity for kindness and love.  He just doesn’t realize it about himself because he’s been manipulated into thinking the opposite, and because he was so savagely abused and put into such nightmarish circumstances, that he had to do awful things just to keep living.  And that’s a massive tragedy.  That Ash is the only one who won’t forgive himself for having to do the things he’s done, despite the very real and justified reasons for those actions, is further testament to the goodness in his heart.  Ash can’t and won’t give himself a break, can’t and won’t forgive himself for it, even as everyone around him tells him he should.  Because Ash always was and always would have been a good kid, with a good heart, who understood from the beginning the awful reality and seriousness of taking another life.  He understood that in a way Dino and Yut-Lung and even Blanca never did.  Those things were always going to weight him heavily down with awful, crushing guilt and remorse.  He hated himself for having done it, and saw himself as worthless because of it.  He was never what the others thought of him as.  He was never this “prince of darkness”, never this demon, or devil.  He was just a young boy trying desperately to survive.

It’s Eiji who sees that about Ash, where everyone else fails to.  Even Shorter doesn’t understand in the beginning of the story why Ash lets those guys go who tried to kill him.  Even Shorter, I don’t think, understands the toll that killing takes on Ash.  It’s Eiji, and only Eiji, who sees Ash for who he really is.  It’s why he’s the only one Ash can actually be himself around.  The only one who LETS Ash be himself.  Why it’s only around Eiji that we see Ash really able to genuinely smile, and relax, and let down his guard.  Because he knows Eiji isn’t going to try and make him into something he’s not, doesn’t see him as something he’s not, and isn’t going to try and get something from him.  Who isn’t going to try and control him, or mold him into what they want him to be, or what they think he should be.  He understands why Ash acts the way he does, why he does the things he does, and he doesn’t judge him or condemn him for it.  He accepts it, and tries to help Ash forgive himself and love himself.

Even without Eiji coming into his life, I don’t think Ash ever would have become like Dino, Yut-Lung, Foxx or Blanca.  I don’t think Ash ever had the capacity to become a monster like them.  His heart was always too big, and he always cared too much, felt too much, to become that.  What Eiji did give Ash, which Ash never had before, was the knowledge of what it is to be loved.  He gave Ash a sense of what it was to be treated like a human being, not an object to be admired, or a weapon to be used.  He acknowledged that Ash had feelings. That he had emotions and thoughts of his own.  He treated him like he MATTERED.  He didn’t make Ash human, because Ash was always human.  He didn’t give Ash morality, because Ash always had morality.  But he was the only one who saw those things about Ash, where everyone else failed to, even Ash himself. And because he could see that about Ash, he was the only one who ever made Ash feel like a normal boy.  The only one who ever made Ash feel like who he really was.  The only one who ever allowed Ash to BE who he really was.

[fairydust-stuff]

Enemy Yut Lung & Eiji one shot: Warning  this one is not romantic or soft plantonic friends.

“ I’ve decided i’m going to be Ash Lynx’s enemy,” Yut Lung casually states.

Eiji freezes the implications of this statement slowly seeping into his brain. What the hell was this guys problem? He said he was just like Ash if that was the case why did he want to make his life harder?

At first Eiji had viewed Ash as untouchable, a powerful shonen hero like the ones from his childhood heroically fighting against evil men who wanted to control him but after that night. Eiji had seen the look of devastation on Ash’s face as he put a bullet in Shorter Wong’s brain. Even covered in the blood of his enemies ,Ash had such a shattered look about him.

The nights that followed were full of raw howls and heaving sobs as Eiji soothed Ash Lynx back to sleep. By day his gang members cowered from his wraith since the slightest thing they did seemed to set him off.

He cann’t handle anymore he’s been brutalized for far too long and as much as Eiji wished he was like those magically girl characters who made everything all right. He couldn’t just reach inside and rewire Ash’s brain or fix his heart with gentle fingers. All the love in the world could not repair the damage Golzine had inflicted.

Yut Lung had the means to tear what was left of Ash’s heart straight from his chest and crush it under his heel. Which is why Eiji said what he did next.

“ If your Ash’s enemy then i’ll be yours!” Eiji proclaimed defiantly.

Yut Lung’s usual hateful mocking expression was replaced by pure shock. Then he laughs.

“ Very well if you're my enemy” Yut Lung motions to the gun in Eiji’s hand and raises a delicate eyebrow as if to say get on with it.

Eiji raises the gun and points it at the other boy with one bullet and he can get rid of one more problem for Ash, but something about the other boy’s eyes makes him hesitate. There’s an uncomfortable familiar vibe to them that unnerves him and makes Eiji unable to pull the trigger and end things. Also killing an unarmed person, even one as vile as Yut Lung still isn’t right. It goes against everything he’s been taught.

“ Disgraceful, how can you be my greatest enemy if you cann’t even pull the trigger?” Yut Lung looks at him as if he’s a disappointing liar who cheated him.

Eiji’s plan was too escape and run directly to save Ash. he was just about to get back to that plan. When the younger boy who had looked pissed when he saw Eiji in the elevator shows up and tackles Eiji to the ground.

“ You ok?” he asks Yut Lung softly

“ I’m fine!” Yut Lung brushing the boy's concern away. “ Just get him back to his room” he snapped with irritation…

Eiji threw himself upon Yut Lung Lee who moved swiftly out of the way, he fell and smacked his head on the door.

“ Is this your way of persuading me you’ll be a good enemy or a court jester?” Yut Lung said with some amusement.

“ How did you know?” Eiji asked rubbing his head

“ I’m not the person to fall for the same trick twice” Yut Lung said …

Eiji shoves his dinner into the face of Yut Lungs servant and hurls the plate at him, the other boy dodges.

“ I’ll have another plate brought up for you, if you toss this one you can go to bed hungry” The younger boy warns with a pleasant smile…

“ How the hell did he get a lighter!” Yut Lung exclaimed furiously using expensive cloth to douse the flames to save his precious plants as the guards restrained a smirking Eiji...

“ Fine you can be my enemy, I certainly hate you enough” Yut Lung spat.

“ Great now please free me so i can save Ash” Eiji said.

“ No, though you have managed to irritate me, your technique is sloppy and unrefined. If you're going to be my enemy, you're going to become worthy of that title” Yut Lung makes a motion to his mafia goons who drag and blindfold Eiji when they take it off he sees he’s in an underground room.

“ Lets start with your breathing” Yut Lung states.

“ breathing?” Eiji demands

“ Its loud i can hear you coming, we need to change that” Yut Lung says simply “ But i need to” the mafia heir cuts him off “ I’ll keep an eye on the Ash situation” …

“ What? you have a shooting range on your estate?” Eiji exclaims looking at the fancy targets one of Yut Lung’s guys hands the boy a gun.

“ You should see the interrogation room in the basement” Yut Lung says sardonically and lines up his weapon and takes aim bam bam bam! Three straight shots in a row.

“ I cann’t tell if your fucking with me” Eiji said with a scowl.

“ Here” Yut Lung hands him a gun. Eiji frowns, forgive me Ash but i’m doing this to save you. He takes a few shots.

“ Disappointing” Yut Lung states.

“ What are you talking about i got half of them” Eiji argues.

“ Half isn’t good enough in a shoot out with me and my men” Yut Lung shot back. “ Lets talk about your shooting stance”

“ Ash showed me this!” Eiji argues.

“ What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone” Yut Lung informed him. “ Lets try some different stances and see if we can find one, That works better for you”

Eiji placed his arms and legs where Yut lung told him “ This is weaver stance its a boxer type, it might work better. You have a wider frame, Ash is more slender in build.”

