#banana fish ending

[chaotic-banana-fish]

ASH LYNX – MIND, BODY, AND SOUL 

(tw: discussion/explicit mention of Ash Lynx's past as well as his eating disorder + spoilers for the entire show)

We all know that Ash Lynx disconnects from his body as a coping mechanism to deal with all of the abuse he’s suffered. He also does this in order to brace himself for any incoming violence that he sees coming, such as in prison when he knows that he can’t escape Marvin and his guys. He can even use this disconnect to utilize his body as a tool to seduce others despite sickening him to the core (and in my opinion, scenes in which this happens, are some of the most revolting in the entire show). Disconnecting from his own body has allowed Ash Lynx to survive, it is also however, part of what causes him to feel like an emotionless killing machine.

Ash talks about how his fingers pull on the trigger, how his hands wield the gun and kill people almost like a reflex, without feeling anything, how that makes him a monster and how scared he is of himself. It is obvious to us, that not only isn’t this true, but that he was trained to execute this violence, and was taught to repress any kind of feeling that came with it, which on top of all the violence he endured would be enough to numb someone superficially. Still, it’s really not just that. Ash has had to separate himself from his body in order to survive and not crumble under what it has gone through, and that disconnect has gone so far that his body acts like an entity of its own. He talks about his hands and how they pull the trigger as if it were not the one doing it. Instead, he sees himself kill without mercy almost as if from the outside, terrified of what his body is doing and who that makes him. We can see this not only in the way he talks, but in the several shots of Ash looking at his own hands with fury and disbelief, as if horrified and surprised they are his own. In his dreams, he appears with a knife in his hands, Eiji’s and Shorter’s corpses on the floor, and he screams when he realizes what he’s done, which only happens after he sees the blood on his own hands.

This disconnect, also makes sense in relation to his eating disorder (which is not talked about almost at all). He’s so disconnected from his body and what it needs, that he doesn’t eat enough, and when he does, his body disconnected from his mind, rejects it, causing him to develop anorexia. Of course, his eating disorder is very much intertwined with the abuse he’s suffered, what others do with his body has been completely out of his control for years, food is one of the only things he can control, so restricting himself of it is a mechanism as well. The context in which his anorexia worsens is obviously key, as it is when he return to Dino, and is forced not only to relive his worst trauma, but also to do atrocious things working for Dino and his political schemes. However, I do believe his eating disorder was present before this, as he brags to Eiji about his weight not changing since he was much younger, he mainly eats salads (Eiji even jokingly remarking how strange it is that he doesn’t like burgers) and he jokingly tells Max he doesn’t want to get “fat”, all subtle indications that subconsciously he’s controlling his body and diet to a certain extent. It is with Dino however, that his body completely shuts down, as even Ash expresses that he’s not starving as a form of rebellion or on purpose, he instead genuinely can't consume anything. 

So, throughout the show we can see much of how Ash disconnects from his body both consciously and unconsciously in order to survive, however we also see him reconnect with it: when he’s with Eiji. If we’re talking about food, we can see when Eiji prepares him soup, and Ash remarks that food hadn’t tasted that good in months, or when they go out for hotdogs together, or when Eiji makes sure he eats even the things he doesn’t like. This is one of the ways Eiji helps Ash reconnect with his body, but there are others. One, is the simple act of touch. Eiji hugs Ash a lot, and we can see Ash’s progress as he slowly becomes more accustomed to it, hesitant at first, as if his body is unsure how to respond, to hugging him back, to pulling him close, to crying on his lap and letting him run his fingers through his hair. Through gentleness Eiji shows Ash a form of touch that doesn’t come from violence, and his body begins to adjust as well.

This is partly terrifying for Ash, is what makes him let out so many repressed emotions of guilt, because now that he’s reconnecting with his body and his self, he’s also confronted with the crimes he’s committed with it. Ash can only be his true, normal, 17 year old boy self around Eiji, because his body leaves that state of constant vigilance and resistance and just eases into the rest of him, allowing him to be undivided for once. However, it also because of this new-found ease, that his body begins to recollect everything that has happened, causing Ash to have more nightmares, waking up in cold sweat and crying out for his mother, thing which didn’t happen when he slept around his gang members. It is because of this, that Ash can’t hold it in any longer when he breaks down in front of Eiji as he recounts the first time he was raped, which contains a lot of specific details about how his body felt, about how terrified he was and how he couldn’t seem to find his voice. Curiously, right before he breaks down Ash makes a joke about having to eat Eiji’s food, which I don’t think is coincidental. It’s just as Eiji is joking that Ash’s health is in good hands that Ash breaks down and lies on his lap sobbing as everything catches onto him. It is then all the more heartbreaking when Ash continues to cry and talk about how emotionless he is, the paradox of his words paired with his tears incredibly painful to watch. 

