𝓱𝓾𝓮𝓱𝓾𝓱𝓾 🌻

Hello!! Well, I suppose each person would see it in a different way, but I believe his wound wasn’t lethal for the following reasons: 1) they made sure to say Lao had “missed all his vital organs”. I don’t think they meant it in a “but it’s still gonna kill Ash” way, otherwise it’d just be pointless and pretty silly? Why say anything at all? It felt like they were really trying to emphasise that the wound wouldn’t kill Ash — unless he wanted it to; 2) I’m not that opposed to the ending, as I’ve said a few times before, so I won’t take the “Ash would’ve been happier had he survived” argument into consideration. But the thing is, I think that letting Ash choose between dying or looking for help is a way to finally let him decide his own future. Would it be sadder to watch him die, regardless of what he wanted, or to watch him make his own choice, even if that meant he’d die? I personally think that, considering how much Ash valued and fought for his freedom, giving him the chance to choose whether he wanted to keep on living or not is the best option. It’s sad, of course, but he was finally free. And I understand that it might seem like he just ignored Eiji’s letter, or like he didn’t trust his words. But the way I see it, it’s because of Eiji’s words that Ash was able to come to terms with himself — at least to some extent —, which means he could die with no major regrets. As unfair as it might be, even such a brief moment of extreme happiness would be enough for Ash to think “ah this was worth it”, or something.

@ayame-tsukika I understand why most people don’t agree with that, but I personally don’t think it’s so out of character. Ash chose to be free. I’m gonna link two of my previous posts in which I’ve mentioned why I think Ash would choose death over other outcomes.

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However, due to Ash letting his guard down, Lao was able to stab him and I think that’s when he started to think again: “I’ll only put him in danger.” I’m not saying it had to be this way, that people would definitely follow him everywhere and Eiji would get hurt again, I’m just saying that this was Ash’s mindset, that was how he saw himself: Someone who’s bound to bring misery to others.

That’s why he, after he shot Lao, decided to go back to the library and don’t go see Eiji. I do think the wound wasn’t lethal. If it took hours until he died, I’m pretty sure that there was at least some sort of chance that he could have been saved. But he deliberately choose to not seek help and to accept death instead (I don’t see it as a suicide but rather as acceptance since I think there’s a difference between actively ending one’s life or just choosing to accept death. I still believe that he wouldn’t had refused help if someone had offered it). And I really think he did it in order to keep Eiji safe. He choose death so no one would have a reason to come after him anymore since Ash always saw himself as the reason for Eiji’s problems. Again, this doesn’t have to be the truth. I’m the last one to say that Ash was being a danger to Eiji. We all know that they healed and comforted each other like no one else could ever do. But that’s how Ash’s mindset worked: Seing himself as the very reason Eiji was and will be in danger. And the only resolution for this was to remove the cause (Ash himself) entirely. He knew Eiji definitely would come back and he also knew he wouldn’t be able to push him away. He tried that over and over again and failed every time because his heart was speaking a different language than his mind. That’s why he decided to let it end right then and there.

I know people are like: “But what about Eiji? Didn’t he love him? Didn’t he know he would get hurt if he died now? Didn’t he care?” Ash did love Eiji. More than anything and anyone else. And I refuse to believe he didn’t know he would hurt Eiji with that. The thing is, Ash saw no value in himself, he never loved himself, only ever viewing himself as a killer machine and a monster. A terrible mindset can do terrible things to you and in Ash’s case, he wasn’t able to grasp just how much Eiji would get hurt, that even 7 years later he still wouldn’t be able to move on or look at his beautiful pictures. Ask yourself: If you died now, do you think your friends/family would still mourn you 7 years later as much as Eiji mourned Ash? 7 years is a freaking long time. I personally wouldn’t expect people to mourn me for that long. Thinking about me from time to time and shedding tears? Definitely. But not mourning me as much as like Eiji did in GoL. And that is one of the biggest tragedes in Bf: Ash not seeing exactly how much he could mean to a person. I’m certain he realized that Eiji loved him by reading that letter, but still wasn’t able to understand exactly how deep his feelings were running for him simply because he couldn’t imagine it.

I know the idea of dying for someone is almost always romanticized in fiction, but I don’t think it’s the case with Bf. Because we see how much it’s affecting Eiji and Sing in GoL. Nothing is peace, love and harmony, rather the complete opposite. No one is happy he died, nothing is alright and no one can understand it. Sing even says: “I keep wondering…what you were thinking about, that day. While the blood slowly drained out of your body…and your blood pressure and blood temperature dropped…during these long, long hours until death finally came…” I always interpreted it as: “Just what the hell were you thinking, letting yourself die like that, not seeking for help?”

Yes, GoL hurts. It’s the ultimate confirmation that Ash really died, that he let himself die, and won’t come back, but it’s also telling us that it wasn’t right for him to do that, that he shouldn’t have died, how much people wanted him to live and how much they miss him, and most importantly, it’s telling us once more how much other people loved and valued him, and Ash never fully realized how much he mattered and what a great person he truly was.

(spoilers)

“Ash dying in the end was editorial meddling because Yoshida wasn’t allowed to write a story where gay people survive and become happy, so actually Ash should survive and move to Japan and live happy ever after with Eiji.”