It was surreal Eiji thought being taught by the one person he couldn’t stand who actually had some good advice. He found the second time he actually hit more of his targets. Yut Lung made him practice until almost nightfall...

Eiji found his days of being a captive were now loaded with lessons every day he was led blindfolded to some obscure location of the house. Where Yut Lung would instruct him on one topic or another...

“ Again” Yut Lung commands as Eiji pulls yet another acupuncture needle from his body. He was just glad they were clean; he still had awful memories of suddenly blacking out from whatever horrible substance the mafia heir put in those things.

Though he could do without Yut Lungs constant criticisms which made him want to curl in a corner and cry and took him back to his school days of struggling to balance athletics and still maintain perfect scores on every test. Eiji told himself at least the mafia heir wasn’t focused on Ash. Besides it was the same pressures he grew up with and this time he was determined not to crack…

A month later and Eiji was sitting at the dining room table apparently after no instances for a couple of weeks and Yut Lung had loosened his restrictions. Though he was still being lead to and tied to the table with one hand.

The boy who recaptured him who Eiji learned was called Sing Soo Ling was loading up and gobbling down what appeared to be multiple dishes.

“ You can at least use a napkin. I'm sure the Wong’s didn’t raise you to be a pig” Yut Lung remarks.

Sing responds by opening his mouth and giving the other boy a view of his chewed food. Yut Lung makes a soft sound of disgust as he delicately dabbles at his mouth. He turns to Eiji “ You made some slight improvements” he remarks. Coming from Yut Lung, it's almost a complement.

“ Are you seriously training this guy to be your enemy?” Sing demands incredulously

“ Honestly he wasn’t even my first choice” Yut Lung responds.

“ You ritch types are weird” the fourteen year old said.

“ i don’t go around with something called dragon fang” Yut Lung retorted.

“ Maybe if you did, you’d get taken hostage less!” Sing responded.

“ He got the jump on me. How is that my fault?” Yut Lung exclaims

Eiji watches incredulously as the two of them get into a pointless argument going back and forth there’s no heat to it really, rather a sense of comfort. Its the kind of argument he might have with his younger sister. Its just odd seeing this casual behavior from Yut Lung Lee of all people.

“ So Eiji has this guy dangled you over a snake pit yet?” Sing asks cheerfully

“ Where did you hear something so ridiculous?” Yut Lung complains

“ Servant gossip” Sing replies.

“ They’ve gotten chattier since my brothers illness” Yut Lung scowls.

“ Come on Yue don’t be so uptight” Sing coaxes

“ What’s the point of having a staff if they don’t know how to stay quiet” the mafia heir points out.

“ Their not spilling any secrets, just making up odd stories ” Sing pointed out.

“ If i hear one word of actual Lee businesses pass anyone's lips…” Yut Lung was interrupted by the entrance of a servant girl who whispered something in his ear.

“ What!” Yut Lung hurled one of the dishes at the wall.

“ Getting hysterical again!” Sing teased him.

“ Shut up!” Yut lung got up “ No one can seem to find Ash”...

Eiji sits in his room Yut Lung is too off kilter to continue his training. Sing gives him updates saying that the mafia heir spends a lot of time sending his people out, waiting by the phone and has even headed out a few times himself. It worries him that Yut Lung hasn’t actually given up on Ash. So he does push ups and pull ups every day to keep in shape. Eiji practices the stealth techniques Yut Lung showed him. He steals a pen so he can practice writing the codes on the walls he was taught to decipher and study. He has Sing bring him firearms so he can practice taking them apart and putting them back together.

Then Yut Lung visits him a few days later“ We found Ash” Eiji watches all of the tension from the past few days vanish from him with those three words. This guy was actually concerned for Ash?

“ You really are devoted to becoming my enemy” Yut Lung comments tracing codes on the walls with astonishment.

“ Ash?” Eiji asked

“ He escaped from one of Dino Golzine’s secret government funded organizations ” Yut Lung looks bothered like this is something he hadn’t known about. “ He’s been experimenting on criminals with Banana Fish” …

Its one more day then he’ll finally see Ash and the others again. “ Now before our final lesson there’s someone i want you to meet” Yut Lung leads Eiji into a room down the hall and opens the door. He gasps there’s a grown man with eyes like Shorter’s drooling on himself! He groans at Yut Lung who touches his cheek lightly.

“ Eiji may i introduce Hua Lung my older brother”

“ You used that horrible drug on him!” Eiji backs up.

Its wrong, even worse is the way Yut Lung pulls his living human puppet into an affectionate embrace, his eyes gleaming with hate.

“ Hua Lung was my former enemy” the younger boy pauses. “ Tomorrow i’ll be giving you back to Ash”

Eiji stares stunned at how his arms are still wrapped so tenderly around the one who he had so thoroughly destroyed.

“ Don’t look so surprised” Yut Lung says, misunderstanding the reason for his reaction.

“ I only wanted to deliver Ash to Golzine to force him to be my enemy” Yut Lung looked Eiji in the eyes over the shoulder of his zombie brother. “ Now you are my worst enemy, who will someday destroy me”...

“ Eiji!” Ash embraces him tightly as if he never wants to let him go. Eiji manages to persuade Ash, Yut Lung was just giving him a safe place to stay. The blond would go ballistic if he knew the truth.

Their just about to go then Yut Lung pulls him into a hug Eiji’s body goes entirely stiff he feels the softness of the other boys hands on his skin his voice in his ear like a lovers caress “ Goodbye for now, Eiji”

then the hands are gone his body feels chilled as he remembers exactly who else was embraced with such vindictive tenderness.

“ Eiji .what’s wrong?” Ash asked

“ Yes Big Brother Eiji are you cold?” Yut Lung asks innocently.

Eiji suddenly feels the full weight of the obligation he’s agreed to pressing down on him. How is he supposed to look at those oddly familiar eyes and manage to close them forever? But if he doesn't, well Eiji doesn’t want to think about it.

[lordsister]

What She Meant To Him (Yut-Lung Lee x Reader)

A/N: I was in the mood to write angst and this is what happened.

I do not own Banana Fish or any of its characters. I do, however, own the plot of this fanfic.

My ko-fi: ko-fi.com/lordsister

He realizes now, what Eiji meant to Ash.

Yut-Lung blames himself for this. He shouldn't have pushed you away and left you unprotected. He should've held you close and never let go, his precious, irreplaceable (y/n). But it was much too late for him to rethink his actions.

The truth was he'd been terrified by how strongly he felt for you, someone wonderful and beautiful and actually normal who'd unsuspectingly walked into his life and undeservingly paid the price for it. Yut-Lung should've been honest with you, told you what kind of monster he was, but he hadn't wanted to. He told himself that it was because you'd move on with your life, move on from him, soon enough, but that was a lie. It was really because he wanted to keep you by his side for as long as he could and he knew that if he told you you'd probably run away screaming. For the first time in his life, Yut-Lung Lee had found someone who his heart beat for, someone he wanted to share his secrets with and hold close late at night, and it scared him more than anything.

So he did what he did best. He said horrible things to you, threatened to do horrible things to you that made the bile rise in his throat, and at the end of it all he lost you, just as he had intended. The worst part was that as you walked away from him, tears streaming down your face, he actually had the nerve to feel regretful.

This was what he wanted, wasn't it? He was disgusted with himself, both for feeling this way and for hurting you.

It was just like him, to do something like this, to push away the one good thing in his miserable life. Your presence was like being bathed in gentle morning sunlight after a long night, except you weren't here anymore and the darkness had returned, more lonely and cold than before.

