Man, I get so fucking annoyed with how Blanca treats Yut-Lung with kid gloves, meanwhile he slaps Ash around and shits all over him and makes him hate himself even more than he already does. But okay, whatever.
This entire sequence pisses me off.
Yut-Lung literally just admits that he wants to kill Eiji because he's upset at the idea of Ash "finding redemption" while he has to wallow in his bitter hatred. But again, for as intelligent and brilliant as Yut-Lung is, and for as well as he's able to read Ash and target his weaknesses, he shows here that he really doesn't know him at all.
He says he can see the "rage" in Ash. That his beautiful face masks a furious demon, and blah, blah, blah. Talk about a terminal case of projection.
The real, root cause of Yut-Lung's hatred toward Ash is that Ash isn't like him, and he knows it. He knows Ash has experienced worse abuse than he has, even, and yet Ash isn't "filled with hate" the way Yut-Lung is, and he never has been. Eiji isn't the reason for Ash's empathy or compassion. Ash had those things long before he ever met Eiji. We see it in the way Ash ran the youth gangs in Manhattan, for example. Under his rule, fighting between the groups became basically non-existent. We see it in the way Dino talks about how much Ash cried the first time he was ordered by Dino to kill for him. We see it in the way he spares the lives of his own boys, even when they went behind his back to work with Dino. We see it in the way Shorter gets frustrated at Ash for playing "soft ball" with his enemies. We see it in the way Ash begged Blanca to show him how to go easy on his enemies, and in the way Ash tries to limit the damage he can cause by using a revolver instead of a semi-auto. On and on. Ash never wanted to hurt anyone. He never let the abuse he suffered drive him toward hate. He was always filled with compassion and kindness, and always led with those qualities first. So this so-called redemption that Yut-Lung expresses so much jealousy over isn't even a real thing. Ash never needed redemption, because he never sought to hurt anyone who didn't hurt him first or threaten him or the people he cared about. And even then, and I know I've spoken about this before, but for example, he never shows any, real desire to go after Yut-Lung, despite the absolute horror he subjects Ash to.
I swear to God, Yut-Lung is so full of shit.
He's trying to make excuses to Blanca here for his own, shitty behavior. Because he knows what he's doing is wrong. So he tries to pawn it off as somehow being Ash's fault because it "isn't fair" that Ash can find love while he can't. He refuses to give Ash any credit for being a good person. As if Ash just lucked into the bonds and relationships he has, rather than gaining those friendships through his own kindness and compassion. The real reason Ash has so many people who care about him is because Ash cares about them just as much, if not more. People are drawn to Ash, ultimately, because they know he would never abandon them. Because they know his care is genuine and that he would do anything to protect them.
And Blanca is only half-right here. He thinks, along with Yut-Lung, that Ash would have ended up like both of them if he hadn't had Eiji. That losing Eiji would turn Ash into a monster. But the truth is, with or without Eiji, Ash was never a monster and he never would have become one, either, because his entire character is defined by compassion. He was compassionate before he ever met Eiji, and he would remain compassionate, even without him. The part Blanca gets right is when he says that 'rather than hate and be triumphant, Ash chose to love and be destroyed'. Ash made that choice, before he ever met Eiji, even. He made it in the bonds he had with Shorter, and with Alex and Kong and Bones, and Skip, and Griff. He made it every time he willingly put his life on the line for theirs, every time he showed compassion and mercy, even to his enemies like Arthur. The reason Arthur is able to come back for Ash later on is because Ash chose to spare his life to begin with. Something Blanca would have cautioned him against. That's a manifestation of what Blanca means when he says Ash chose to love and be destroyed over hating and finding triumph. Again, long before he ever met Eiji. And when Blanca tells Yut-Lung that 'one who does not love cannot be loved', and when he says 'Ash at the very least knows what it is to love', that's a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental difference between Ash and these two. Ash always knew what it meant to love. He never lost sight of it, never lost the ability to love, no matter how bad things got for him, and that's his strength as a person. That's what makes him superior to Blanca and Yut-Lung.
Yut-Lung's real problem with Ash started when he saw that Ash was capable of love, still, despite the hell of his life.
He couldn't handle it because Yut-Lung himself no longer was, and so Ash's very existence served as a constant reminder of his own weakness and failure.
And so all the horrible shit he does to Ash, it's all in service of trying to drag Ash down to his level. Of trying to turn him into a monster like himself, so he doesn't have to be faced with his own shortcomings.
It's so petty and it's so wrong. Ash never did anything to him, but Yut-Lung doesn't care, because seeing Ash makes him hate himself even more, and that's enough of a reason for him to destroy his life.
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