Even with all of this, I think Ash is grateful and his body greatly relieved. He’s eating better, he feels loves, and it’s the first time he feels comfortable in his body around someone since he knows Eiji would never harm him. We can see this verbalized by him the most in 2 conversations with Blanca. The first is when he begs him not to kill Eiji, and then goes one to express how “lucky” he is for having found someone like him, and how it’s the “best feeling in the world”. The fact that he considers himself even remotely lucky is extremely painful to hear, but also demonstrates how much genuine love has changed Ash’s mind and body to the point of being able to smile so fondly, and be “happy”, despite the pain it may also bring. The second conversation with Blanca, is his almost-confession about his feelings for Eiji (or that’s how I personally like to interpret it). In it, he quite literally says that Eiji’s “kindness and warmth” “ran through (his) body”, and once again, I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Eiji’s touch mended his body and heart so that they didn’t have to be in constant battle with one another, making him in Ash’s words “complete”. 

Sadly, as in many tragedies, this healing and warmth is what will eventually lead him to his death, just like Blanca and Yut Lung said it would. When Ash is running to the airport, his body is exactly where his mind is: in finding Eiji and being with him, that’s what matters. So, with his body acting like that of the 17-year-old boy he is, not detached from his self or looking for danger, he doesn’t see Lao coming. He doesn’t realize what is happening until he feels the pain in his chest and looks down in surprise to see the knife. Then, quickly, with the same certainty with which he knows he’s been stabbed, he knows he can’t go with Eiji, that if he does, he’ll only bring danger with him. He comes to terms with all the love he feels for him, but also with all the blood he has shed, and he knows he’s a leopard in the mountains who can’t turn back. So, he goes to the library where he reads Eiji’s letter, which essentially confirms to him that Eiji felt the same way and that what happened was real, it was not waste. He feels all that love and warmth one final time and decides to accept death as it comes, he doesn’t seek it, but he doesn’t run. So, he lays down in a place he loves, feeling loved, and his body and mind are truly reunited to form the “soul” that Eiji is now forever intertwined with.

[nutler--kleinja]

TW: minor mention of suicide

Does anyone realise how ash died with Dino’s last name?

like, Dino had adopted him, and he never went through any papers to get another last name or anything, so like, he never really managed to change his last name.

He still ended up being trapped, by contract on paper, still being Dino’s, no matter what happens.

He ended up getting stabbed with Dino’s last name, and made his choice to go to the library and bleed out/basically commit suicide despite how he never actually lived a free life.

Because the person who stabbed him didn’t hit any vital organs, had a perfect chance to simply go to the doctor to fix his wounds and change his name to live an actual life and everything like that, even if it meant missing his plane and not being able to be with Eiji for a while, or being away from him.

And along with that, although to us we might’ve easily forgotten about the scene where Dino announced that he was adopting Ash, it must’ve been tormenting and impactful for him to realise that he’d officially belong to the same person who had tormented him since he was a young child. There is no way he forgot about the fact that he was Dino’s adopted child so easily.

So why did he not want to? With his intellect, I doubt he didn’t realise it wasn’t a vital organ.

Was it because he felt he didn’t deserve freedom, or was he simply already content enough with seeing Eiji free?

Did he feel guilty for making Eiji endure all that for him, just so he could be safe again, or that in the process of gaining his free will, Eiji had lost his sunshine?

Was it that he felt that because of the way he couldn’t achieve his own justice through killing Dino, and the way Dino died (suicide) made him undeserving of his reward which was a true life?

Was it that he couldn’t bear the thought of living life without Eiji too draining, even if for a short while, and he couldn’t bear being far away from him?

Was it that he thought that his presence would continue to taint or corrupt Eiji?

Or was it just that he was content with seeing Eiji safe and happy, and couldn’t care about himself anymore?

Either way, in the end, he never got true free will.

sorry for being a cornball i just had to get this out of my head

[cosmicjoke]

I think what so many people who criticize the ending of “Banana Fish” don’t understand, is the story itself, and what the story is about.