At least you were safe now, he'd thought, bitterly trying to find a pro to your leaving him as he drowned his sorrows in expensive wine. But even that had turned out to be untrue, leading to his current position standing outside a uniform hospital door, your name scribbled on a temporary placard on the wall. By the time he'd let you go it was already too late, one of his many enemies had already found out about you, despite his best efforts to keep you a secret. When Yut-Lung had woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, a phantom knife lodged between his ribs, he'd immediately known that something had happened to you.

He remembered ordering his men to find you and bring whoever it was that had hurt you to his feet. He remembered the sting of broken glass slicing his hands as he destroyed everything in sight in a fit of rage. He remembered putting bullet after bullet after bullet into the body of the man who had harmed you, his blood pooling across the ornate oriental carpet. He didn't remember how he had gotten to the hospital and found your room.

Why was he even here? It was his fault you had nearly died. Being with him had immediately made you a target. He might as well have painted a bull's eye on your back. What could he possibly say to you that would make things better? The best he could do now was leave you alone, cut himself off from you completely.

But he doesn't want to. Selfish as he is, he wants to keep you by his side, the one person who actually made his life bearable. It's more than he deserves and he knows it.

Funny that as he's standing here, longing for you with every breath he takes, Ash Lynx and Eiji Okumura are what come to mind. The sheer force of realization makes his chest cave and his heart squeeze painfully. He never understood why Ash cared so much for the Japanese boy until now. It was because Eiji was a balm to everything horrible, someone he could talk to without fear, a center of gravity his tortured soul could rely on no matter what happened, and the same was true for you when it came to Yut-Lung. That's what Eiji meant to Ash, and that's what you mean to him.

And just like Ash did, he's going to have to let you go to keep you safe.

It's simply too dangerous to be around him. After everything he had survived and experienced, your pain is the one thing he can't bear. For once in his life, he'd found someone he cared about more than himself and if it meant you could live a happy, normal, safe life he would readily, but not gladly, let your hand slip from his.

All he wants now is to speak with you, see you, one more time, just one last interaction to hold onto for the rest of his life. But should he? Does he even dare to after what happened? Further, Yut-Lung had the impression that the moment he walked into that room and saw you, he'd lose all resolve to let you go. Even so...just one last time. One more time and then he'd be gone.

Quietly pushing the door open, his eyes land on your sleeping form. Part of him wants to wake you up so he can look into the eyes he dreams about, but he knows you'd probably only look at him with anger and hurt now instead of love, so he settles for your peaceful face. His heart beats painfully in his chest at the realization of what he had and what he lost and for the first time in his life, he prays.

Yut-Lung prays for your safety and happiness, first and foremost, and then he prays that the heartbreak he feels now never leaves so he'll never forget what you meant to him.

[transgayhamlet-blog]

finished banana fish! so here are some of my thoughts on it (obv spoilers)!!! CW // trauma, abuse, mentions of character death!! //

god wow. even tho i spoiled it for myself at the end (had a vague sense of what was gonna happen anyway), it still wrenched my heart out in the most tender way. i have a lot of trouble crying, especially when it comes to things affecting me. usually only angst in fan fiction can get a few tears out of me (i am not bragging about this. this isn’t a good thing to have, it’s a symptom of trauma and it’s not edgy or cool! i’m working on letting myself be more emotional but it’s a work in progress.) so to have several moments in this anime that caused me to straight up sob is revolutionary.

all of the dynamics between the characters were very real and fleshed out, to me at least. ash’s reactions were ones that i could so closely relate to that it hurt. i’m not used to relating to characters because i’m used to not reacting to things that hurt me, unless it involves people i love. so i totally get switching between these two extremes. i get the scene where ibe sees ash enjoying his time with eiji just for ash to be closed off at the sight of an adult. i get it. i understand it so well and i don’t ever see media that shows this well. obviously, the anime demonizes both ash and yut lung (which is understandable to an extent considering it revolves around a mind controlling drug and other terrible things, but still) but it doesn’t make them feel like villains. at least, not to me. seeing them hate themselves in their own ways allowed me to have sympathy for myself, because i could see ash blaming himself for things that happened to him that weren’t his fault. and then, flipping that emotion towards him back on me changed my mindset on myself a bit. they deserved to be happy. all of them (not all of them, yknow what i mean). and so do i. i didn’t need to go thru all that just to learn to be strong. nobody deserves that.

it also made me feel less terrible about hating my abusers. even tho my situation isn’t as extreme as ash’s or yut lung’s, it’s still similar in many aspects. nobody ever discourages ash’s anger and hate towards golzine or others. and even tho that seems rlly simple, it’s not something u get very easily. i disrupt my family’s dynamic because i finally allow myself to be angry, rightfully so, at my abusers. so seeing people support ash in that sense is very comforting.

lastly, although i wish ash didn’t die at the end, i think it did comfort a part of me. he should’ve had the chance to live peacefully and happily. because so many of us don’t get that. so many is those abused or traumatized don’t escape it. and it hurts. we aren’t meant to be martyrs or symbols or romanticized. but. he did seem at peace. he wasn’t paralyzed by fear or killed by an abuser. lao had his reasons, even though it was misunderstood. and my one wish in life is to die calmly. to not be scared or worried or clutching at the last threads of life that i’ve tried so hard to escape from. he had more things to do, which is soemthing i fear, but i think we will always have things left unsaid no matter how much we prepare. i haven’t felt peace in a long tine, so seeing ash get it in his death is comforting. i’m just rambling at this point but i don’t know how else to describe it.

eiji. my baby. eiji. i have an eiji in my life. or had? maybe that’s another reason i relate to ash :( we broke up after i left for college, but she’s my eiji. in a life of darkness and bitter fury and turmoil, i found someone who looked last all that. who wasn’t fazed by the baggage i was so worried about deterring others with. who gave me hope, let me see that there are good people in the world. she didn’t save me. but she was a piece of light that i needed at the time. like ash, i didn’t think there were people out there willing to help and care for me without wanting something in return. but there are. and they’re worth it !!!

summary: banana fish is awesome and i loved it! obviously that’s just my opinion and it wasn’t perfect, but i just related to the experiences and feelings of ash, something i’m not used to doing with most media.

[bananafishmetas]

Ash and others perception of him:

cosmicjoke

This is gonna get long, and I keep amending it, sorry.  It’s difficult for me to work out what I’m trying to say, but here it goes.

One of the things I find most interesting about Banana Fish is the recurring theme throughout of what the other characters think of and how they perceive Ash, and how, almost all of them to the letter are completely wrong.  All, of course, with the very notable exception of Eiji.

Almost everyone speaks about Ash as if he’s some sort of otherworldly being. They often use terms such as “devil” or “Satan”, or “demon”, or “angel” when talking about him.  This occurs with Dino, Yut-Lung, Blanca, Foxx, and any number of other characters.  Even Ash’s friends, like Shorter, Sing, Cain, and his gang, talk about him like he’s almost inhuman.  And, more important still, there seems to be an across the board notion between all of the former characters that Ash will eventually, one day, become like them.  That he’ll become a monster.  A “Prince of Darkness”.  There’s even a notion among readers/viewers of Banana Fish that seems to buy into this notion.  That without Eiji and his influence, Ash would eventually succumb to the dark side, as it were.

