Everything Is Only As It Is.

Banana Fish: Come for the gay; stay for the slay(ing of the US empire)

*spoilers af*

Banana Fish is a manga from the 80s that was published in a shoujo magazine (aimed at the young and teenage girls demographic) and was recently adapted into an anime in 2018. It perfectly juggles many themes, and is not praised enough as an amazingly written political love story. BF is a violent, yet warm story that was literally born out of the Cold War. It follows Ash who leads a small gang in New York. He was essentially groomed by the head of a big mafia named Dino who runs the local drug market. In terms of the political stakes, they escalate when we learned that Dino is involved with the US government in developing a dangerous drug called Banana Fish, which will be used to destabilize third world nations. The plot thickens into global imperialism lead by the US…we all need to give the creator, Akimi Yoshida, her roses.

Yoshida understands the world we live in, and so does Ash, our hot, intelligent, OP, and emotionally damaged protagonist.

The main difference between the anime and manga is that the anime takes place in 2018, losing the major context of the Cold War and how the Banana Fish drug is set to be used in multiple countries throughout the world that were fighting colonization, including Nicaragua, Honduras, etc. Yoshida is so funny but wild for portraying American government officials wanting to engineer a coup d’ etat in Honduras by claiming that there is a cadre of hard-lined Marxists originally trained in Cuba infiltrating the country . Wild af. Anyways, throughout BF, there are consistent international references made including to the Vietnam War, Cuba, Algeria, etc. Yoshida also stated in an interview that when the Soviet Union fell, it majorly impacted her writing. BF ended in 1994 while the SU fell in 1991. The world of BF is very much grounded in our world.

The changes from the manga to the anime are major and should be questioned. Some are evidence of the strong relationship the US and Japan have developed ever since the end of WWII. The original BF story challenges the idealized history us Americans are raised to learn post WWII, illuminating the callousness and brazenness of American intervention into other countries’ process of liberation. I totally recommend the manga over the anime for mainly this reason, but I have a lot more reasons. There are a lot of differences I’m not a fan of, and that’s a whole ass other article.

A lot of folks ask is BF a yaoi series? I do jokingly refer to BF as a yaoi but it isn’t. Ash and Eiji do not explicitly express sexual attraction towards each other. They share an intimate friendship and Akimi is a troll who teases potentially ~lovers ~ art of both young men outside the actual story, challenging homophobes and even the queers lmfao because I wanted to see more intimacy. I consider BF a BL story because Boys Love is an umbrella term so it should include different relationships between boys and men in the many forms it can take.

From official illustration book Angel Eyes

Part of wanting to talk about the world of BF is sharing my thoughts on the controversial ending. My hypothesis: Those who accept BF’s ending are more politically invested in our world. Basically, we accept Ash’s choice because even though it fucking hurts, we at least somewhat understand the bigger picture of international systemic oppression and why Ash believed he couldn’t escape his violent life, literally and mentally.

That ending
Shoga Yu describes this well in her video, but the ending is effectively heartbreaking because we don’t experience catharsis through other characters’ mourning or a continuation of the story as we have with past deaths. The story doesn’t go on…and it feels we can’t either. I sure haven’t. This is the first time a visual piece of art has inspired me to take some time to reflect and write on it. I didn’t really cry when I actually finished the series. Rather, I tear up a wittle when I randomly reflect on the whole series and while writing this up. It feels like real grieving in which I don’t immediately react. Then I proceed with my life, going to work and doing other mundane things. Meanwhile, I suppress all the feelings until they come out during inappropriate moments.

Anyways, I’m not saying Ash wanted to die. But, it’s clear he died with a smile on his face. For someone with a tragic story, that’s a happy ending. It’s an ending he chose despite so much of his autonomy being challenged and taken throughout his life.

Ash had been a victim to the upper echelons of society since he was a child. He was violated by men who not only had local control, but global. Remember when Ash was forced to be at a table with government officials, advising them on how to destabilize the Central America (It’s the vague middle east in the anime *rolls eyes*)? Ash begged Dino to instead let him be degraded through human trafficking as he had in his past. Dino basically responded that he knew it was harder for Ash to sell his soul to the state rather than his body.