Sato (Yoshida’s editor): “If I wasn’t your editor, I’d probably have thought a female Blanca [who hooks up with Ash] would have been fun to read too. I don’t remember what I said at our meeting [to change Yoshida’s mind], but I probably looked like I wasn’t pleased with it.”

Yoshida: “Did you think that Ash having sex with a woman wouldn’t fit?”

Sato: “Not really… I wonder what I was feeling?”

Yoshida: “For me, you know, there’s no sex scenes with women [in BF]. So I felt like I’d like to show that hey, Ash is a guy! Since Ash isn’t actually gay.”

Yoshida: “I had Ashita no Joe in mind [when I wrote the ending].”

Sato: “Yeah, you talked about that back then.”

Host: “In HIkari no niwa, it says directly that Ash died.”

Yoshida: “I said he died! (laughs) There were people who kept writing to me saying Ash has to be alive and that he has to come to Japan, kept saying ‘He’s actually alive, right?’“

Host: “They insisted he’d use the ticket he got from Eiji and come to Japan?”

Yoshida: “Nothing that specific, but I wonder why some girls think of happiness in that sort of context. They kept saying, ‘He’ll come to Japan and the two of them will be happy, right?’ and I always wondered, why would you insist that coming to Japan will make him happy? What is happiness?”

Host: “Do you think fans will get mad when you say that?”

Yoshida: “I do wonder. I always worry about how to deal with my protagonists who are criminals. Obviously they’re hurt by killing people, but still. […] They kill because otherwise they’d be killed, but they’re still murderers. I feel giving a proper ending to people like that is very difficult, and in the end in Banana Fish I decided that he shouldn’t survive.”

Fujimoto: “Why did Ash die?”

Yoshida: “I was conflicted about that. I had two endings in mind, one where he dies and another where he doesn’t, but I’d decided a long time ago that he would die, so I felt I couldn’t change that.”

Fujimoto: “What was the ending like where he didn’t die?”

Yoshida: “Nothing special, he just doesn’t die (laughs).”

Fujimoto: “Nothing happens between him and Eiji, they just part ways and…”

Yoshida: “Yes, like that. But I felt that the ending I’d thought of first was the most fitting.”

Fujimoto: “So when you started this series, your plan was that Ash would die.”

Yoshida: “Exactly. To say the truth, I only became conflicted about whether he would die or not quite late on in the serialization.“

Fujimoto: “When was it exactly?”

Yoshida: “When River Phoenix died (laughs). I began thinking this wasn’t a joke. But my original theme for this story was that there’s something fascinating about people who die young, like how this person lived his full life in 17 years rather than the 70 years it takes for normal people. But in reality, people dying young is a terrible tragedy. So I thought maybe I shouldn’t go there. But when it comes down to it, Ash is a killer. I feel that regardless of what might have been behind the killings, people who take another person’s life need to make up for it with their own life. So that’s why I wrote that ending. Also, I didn’t think Ash would get to live long anyway (laughs).”

Fujimoto: “Some writers say it takes a lot of energy to kill off their characters. How do you feel about killing off your characters?”

Yoshida: “Me? That’s not really an issue for me. I’d killed off a lot of characters before, and it wasn’t a big deal. The only thing was that River Phoenix died young in real life, so I thought ‘This is bad.’ If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have felt anything about it. I don’t think dying young is an unhappy thing. Whether people were happy or not doesn’t depend on how long they lived. I always wonder if people were happy just because they had a long life.”

“Banana Fish is actually shonen manga, and if Yoshida had her way or if it had been written today, it would have been shonen or seinen (or BL).”

Headline: “I like shojo manga because anything goes”

Fujimoto: “Don’t you get a lot of offers from magazines aimed at men?”

Yoshida: “I do, but I think writing for boys is boring. Their wants and desires are too obvious (laughs). And I feel they’re conservative… or how should I say it, they refuse to believe in magic? They don’t believe in magic and instead believe in their own sexual desires (laughs). I’m envious of how simple they are (laughs). But girls aren’t like that. They’re confusing and complicated and I don’t know what they’ll react to and how, and on the flip side that means anything goes.”

Ahahaha.  Ahahaha.  Ahahah….

So when she says that Ash is not gay, that indicates, to me, that she would *never* write a sexual relationship for Ash and Eiji. She just didn’t see it that way. And honestly, despite what I write in fanfiction, I’m cool with that. I think their bond is what it is (and in my mind, it’ll always be romantic, even without the eventuality of sex).

I’m also interested in the fact that she attributed Ash’s bad end with payment for his crimes as a killer. As BF fans, we regularly dismiss his killing. In fact, the only kill of his that really disturbed me (apart from Shorter, which is an entirely different kind of disturbed) was during his gang war with Arthur, when he had underlings executed. Everyone, including Ash, had issues with that. So why doesn’t the rest of the killing bug me? I really don’t know. It just doesn’t.

But Ash, from the very first, knows that he deserves punishment for his life style. Some might reasonably argue that he’s already lived enough punishment for that and more, but I can see how Ash might never accept the idea of a clean slate. As Yoshida said, why would you insist that coming to Japan would make Ash happy? I don’t think he’s capable of really being happy anywhere. 😢

Jean: You had Kaeya with you

lonely whale