But I think it’s something a little different than that.  Because, deep down, that isn’t who Ash is.  It isn’t what he has inside him.  Ash never cared about money, or power, or control.  He never had the desire or wish to dominate people, the way all of his abusers wanted to dominate him, and control him.  Despite the perceptions and beliefs of all of these characters regarding him as this incredibly dangerous, wild beast, what Ash actually is, is just a young kid who’s been horrifically abused and who is struggling every moment of every day simply to survive.  And the only one who seems to ever really understand this about him, the only one who ever really sees this about him, is Eiji.  Eiji even has that moment of internal dialog where he’s talking about how Ash has had to put on this facade of an ice cold heart, but that he knows it’s only, in reality, a defense mechanism.  To keep himself from losing his mind.  To keep others away from him because he’s been repeatedly hurt and betrayed by everyone in his life, especially adults.  To simply keep himself alive.  Ash shuts down when he kills, not because he doesn’t feel anything, as he keeps accusing himself of, but because he feels too much.  The very act of killing is so horrific to him, he’s naturally so repulsed by it, that he’s had to learn to shut off his own emotions in order to simply survive.  We know that killing has always been a terrible thing in Ash’s mind from Dino’s own words, near the beginning of the story, when he’s talking to Ash, and he reminds him about how he used to always cry with every “job” Dino gave him.  One can easily infer from this that he’s talking about forcing Ash to take out hits on people, to kill people.  Ash cried about it then because he hadn’t yet learned to detach himself from the act for his own sanity.  Of course, as this continued, as Ash was made to do more and more terrible things to survive his own, horrific situation, it gradually and consistently eroded away at his own self-esteem, until we see how he regards himself throughout the course of the story.  His deep self-loathing and disgust at himself.  The tragic irony, of course, is that Ash’s own self-hatred is proof in itself of his good heart. He hates himself for killing because it’s always been something he understood to be bad, to be wrong.  He’s never had a problem understanding the nature of killing.  He’s never had difficulty understanding what it is, or what it means to to kill.  He’s never had a lack of empathy or sympathy.  He was never a sociopath, or a psychopath.  He doesn’t care what the reasons for it are, or that he’s justified in it.  It still tortures him, to know that he’s taken a life.  It haunts him and eats away at him in the worst ways.

Ash relaxes around Eiji, because Eiji is the only one who knows that Ash isn’t this wild, out of control, vicious animal that everyone else seems to think he is. He knows that the cold, frightening facade he puts up is just that.  A mask, used to protect himself and those he cares about.  And because he knows that about Ash, he treats him just like a regular boy, which is all Ash has ever wanted.

The thing about this notion that Ash would become like Dino, or Yut-Lung, or even Blanca if Eiji hadn’t come into his life is, I think, wrong.  Eiji doesn’t give Ash his humanity.  Eiji gives Ash a sense of normalcy and a sense of what it’s like to be treated like a normal kid.  He makes him feel human, because he treats him like he’s human.  But even before Ash really knows Eiji, we see how deeply he cares about and is willing to sacrifice for those he loves.  When he goes after Skip after he gets abducted, and willingly gives himself up to Arthur and Marvin.  We see he’s formed deep and loving connections to people, like Skip, and Shorter and of course his brother Griff.  We see him show genuine, anguished emotion over all of them when they’re killed.  He cared about them deeply, and it wrecked him when they died through their association with him. That isn’t the reaction of a monster.  That’s the reaction of a human being who’s lost someone they love.  It hurts him to his core.

We see him go out of his way to spare the members of his gang who moved against him by working for Dino, telling them to get lost instead of shooting them. He spared Arthur even, during their turf war, when he took over all of Arthur’s gangs.  All of those acts of mercy eventually came back to bite Ash, because all of those people then turned around and betrayed him and tried to kill him.  And that really informs the one moment in Banana Fish in which Ash’s morality seems to waver somewhat, when he’s taking out members of Arthur’s gang in systematic fashion.  Even during this point in the story, Ash gives those guys ever chance to save their own lives by telling his own gang to get the word out that if they skip town, no one will come after them.  Ash and his crew will leave them alone, as long as they don’t join forces with Arthur against him.  After that, those who fail to heed his warning or accept his leniency, yeah, Ash goes after them without mercy.  But that, again, ties back into what we see earlier, with how Ash’s previous acts of mercy towards Arthur and others resulted in the situation he then found himself in.  The fight he has with Eiji, when Ash screams at him that if he shows any of Arthur’s gang mercy, they’ll just kill him, is founded in Ash’s own, brutal experiences.  He knows that if he lets those guys go who beg for their lives, that they’ll just run back to Arthur, regroup, and attack Ash and his crew again, not only risking Ash’s life then, but those who have placed their trust in him as their leader.  Ash’s actions here, as harsh and merciless as they may seem, are actually based on his own past experiences and logic.  He isn’t killing Arthur’s gang because he wants to.  Or because he’s trying to gain power.  Or because he thinks it’s fun.  He’s doing it because past experience tells him if he doesn’t, him and those who follow him are going to pay the heavy price of their lives.  It’s not even really revenge for Shorter’s death.  It’s defense through offense, protecting the lives of himself and his gang because he’s been forced to take action by Arthur’s refusal to leave him alone.  Even then, Ash is willing and wants to simply fight Arthur one on one to end the war, so no one else has to die.  He’s willing and even expects to die himself in order to save the lives of not only his gang, but Arthur’s gang.  That shows a strong moral conscience.  That shows goodness of heart.  It’s only again when Arthur betrays him and has his entire crew try to gun Ash down in the subway that Ash kills the rest of them. That’s pure self-defense.

Beyond that point in the story, Ash, from beginning to end, constantly displays a deep and powerful moral conscience, constantly going out of his way to help others, and tries very, very hard never to hurt or kill anyone he doesn’t absolutely have to.  We see Ash consistently unable to turn away when someone he knows or cares about is in danger, like Max and Ibe when they get captured in the mental facility Ash had just fought tooth and nail to escape from, literally running back into the line of fire to rescue them, directly putting himself in danger in order to help them.  He’s constantly pushing other characters out of the way of gun fire, putting himself instead in the line of it.  That’s a knee jerk reaction.  It’s just what he does naturally.  The same as Eiji.  He’s constantly into firefights in order to lead others away to safety, sacrificing himself physically to rescue others, sacrificing his own privacy and mental well-being for the cause of others, when he tells Max to use the photo’s of him being molested as a child to spare the other kids who’ve been through the same thing.  Ash only kills either in self-defense, or in defense of those he loves and cares about.  Even in heat of the moment situations, like when members of Sing’s crew shoot Eiji and try to kill him and Ash, even when Ash seems to have lost it, repeatedly shooting their already dead bodies, when Lao comes at him with a gun, Ash doesn’t kill him. He has the presence of mind to simply shoot Lao in the hand.  He isn’t ever an out of control wild animal.  That’s just what people have made Ash believe about himself, which is one of the most tragic aspects about him.  That he’s been manipulated into seeing himself as a monster, when he never was.  When Lao screams “He’s not human, he’s a monster!”, Ash doesn’t even defend himself. He agrees with it, even though it’s so blatantly untrue.  That shows the ravages on Ash’s mental and emotional state from the abuse he’s suffered.  But even with all of that, he never became like those who abused him.  He never tried to hurt anyone who didn’t try to hurt him first.  By contrast, everyone who claims Ash is some sort of demon, everyone who claims him to be this inhuman monster, all themselves tried to hurt Ash and those he cared about when he himself had never done anything to them.  Ash never did anything to Dino, or Yut-Lung, or Foxx, or any of those people.  He never went after any of them until they went after him first, or those he cared for.  Even towards those who failed him so miserably and set him on the path he ended up on, like his father, Ash showed incredible compassion and care towards, despite the awful way James treated him.  When Ash had every right to hate him.  But he didn’t, and in fact was immensely distressed when James was shot.

