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Sing doesn’t just marry a woman, but a teenage girl. They meet at 13 and 23. New York Sense shows that they married in 1999 when Akira was 18. Going by those dates, they were either 1) in contact/dating during Akira’s teenage years and married when she turned 18 in NYC or 2) had no contact and married within a year of Akira coming to NYC. Neither of those bode well. Sing could’ve been courting a minor 10 years his junior. Yes, there was no sexual contact because they were in different countries, but it’s still inappropriate and imbalanced. Yes, Akira marrying at 18 is legal in the US whereas Yut-lung’s mother marrying at 15 would not be. There are big differences between those ages, but they’re still teenagers. Marrying within a year of dating is a red flag no matter what age. However, their relationship is presented as the light at the end of the tunnel.

In Banana Fish, grown men marrying teenagers is only portrayed as bad through stereotypes of gay or Chinese people. Dino exemplifies the gay predator stereotype, the Lees the stereotype of Chinese concubines. In Banana Fish, Dino legally adopting the younger man he considers his lover is horrific. In real life, it’s what gay men in the US like Bayard Rustin had to do to create a legal connection to their partners during the AIDS crisis. Gay men in Japan still have to legally adopt their partners. Yes, Dino is a child sex abuser. Yes, Yut-lung’s mother was a child bride. Those are bad things and they’re presented as such. Yes, concubines were outlawed in Hong Kong in 1971 which lines up with Yut-lung's birth in 1969. However, these are still stereotypes and these are fictional characters, not real people. Yoshida utilized stereotypes to craft these characters in ways she did not with others. Compared to how no one even questions Sing and Akira, it comes across like the misdeeds of Dino or Yut-lung’s father are more to due with their demographics than the actions being bad themselves. (Sing is also Chinese, but isn’t written with the stereotypes of the Lee family.)

Sing can move on from street gang life and marry Akira. He’s not gay nor stereotypical like the Hong Kong national characters, so his marriage to a teenager isn’t framed as inappropriate. Again, these are fictional characters crafted by Yoshida. Like Sing, Jessica can move on from being raped and remarry Max. They can both find happiness because they’re heterosexual and can get married and raise families. For Ash who was both a victim of countless rapes and a murderous gang leader but whose greatest love was another boy, his “happiest” most “fulfilled” ending according to Yoshida is to die. This is long enough and I don’t want to get into why I think Ash dying how he does is unfair.

The way different-gender couples prosper but Ash and Eiji don’t is just salt in the wound. Sing and Akira’s genders and heterosexuality reinforce each other too. By Garden of Light, Sing has grown into the pinnacle of physical masculinity: tall, muscular, athletic. He fulfills that gender role by accepting a fellow man like Eiji won’t love him back. Again, he’s a fictional character. It makes sense in context to move on from Eiji who can’t get over Ash, but there’s no same-gender couples happily together to fill that void compared to plentiful different-gender ones. By the end of Garden of Light, Akira accepts being a girl specifically so she can grown into a “good woman” (translated as “foxy lady” in VIZ editions) to marry men like Sing.