“Banana Fish” was always a story about the devastation and consequences of child abuse. Ash dying in the end is absolutely meant to be seen as, and IS a tragedy, but that’s really the point. His death was necessary within the narrative to drive the tragedy of his life home and make the audience really understand it as such. To make the reader and/or viewer face up to the reality of that tragic life, and not allow them to hide from it through the comfort of a happy ending. We’re meant to feel devastated by Ash’s death, precisely because it isn’t fair, or just, or good. It’s in fact breathtakingly unfair. But again, that’s the point. His whole life was unfair.

Ash is a character who, on the surface, would seem to have every natural advantage and privilege in life. He’s incredibly good looking, frighteningly intelligent, physically gifted, etc…. He’s someone who had basically limitless potential. Someone who could have been anything he wanted. Right? Eiji even makes this argument to Ash at one point, talking about how he has so much more than the average person. How he has all these “gifts” that normal people don’t have. Ash gets incredibly upset over this and tells Eiji he never once asked for any of it before running away. Because to Ash, all his “gifts” have ever brought him is the unwanted attention of his abusers. And again, that’s the point.

The abuse Ash suffered destroyed everything he had, and everything he could have been. It took what should have been his limitless potential and promise and twisted it into something ugly and horrific for him, before snuffing it out completely. That’s what abuse does.

All of Ash’s potential, all of his gifts and all of his promise, was stolen away from him because he was abused, and so severely abused from such a young age.

Because he was raped when he was seven years old, and because he then found no real support from his father, but only more abuse, he ran away from home, which lead to him being homeless on the streets of New York as a young child, which lead to his abduction into a sex trafficking ring owned by a mafia don and his further sexual abuse, which in turn lead to him being dragged against his will into a life of violence and crime, which eventually lead to his death. Everything Ash could have been, all of the promise and potential that he had, was ruined by the abuse he suffered. And once more, that’s the point. To show the devastating consequences of child abuse. To not let the audience pretend, through a forced happy ending for Ash, that what he went through really wasn’t that bad or ruinous.

All of this leads back to the failure of the adults in Ash’s life to protect him. His death is directly linked to that. And so, as devastating, tragic and unfair as Ash’s death was, it was also vital to the narrative of the story working as well as it did. We aren’t meant to be happy about it, or relieved. We’re meant to be destroyed and heartbroken by it, because by refusing to compromise and give in to the audiences desire to see a happy ending for Ash, it forces us to also realize we should be just as devastated and heartbroken over Ash’s whole life. By forcing us to face the injustice and cruelty of his death, it also forces us understand, to fully grasp, the injustice and cruelty of his life. We aren’t allowed to pretend that what Ash suffered is easily dismissed or conquered or recovered from. We aren’t allowed to turn away from the devastating end point of it. Instead, by making us watch Ash die, after a lifetime of horrific suffering, it also makes us acknowledge the full extent and depth of the damage wrought onto him in his short life, and to children who go through what Ash did. We’re forced to acknowledge the way child abuse can and does ruin promising young lives.

[glowingsand]

“to do this, i must know your story!”

[edamammy]

basically, an asheijified study of this

[narumi-gimmick-blog]

OMG!! It’s my black x white hair doomed yaoi ship!

Which. One. Bro.

[paranoiahaven]

My unhealthy obsession with enjoying works that were created to physically hurt me all began with Titanic. What about you?

[skrunksthatwunk]

thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.

[ta1ntd]

I do understand how a lot of people kind of dislike the ending of banana fish because as a viewer you tend to want your faves to be happy and stuff but I feel it makes complete sense if you look at it through Ash's pov. To me it makes sense why he would chose to die in that moment because getting stabbed there was a reminder that there's always going to be someone or something that is against him and that would then put people he cares about in danger, it's a pattern that happens throughout the story and generally through his life and so the response of choosing to die so no one will be hurt because of him makes complete sense in his own head. Along with this I do think that to him his death wasn't really sad because he died believing that not only he had protected the person he cares the most about but that there is someone out there that cares about him deeply and to me at least it feels like a fitting conclusion to his character despite it being extremely sad to watch.

[ballet-in-a-football-field]

Trope

A: I would die for you

B: I would watch the whole wolrd burn over and over if it was the only way to save you

[b4gu3tt3m4n]

WHY DO GAY PPL ALWAYS HAVE TO DIE

[mikalblossom]

Its always blond x dark

[ingridgh0st]

My very personal "yaoi" starter pack

EDIT: How could I forget about this one

[ashneiji]

This ending specifically has changed my life

[hysokaz]

illumi is a cis man out of convenience. he does not care enough to think about it. gittarackur is the most genderfuck thing ever tho yas pinhead slay

[spicynectarines]

i watched Banana Fish for the first time.