As an example of how intrinsically Ash differs from the other characters who deem him a monster or a demon, I think comparing him to the character who most resembles him is a good case in point.  That of course is Yut-Lung.  Yut-Lung suffered his own horrific abuses and cruelties at the hands of the people who were meant to care for him, namely of course his brothers.  And understandably, he wanted and was justified in taking revenge on them for what they did to him and his mother.  But here’s where he and Ash diverge from each other.  Yut-Lung has in him a capacity for deep pettiness, jealousy, and resentment.  Failings which he acts on again and again throughout the course of the story, without hesitation, and failings which Ash himself never displays even the barest hint of, despite having suffered similar and even worse abuses in his life.  Yut-Lung tries with absolute commitment to kill Eiji, over and over, simply because he can’t bear the idea that somebody actually loves Ash.  He can’t bear to see Ash have even a little happiness, in a life of otherwise complete sadness and pain, because he himself doesn’t have it.  He can’t stand the idea that Ash might find “redemption” through love.  And so he tries with all of his considerable power to take it away from Ash.  It’s the definition of pettiness and cruelty, which is something Ash, even in his darkest moments, never showed a capacity for.  I don’t think Ash ever had it in him to be so ugly and unkind and vicious.  He can be manipulative, of course.  But he only ever used those manipulative abilities to defend himself and others.  He never used them to hurt anybody who hadn’t first hurt him or those he cared about, or at least tried.  He never tried to hurt someone simply because they had something he didn’t.  He never tried to take something away from someone simply because he didn’t have it too.  He never resented anyone for having a better life than him, or for having love when all he had was pain.  And therein lies the difference between someone like Ash and Yut-Lung, and it means everything.  

Ash sees himself as a monster because everyone’s always told him he is, those people projecting their own monstrosity and ugliness onto him.  Trying to twist him into what they are, trying to force him into a position where he has no choice but to do terrible things in order to survive.  They try to corrupt him because they themselves are corrupted and cruel.  But somehow, despite all the horror of Ash’s life, he never becomes like that.  He never loses that part of himself that recoils at violence and abuse, that agonizes over having to make the decisions he has to to survive.  He never becomes petty, or cruel, or hateful.  He never becomes unable to love.  Like Ibe says about him “He’s such a good kid.  He’s just such a good kid.”.  I think Ash is able to resist becoming like the monsters who abused him because he had in him an innate goodness.  I think Eiji could see that in him from the start, when everyone else could only see a savage animal, or a beautiful commodity.  It’s also why I think Eiji was so profoundly drawn to Ash, because he could see that goodness in him from the start, and why he had the opposite feeling and reaction toward Yut-Lung, because he saw the pettiness and cruelty in him.  It’s why there were so many people who deeply cared about Ash.  Eiji, and Max and Skip and Shorter, and Sing, and his entire gang, and Cain, and why someone like Yut-Lung didn’t really have anyone who cared about him, except I suppose Blanca and Sing to an extent, but not with nearly the level of real love and respect Ash garnered.  Not with nearly the same loyalty.  And that’s also why both Sing and Blanca sided with Ash eventually, against Yut-Lung. As deep a capacity for cruelty and petty envy as Yut-Lung had, Ash had an equal capacity for kindness and love.  He just doesn’t realize it about himself because he’s been manipulated into thinking the opposite, and because he was so savagely abused and put into such nightmarish circumstances, that he had to do awful things just to keep living.  And that’s a massive tragedy.  That Ash is the only one who won’t forgive himself for having to do the things he’s done, despite the very real and justified reasons for those actions, is further testament to the goodness in his heart.  Ash can’t and won’t give himself a break, can’t and won’t forgive himself for it, even as everyone around him tells him he should.  Because Ash always was and always would have been a good kid, with a good heart, who understood from the beginning the awful reality and seriousness of taking another life.  He understood that in a way Dino and Yut-Lung and even Blanca never did.  Those things were always going to weight him heavily down with awful, crushing guilt and remorse.  He hated himself for having done it, and saw himself as worthless because of it.  He was never what the others thought of him as.  He was never this “prince of darkness”, never this demon, or devil.  He was just a young boy trying desperately to survive.

It’s Eiji who sees that about Ash, where everyone else fails to.  Even Shorter doesn’t understand in the beginning of the story why Ash lets those guys go who tried to kill him.  Even Shorter, I don’t think, understands the toll that killing takes on Ash.  It’s Eiji, and only Eiji, who sees Ash for who he really is.  It’s why he’s the only one Ash can actually be himself around.  The only one who LETS Ash be himself.  Why it’s only around Eiji that we see Ash really able to genuinely smile, and relax, and let down his guard.  Because he knows Eiji isn’t going to try and make him into something he’s not, doesn’t see him as something he’s not, and isn’t going to try and get something from him.  Who isn’t going to try and control him, or mold him into what they want him to be, or what they think he should be.  He understands why Ash acts the way he does, why he does the things he does, and he doesn’t judge him or condemn him for it.  He accepts it, and tries to help Ash forgive himself and love himself.

Even without Eiji coming into his life, I don’t think Ash ever would have become like Dino, Yut-Lung, Foxx or Blanca.  I don’t think Ash ever had the capacity to become a monster like them.  His heart was always too big, and he always cared too much, felt too much, to become that.  What Eiji did give Ash, which Ash never had before, was the knowledge of what it is to be loved.  He gave Ash a sense of what it was to be treated like a human being, not an object to be admired, or a weapon to be used.  He acknowledged that Ash had feelings. That he had emotions and thoughts of his own.  He treated him like he MATTERED.  He didn’t make Ash human, because Ash was always human.  He didn’t give Ash morality, because Ash always had morality.  But he was the only one who saw those things about Ash, where everyone else failed to, even Ash himself. And because he could see that about Ash, he was the only one who ever made Ash feel like a normal boy.  The only one who ever made Ash feel like who he really was.  The only one who ever allowed Ash to BE who he really was.

[greeblingyaoza]

So, since we know like next to nothing about Yut Lung’s life post-Banana Fish, there’s so much room for imagining what could have happened in that time period...like, he could have even had a partner eventually, for all we know. I mean I kind of doubt it personally, but it’s possible. Which got me thinking about something real angsty, but here goes anyways. 

Even though I like to pretend those two cursed pages in Yasha don’t exist, I wonder just exactly how he got assassinated. Where was he, how was he assassinated, did he suffer, etc... And then I thought, hey, imagine if Yut-Lung did have a partner, someone he eventually found who he loved and who loved him in return, and the Vietnamese mafia targeted them first as a way to really hurt him before they killed him. Make him suffer. But Yut-Lung shielded them just in time, taking the bullet, and dying right in front of them. And then in his dying moments, he realizes he now understands just how Ash felt when he was so willing to die for Eiji’s sake. 

:)

[sayaka19fan]

Hi, sayaka! I came across a post discussing why Dino has never tried to force Ash's obidience by threatening to harm his friends and beloved ones unless being suggested to. Arthur, Yut- lung, even Fox realised how effective it was. I am not sold. Believing it's all due to Dino's obsession feels off to me. If you don't mind, could you share your thoughts about this topic? Thank you!

To answer your question I have to flash out Ash's and Dino's dynamics a little. First of all I need to say that their relationship is modelled upon a trope I would call "Bastard father and enviable son".

It is the same trope working in Garasu no Kamen (alias Glass Mask) by Suzue Miuchi between Masumi Hayami and Heisuke Hayami or between Askeladd and Thorfinn in Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura. The older man has thrown away any moral in his life and feels like he is leaving nothing good behind himself when he met a young boy, clever and somehow pure. Apparently they want to destroy that pureness but in reality they make a gamble and want to see if that treat of the character will survive after they have trained their boys in the hard way. Being strong-willed boys makes them the most subtable candidates for this particular gamble.

