#like. eiji thinks so lowly of himself and ash thinks that eiji is his whole world bc he IS

[in-a-faith-forgottenn-land]

ash and eiji as a ship could fit “and i wouldn’t marry me either” “i’d marry u with paper rings” both ways and that’s just so important to me ok

[cosmicjoke]

Ash Lynx and Blanca

I’m reading through Banana Fish right now, and I’m to the part in which Blanca enters the picture, early on to when Ash just figures out that it’s Blanca that’s been shadowing him, and is now targeting Eiji.

I know Blanca seems to be a character that has a lot of people split in terms of how they view him, but I have to say, while reading through the early appearances of him in the manga, I find what he’s doing to Ash to actually be some of the cruelest, most unkind actions taken against Ash in the entire series thus far.   It’s really hard to like Blanca at this point in the story, and I know that later on he ends up helping Ash.  But early on here, I feel like what he’s doing is tantamount to torture.  Blanca knows Ash’s history.  He knows what kind of tragedies and hardships he’s suffered in his life, and how from an incredibly young age, he’s been manipulated and abused by basically every adult in his life.  Blanca knows that Golzine not only repeatedly raped Ash, but allowed his associates and clientele to do the same to him, and yet we see him willingly associating with and working for Golzine during this period, as well as Yut-Lung, actively working to put Ash into a position which will lead him directly into the hands of people who want to hurt and torture him.  Beyond just that, he essentially stalks Ash for several days, purposefully working him into a frenzied and frantic state of fear and paranoia, all for nothing more apparent than that he finds it amusing, and wants to “test” Ash.  As if Ash’s entire life hasn’t been, and continues to be, a desperate and heartbreaking struggle to simply survive.  Ash has routinely been in a position since he was an eight year old child in which he’s had to essentially always be looking over his shoulder and approach every person and situation with an all-consuming wariness and fear.  Blanca KNOWS this, and yet he uses his experience and superior skills to essentially fuck with Ash and scare him into a state of awful anxiety.

I don’t know, but this whole section of the manga, and the way Blanca treats Ash in particular here, I think is incredibly upsetting, and in my view, some of the worst abuse of Ash yet, even with all the horrible experiences he’s had up to this point.  It’s again an adult basically manipulating and abusing him, not physically this time, but certainly psychologically.  I just can’t bring myself to like Blanca at all, for how cruelly he treats Ash here.  In the context of “Private Opinion” too, seeing the way Ash looked up to Blanca, and viewed him as maybe the first adult in his life he could look to for protection, it just makes Blanca’s actions towards him all the crueler still.  Anyway, that’s just my two cents.  Again, I know Blanca ends up helping Ash in the end, and that makes up for some of what he does here, but not all of it, in my opinion.  

Edit: Okay, so I reached the end of volume 12, and man, if I didn’t like Blanca before, I kind of just outright hate him at this point.  Even knowing he ends up helping Ash at this point isn’t enough to change my mind on this.  My god, first he leads Ash right into Golzine’s and Yut-Lungs hands, and then he beats the living shit out of him, and then he tells him that the best place for him is under the control of a man who repeatedly raped and molested him and trained him to become a killer.  I mean... yeah, there’s just no justification for that.  Telling Ash there was no other way for him to live.  He’s telling Ash that it’s better to survive even if he’s essentially a slave to a man who abused him in literally the worst possible ways then to seek freedom and die.  These are the kinds of people Ash grew up around, the kind of things he had beaten into him, literally and figuratively.  To view himself as an object to be used and controlled, as a weapon to be wielded.  Not as a human being.  Not as a person with any kind of rights or worth.  Is it any wonder Ash thinks so lowly of himself and can’t imagine himself as being able to escape his cruel existence?  I mean, fuck Blanca.  Fuck that guy.  He can look sad all he wants watching Ash suffer, but he directly contributes to that suffering in the worst kind of way.  God, I just can’t.  And then Ash begs him not to hurt Eiji and Blanca just flat out tells him he can’t do that, when he knows how much Eiji means to Ash, after Ash pours his fucking heart out to him about it, about how Eiji’s friendship means more to him than all the so called wealth and power in the world.  After he explains to Blanca that it’s better to die then to be under the control of a monster like Dino.  Fuck, Ash is just a kid.  He’s just a kid, and he never had any kind of chance, because these piece of shit adults around him never allowed him to have one.  

Okay, excuse me for a minute while I go hide in a corner and cry for a few hours.  Damn.