Masumi lost his mother and his cheerful childhood because of his adoptive father and swore revenge on him for that. Thorfinn lost his father and somehow was taken in by his father's killer and did the same as Masumi. And Ash is no different, although Ash swore to take revenge earlier it was Griffin's death that put it in motion. Still Masumi gave his adoptive father a piggy back ride, Thorfinn refused to kill Askeladd in the sleep and goes so far to save his life. And Ash never learned to let the others down, even if it makes him an easy target.

Back to your question, Dino doesn't want to turn Ash into someone who abandons his friends. I believe that he is not simply blind because of his obsession with Ash. Killing Griffin, threatening Eiji's life and taking Max Lobo and the others as hostages made Ash feral and reckless, then harder to control or predict. When Dino says to Ash that he doesn't like to hire Blanca just to kill Eiji he really means that it is time for Ash to realise that he can protect what he loves only with the power Dino is offering him.

Because of his fondness of freedom Ash could protect the others only in a self-sacrificing self destructive way. To Dino self preservation is such an obvious instinct that he failed to understand Ash's actions when they are guided by Eiji's presence. Bonding his survival instinct with revenge or the pride to fool his hunter was the best way to keep the boy alive in spite of the hell Ash was living in. Above all, Dino wanted Ash to live, therefore in his last moments Dino didn't pull the trigger.

He cared for Ash enough to provide him with the skills he needed to survive in their world. But both Dino and Ash aren't allowed to show any weakness. Whenever, seeing how easily Dino welcomes Ash back, someone suspected that Dino had feelings for the boy, Ash's disgusted words would put everybody off. Dino needed Ash to give purpose to his own life while Ash didn't want to be needed by him. He wanted to be irreplaceable to Eiji but he found his very existence a threat to Eiji's well-being. Ash came to the painful realization that he couldn't protect Eiji's innocence and couldn't avoid turning him into a wanted criminal in order to have him by his side, the very thing Dino did to him.

Also when Ash confronted Dino saying how ridiculous it was turning a living toilet into his heir, although Ash was talking about his own life being a joke, Dino got offended. As if he was hurt for being misunderstood, as if Ash was ingrate. He punched him mercilessly. Even in the infamous kiss scene Dino acted under provocation. Ash had just called him on breaking his promises. It was an assertion of power more than an urge of lust.

Dino himself explained his behavior at the beginning with that enigmatic "I love you sweetheart". "Aishiteiru" with the kanji 愛 [ai] , the Japanese word for "I love you" in that line, can be used generally, including the love between family. 恋 is only for relations/feelings toward a person of the targetted sexual orientation. This means that 愛 is between true friends or father and son too. On the scale, 愛 is stronger than 恋. 愛 describes the feeling of someone who can't rest until he sees that his loved one is safe. It applies to Ash looking for Eiji when he got missing and to Dino rushing to the Mental Health Facility after hearing from Max that Ash was dead, even knowing already that it was a fake news, because he needed to see it with his own eyes.

Ash was lucky enough to find Eiji in his youth, Dino thought he has to raise the person able to live with him, to bring him up from ashes. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

We probably want to see Dino as a proper realistic depiction of an abuser so that we can blame him for everything. Still I believe he is not quite here. Marvin and the others in the manga are more coherent to that image. The trope is stronger than the realism.

[angofwords]

This fan’s take on AshEiji

A conversation with @silverquillsideas this morning got me thinking about something that I, quite frankly, have thought about over and over in the past, but never quite put down in words. She asked me what I thought about the arc of Ash’s feelings and what he might understand about those feeings during the timeline of Banana Fish. We talked a bit, and then she suggested her own take on Eiji. This made me realize that I needed to write an essay. So if this is tedious, you can lay part of the blame at her door.  :P

Ash Lynx’s feelings. It’s a complicated bag to unpack, but here’s my take after the anime and (even more) after years re-reading and reconsidering the manga: Although their relationship was platonic, Ash loved Eiji in a romantic way.

Not immediately. He was in awe after Eiji’s jump – something he probably rarely felt, given he was arguably the most talented punk on the NYC streets. The fact that Eiji could so something like that, something that had never been a possibility for him, threw him for a loop. But that wasn’t love. Fascination, maybe? Fondness? I think that Eiji’s actions in those first couple volumes of manga solidified Ash’s basic trust and friendship, but not much more.

Then there’s the prison kiss, the mission to save Griff and its terrible ending. I doubt any of this changed his feelings. At this point, Ash was focused on his own shit – the last thing he had time for in that prison was lingering over what kissing Eiji might’ve made him feel. (Yes, the fanficcer in me aches to write that sentence, but that’s legit how I read the canon.) It’s only later – after Eiji ditches Ibe and Charlie to go on the lam with him, after that botched attempt at Dino’s life, after Cape Cod – that things start to change.

In California, Ash tries to put on the brakes. He decides, all on his own, that Eiji has to go back to Japan. He even tries being mean to him (‘Go back to Japan. You’ll only be in the way.’) but it doesn’t really work. It makes Eiji cry and makes Ash feel like shit, but neither of them (nor the readers) believe that this is what Ash wants. This is the scene where Ash first gives Eiji an indication that he might be special to him, when he says that Eiji’s the first person ever to help him out without expecting something (the only specific he mentions is sex) in return. I feel like this is actually untrue. Shorter, Max, and even Charlie have helped him at one time or other without demanding payback. I think Ash is trying to say something different here – on the one hand, he’s telling Eiji that there is something special with him, but on the other (at the same damn time) he’s shutting down any thoughts of sex that might be budding in Eiji’s teenage brain. If this isn’t putting the brakes on a potential relationship, I don’t know what it is.

My thoughts have lately been that this is an indicator that Ash himself must be developing non-platonic feelings for Eiji by this point. It’s an odd point to make, even considering that Ash’s history makes him bring up sex in strange places (like later, when Eiji suggests Ash might try modeling), unless Ash has already realized that there’s something to be wary of here.

And then all hell breaks loose and they lose Shorter in the most horrific way. This shatters any resolve to keep Eiji at an arm’s length – immediately following this Ash is at his most protective. He keeps Eiji hidden away from everyone – including Max and Ibe – insisting that this is the only way he’ll be safe. This is also when he crumbles and asks Eiji to stay with him. I think that, in the moments when it looked like Eiji was going to die by Shorter’s hand, Ash realized the full extent of his love.

That’s not to say he’s ready to set up house and live happily ever after. Well, not the happily ever after, at least. They do set up house, and I can’t be the only one who thinks that their condo must have more than one bedroom, right? This is Ash keeping Eiji close and yet holding him at arm’s length, which he does for basically the rest of the series. His reasons are easy enough to see – primarily, he doesn’t think he’s good enough for Eiji. This can be interpreted in the most basic way: being with Ash puts Eiji’s life in danger, but also in a more intangible way: Ash feels like he’s a crap human being and believes Eiji belongs with someone better. I think both figure into his behavior, especially as things come to a head with Arthur and he decides once more to send Eiji home.

By Halloween, Ash still hadn’t found a way to tell Eiji (Ash Lynx, afraid of words?!), and instead he tells him the story of the girl he “really loved” and how she didn’t survive the world he lived in. The parallels to Eiji are so obvious that even Eiji picks up on them, but when he asks Ash if he’s trouble for him (basically giving Ash a wide open door to telling him about the plane ticket burning a hole in his pocket), Ash still can’t say anything, instead opting to have a beery slumber party on the living room floor.

After the adventure of the mental health facility and the forced separation from Eiji it requires, Ash finally gives up on sending the boy home and their relationship settles into the comfortable not-talking-about-it of long-married couples and tightly closeted “roommates.”

Through it all, though the readers can clearly see Ash’s devotion to Eiji and that said devotion is clearly reciprocated (Eiji telling Yut Lung that Ash cares for him as much as he cares for Ash? :swoon:), it’s quite possible that Ash himself actually has much less of a sense of Eiji’s feelings. I mean, he’d be blind if he didn’t get the best friends vibe, but toward the end when Eiji vehemently insists that he’d do absolutely anything for Ash, that nothing he does can shake Eiji’s loyalty, Ash is startled. And so when he gets a note that’s “practically a love letter” from him, it’s no wonder he’s jostled out of his calm. I don’t think for a second that Ash was running toward a happily-ever-after, but I do think he was giddy with the sudden and intense knowledge that all of his feelings were reciprocated wholeheartedly. He wouldn’t have let his guard down if this letter was just a reiteration of things already known – he might’ve managed to steel his resolve and stay put, if nothing in that note was a surprise to him. I think that might be the most heartbreaking part of the ending for me – Eiji might’ve fully understood their bond and their feelings, but Ash didn’t. Not till the end.

But what of Eiji’s emotional arc? I’ve given this a lot of thought, too. The conclusion I’ve finally reached (though by no means do I insist it is the One True Interpretation) is that Eiji is basically demisexual in a way that doesn’t specify gender. When Ash asked him if he had a girlfriend, he didn’t immediately think “Girls? No way!” In fact, the way he interprets the word (as someone he’d had sex with) indicates that maybe he did have a girlfriend (or more?) with whom he hadn’t reached this level of intimacy. And yet, he wasn’t so straight that he couldn’t immediately cast himself in the parallel role in Ash’s girlfriend-who-died story. This indicates a sexual or romantic flexibility that doesn’t lend itself to his being straight or gay. And I suggest demisexual mostly because it seems to suit Eiji’s personality to require that deep emotional connection before he can contemplate sex (consider Garden of Light and his long term, possibly lifelong celibacy).

Take that kiss, for example. Yes, Eiji was flustered as hell. Yes, he was embarrassed. But even in the anime (which, in my opinion, hinted at Eiji’s sexual attraction as early as their first meeting), Eiji never once looks back on that kiss with anything resembling longing or titillation. And this is a shoujo manga, where such lingering examination is practically required! I think this is because, at this point in the story, while Eiji is fascinated by Ash and possibly even fixated on him, I don’t think he’s in love.

So when does Eiji’s feelings change and how do they evolve? I think that, like Ash, Eiji was feeling their bond as early as Cape Cod, though during that trip it felt like three boys on equal footing rather than a-bonded-pair-plus-Shorter. Possibly he fell prey to the rush of damsel in distress endorphins when Ash rescued him at Golzine’s, but that probably would’ve faded if that were the source of his romantic attachment. Even the fan-favorite “forever” scene could be more platonic and big-brotherly than romantic. It shows clear love and devotion, but nothing about the scene is necessarily romantic and their awkward waking the next morning is played more for humor than sexual tension.

In fact, I think the first sign of real longing from Eiji’s side comes while Ash is fighting Arthur and Eiji’s dealing with being told to go home (again), and even that’s not as strong as it will become, because Eiji basically says he’ll go home and never come back, more like a jilted lover than the dedicated partner he becomes.

But then Ash gets hurt and is declared dead, and Eiji gets kidnapped by Yut Lung for no reason anyone (even Yut Lung?) can explain. Here’s where Eiji gets intense for the first time, and it’s mostly because Yut Lung taunts him about it. By insisting that Ash cares more for Eiji than Eiji does for Ash, it makes Eiji evaluate his feelings for (possibly?) the first time. I think this is when Eiji decides on “soulmates.”

And from that point onward, Eiji becomes Ash’s partner in all things. He steps up his game with the gang and with Ash, less often hesitating to dive in, even when it means getting into another fight (like when Ash screams at Sing and Eiji – very gently – tells him off for it).  That being said, Eiji refrains from any verbal expression of his feelings and avoids physical affection except in the most extreme circumstances. I’m sure this is because he understands Ash’s physical and emotional limitations, but also, how hard would it be to discover yourself in love with someone who once praised you for not being into him sexually? (I feel like that last bit would be an impossible hurdle for someone like Eiji, thus pretty much assuring that any physical relationship would have to be initiated and directed by Ash.)

Toward the end, though, Eiji can feel the situation getting desperate and he knows he needs to somehow get Ash away from the whole situation (an interesting inversion of the “send Eiji home” impulse, in fact). He tries a couple of times to express his devotion, but Ash doesn’t really hear him until the aforementioned scene where Eiji snaps at him that he doesn’t care if Ash is “bad news” and wants to be with him forever no matter what. (<3<3<3) And by then, shit’s out of control and Yut Lung has gotten to the Chinatown boys and we all know what happens.

I’d almost say that it’s possible to read Eiji’s love as platonic even now, but you’d have to allow a certain exclusivity to their bond that isn’t usually found in platonic loves. And his letter – maybe it’s not impossible to read that in a non-romantic way, but it’s impossible for me. I’ve tried and tried over the years (I’ve tried out every interpretation of this manga known to mankind, believe me), but even when I can almost convince myself that it could be some seriously intense hetero-life-mate stuff, Garden of Light blows it right out of the water.

So that’s my take. My evaluation that always, always leads to a romantic love housed in a platonic relationship. I’d like to think that more time would’ve allowed them to express that love, and it seems to me that Eiji, at least, was beginning to scramble toward a confession if only as a last-ditch effort to save Ash from his fate. We’ll never know what might’ve been said if Ash had reached the airport – it’s possible he would’ve had a moment in the cab or subway to recollect his cool, but I don’t think so. That boy was all shook up. Either way, it’s not how the relationship started or how it ended that makes it so powerful to me, but the journey. Ash and Eiji had one hell of a journey. <3

[stygianicee]

Banana Fish Ending

the ending is just pure hell - regardless of whether you accept it or not. It’s difficult to say how much Ash is really going through or what Ash’s thought process is, since, throughout the show, the whole thing’s in 3rd pov.  However, I do remember in one episode when Ash goes to the gay club with Max and they meet the owner and Ash holds him at gunpoint, we get a glimpse of his thought process then and it’s absolute hell. We get to see Ash remembering what disgusting things were done to him and how photos were taken. “snip, snip, snip” Ash isn’t like Eiji, who’s much more straightforward and easier to predict. Firstly, let’s get one thing out of the way. Even though Ash was stabbed, he didn’t lose enough blood to die, nor was it a vital organ which was hit. If he’d receive medical treatment, he would have survived. Which means that he made a conscious decision to stay in the library, reread Eiji’s letter and bleed out during his final hours. So basically suicide.  I’ve read arguments which state that it’s out of character for Ash, who’s always had a fight in him and he’s said that he never wanted to die, although he didn’t fear death. Ash when talking with Blanca in his last meeting, already made up the meeting to always think about Eiji but never go and meet him. He saw the letter and saw the ticket and ran to catch up with Eiji. When he was stabbed, he cried out Eiji’s name. I guess at that point, he made the decision to protect Eiji. It was never about him dying, it was about him protecting Eiji. He knew that as long as he was alive, he’d be in neverending fights, and he also knew that he could never stay away from Eiji. His life goal of making sure his abuser died was fulfilled and all the loose ends were tied up - with Max, Blanca, Dino, Yut-Lung, Mannerheim, Fox, Griffin, Soo-Ling and most importantly banana fish(with it being destroyed and all). The place where he was abused and how senators were coming in and what they were doing was also known to the world. Ash read the letter and finally found peace and happiness, and felt pure, unconditional love. He was probably in never-ending torture in his head as well. The way he was abused, assaulted,  used, raped and how he had to kill so many people - he always viewed himself as a monster. He was getting through everything with the hope of killing Dino and bringing him down. Once that was done, the full toll of what he had to endure must have started kicking in. Like a dam that had water breaking through, everything must have flooded all at once. It must have been a struggle to bear. We all know Ash acts tough on the outside while he struggles internally. On the other hand, I truly do think if anybody would have helped him through it, Eiji could. If he had gone to him to Japan, they would have had a fresh start and be happy. I’ve heard that in the manga Eiji doesn’t get married out of the love he has for Ash and he possibly has fallen into his depression yet again. Another thing that bothers me is how he thought his actions would protect Eiji instead of harming him. He knew Eiji was depressed before. Did he think his death would leave Eiji unharmed? Or that he would move on and find someone else to love? It’s utterly heartbreaking. Throughout the anime, I hoped Ash would not break, not after all he’d gotten through. When he went to Dino as his slave in exchange for saving Eiji and seeing him breaking down a couple of times(especially the scene when he’s in bed and goes on about how he’s a toilet - god, utterly heartbreaking), I really hoped he would pick himself back up. And he did. Only to break down at the end. When he was so close. I thought at least for Eiji he would have picked himself up and willed himself to get healed so he could go back to Eiji, but I guess everything that’s happened was too much.  I do accept this ending. I do wonder if Ash would’ve known the kind of impact his death had on Eiji, would he have still chosen suicide? 

[kirisunshine-ejirou]

Hiya! We've never talked before, but I love ur blog all the bnha posts you rb! :) And SINCE I saw recently that you've gotten into Banana Fish too, brace urself for these asks :D 1 Fandom : Banana Fish 2 Ship : Asheiji 3 Character : Eiji Okumura Hope you're having a lovely day! 💕

Aww, you’re so sweet! I actually watched Banana Fish a few months ago, but I recently re-watched it with my sister (and ripped my heart out again in the process), so that’s why I’ve been posting more about it lately!. Anyway, thank you for sending me the ask! :) Here are my answers:

001 | Fandom: Banana Fish

Favorite character: Honestly, as much as I love Eiji, it’s gotta be Ash. I will never stop grieving for him, and I appreciate the complexity of his character.

Least Favorite character: Yikes, there’s so many assholes in this show. I’m gonna go with Abraham for creating Banana Fish and then being a weak little bitch about it when shit hits the fan, and for hurting Shorter. Eduardo is also SCUM.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): I’m not sure if I could come up with 5 ships for this show…Asheiji for sure. Also Max + Jessica.

Character I find most attractive: Ash

Character I would marry: Blanca (hahaha, he’s well-read, attractive, mature, and cares for Ash despite the circumstances they’re both in)

Character I would be best friends with: I wanna be friends with Cain!

A random thought: Cain is such an underrated character! At least, I don’t hear much about him within the fandom. Sing is also a precious bby.

An unpopular opinion: Ash’s full name sounds kinda ugly? Like I love the meaning behind it, but Aslan Jade Callenreese is a bit much.

My Canon OTP: Asheiji

My Non-canon OTP: Don’t really have any.

Most Badass Character: It’s pretty much a tie between Ash and Blanca, but I guess I’d have to pick Blanca since he taught Ash.

Most Epic Villain: Dino. I wouldn’t call him “epic,” but his evil is an evil that’s not so in-your-face, but that still permeates the entire series (Please read @softasheijis‘s analysis of this, it’s great! Linked here: https://kirisunshine-ejirou.tumblr.com/post/183846304436/softasheijis-takes-a-long-sip-of-hot-tea-dino)

Pairing I am not a fan of: Hm. I don’t know of many pairings in the fandom, but Ash + anyone other than Eiji just isn’t right, hahaha. Also Blanca + Yut-Lung is gross b/c of the age thing.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Some characters may be screwed up in the head, but other than that, no one.

Favourite Friendship: Shorter + Ash!

Character I most identify with: Ash. I have never experienced any kind of trauma to that comes anywhere near to what Ash had to endure, but I identify with the difficulty he had with believing he’s someone worthy to be loved. I’ve got low self-esteem and it can really get to me at times :/ I also don’t tend to trust people very easily.

Character I wish I could be: Hmm, well, I don’t think I’d want the tragic life that comes with being any of the characters…but if I had to choose I guess it would be Yut-Lung so I could have his wardrobe, lol.

002 | Ship: Asheiji

When I started shipping them: Honestly - the pole vaulting scene - I knew they were a ship from what I heard about the show before watching it, so my love of their connection was instantaneous. More realistically - that tender moment in Ep. 11 when Eiji promises Ash that he’ll stay by his side, even if the rest of the world turns on him. (God, I’m almost crying just writing this).

My thoughts: This is one of my all-time favorite ships  because the dynamic between the characters and what could have been between them sticks out for me. They deserved better.

What makes me happy about them: Their trust. They would give their lives for each other, and even though this turns out to get them both in a lot of trouble, it comforts me to think that Ash found someone he could rely on after 17 years of hell. Also, the fact that they can both be themselves in the relationship; as Max said, Ash found someone he can finally act his age around, unguarded.

What makes me sad about them: Ash will never get to go to Japan with Eiji :’(

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Making them suffer any more than they already have.

Things I look for in fanfic: More fluff/hugs/domestic content

My wishlist: I don’t really understand this question? I wish for them to be happy. That is all.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: There’s just no other non-platonic pairing for either of them that I can think of.

My happily ever after for them: Ash goes to the library after being stabbed, but calls himself an ambulance, or Max, or anyone who could get him to the hospital, recovers, then meets up with Eiji in Japan where they live a happy, simple life together (as much as possible, ik Ash still has a ton of shit he needs to sort through.)

003 | Character: Eiji

How I feel about this character: His pureness always makes me smile, but he’s also got some spunk! Lol, as in, he teases Ash and isn’t afraid of him (the pumpkin thing, being able to wake Ash up when everyone else is terrified, throwing Ash in the shower, etc.) and he also becomes more able to defend himself as the show progresses; first he goes to Chinatown to find Shorter wearing that ridiculous outfit, then he holds Yut-lung hostage (kinda) and (tries) to shoot Dino. Bless him.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Ash

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: I love his interactions with Bones and Kong!

My unpopular opinion about this character: Not sure if this is “unpopular,” but I’ve heard some stuff about Eiji being more “edgy” (haha, see what I did there) in the manga, so I’d like to see more of that play out in the anime, to give him a little more nuanced character.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish we could’ve got more background info on him. Like we know that he’s a former pole-vaulter and that he has a little sister, but not much more than that. I think one of the side stories of the manga has this content though!

Favorite friendship for this character: Eiji & Shorter! Shorter was so protective of Eiji during their limited time together, and I would have loved to see more Ash - Eiji - Shorter friendship interactions.

My crossover ship: Hm, can’t think of any at the moment!

Sorry some of my answers aren’t the most straightforward, haha. Also, @silverquillsideas I just wanted to say, your blog theme is gorgeous, and even though I follow you, I don’t think I’ve seen any of your Banana Fish art/fics until now (I just reblogged an asheiji work of yours!), but I’ll be sure to look out for more :) Hope your day has been great; see you around!