Throughout the story, Ash continually confides in Eiji in his private moments: he is haunted by his past. Sing asked Ash if he ever regretted becoming the leader of a gang, and Ash responded, every fucking day. However, he also chose the responsibility of unifying the different gangs to collectively oppose the mafia who manipulated them into killing each other. Sing’s sister and Ash state the reality is that the cops had no power to hold Dino accountable and prevent crime amongst gangs consisting of youths. Ash had the ability to do something about it. This was a “gift” that many characters (Cain, Sing, Dino, Charlie, etc.) acknowledge and some even remind Ash. This responsibility freed him to a degree from his life as Dino’s slave, but it also made him enemies among the different gangs. Ash takes on the duty to kill Dino, but that leads to him making enemies within the mafia and the state. His platter of enemies and burden became heavier and heavier. Every time he is at peace with Eiji and enjoys his life, he is brought back to reality by violent experiences. The deadliest reminder is of course the last: Lao.

I’m sorry fans, but we have to admit: If it wasn’t Lao, it was going to be someone else. Ash knew that. I believe in that moment, he chose to live for himself and the comfort he found in Eiji’s letter for him. His end was foreshadowed several times throughout the series. Ash himself didn’t believe he’d live long. One example from the beginning is in Volume 1 when he said he preferred Hemingway’s “short and happy life” (though Hemingway died at 60 which isn’t short to me). In Volume 8, Ash is drawn to Hemingway’s story of the snow leopard who climbs to the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro also known as the “House of God”, and dies there. His death was foreshadowed a little before halfway through the 19 volume series. While re-reading and re-watching BF, many signs of Ash’s struggle with mental health become more evident. Watching those moments made me think of the people I love in my life, and if I’m noticing signs. Am I recognizing my own struggles?

From Vol. 8

World of BF
Looking at America’s film history, it’s clear the Vietnam War is a huge part of American history and a major influence in our collective understanding of war, despite it not being really taught in our schools. It has been a strange experience discovering America’s obsession with Vietnam from a young age through film as a Vietnamese woman. I appreciate how the Vietnam War is consistently referenced throughout BF. Just like when I saw Jacob’s ladder and Full Metal Jacket, I’m being transported to a time I want to understand and learn from. Throughout BF, many other countries in which America has an oppressive agenda are also referenced: from Cuba and South America to the Soviet Union.

A poster for the film “A Yank in Viet-Nam” (1964)

The other real tragedy is that the people who will benefit from Banana Fish weren’t stopped. My breath stopped when Dino was shot because even someone as powerful as Dino is disposable and a pawn in the bigger picture of a global system of oppression.

I wanna hear what New Yorkers think lol, but I do feel the portrayal of America feels genuine. BF’s portrayal of race in America is fairly nuanced minus a pretty white boy being able to unite gangs of various races.

WTF is next?
I am compelled, through my adoration of Akimi Yoshida’s earnest portrayal of Ash’s and Eiji’s relationship in this fictional world that is grounded in my reality, to think about the violent country I live in. America has stifled so many people’s opportunities to experience love in all its forms, to the fullest. But I want to go beyond just thinking and take action because we all deserve a life in which we aren’t forced to make choices that don’t fulfill us.

I want to find my community around BF and other amazing BL/queer stories online and irl. I want to talk with people about queer and radical ways of loving. Additionally, I want to organize some events where fans in LA (and outside if you wanna travel) can meet up. Stay tuned and feel free to share your thoughts below.

I want to shout out the complex and divided BF community. These are some of my favorite sources of BF analyses and would love to find more. Feel free to share <3. There were more noteworthy threads from reddit, tumblr and other sites but only shared the one I can recall.

Banana Fish: A Tale of Twisted Fate → particularly sweet because the speaker connects their own personal queer experience to BF
Understanding the Reaction to Banana Fish → great breakdown on why the ending hurts so much T^TBanana Fish raised my standards for storytelling and media analysis… → Periodt!
Banana Fish: The negotiations of a show, a love story & things that hurt →Love the dedication this person has to analyzing this series

banana fish BL akimi yoshida Boys Love anime manga yaoi ash x eiji Vietnam War politics

cosmicjoke-deactivated20250918

Further commentary on the ending of Banana Fish (Spoilers):

cosmicjoke

Look, I understand the controversy and upset surrounding the ending of Banana Fish. My last post on this topic seems to have pissed some people off, which was never my intention. But I think maybe I could have worded things a bit better, so I’m going to try again to explain why I feel like the ending of Banana Fish was so perfect.

It’s not a happy ending, and I don’t think anyone, anywhere, will try to tell you that the ending was meant to make anyone happy, or satisfied. That’s the point. It’s not MEANT to please the reader. It’s meant to remain true to its narrative realism. And in that realism, it’s meant to break the readers heart. And boy does it do both.

I don’t think anyone would tell you, anyone with any ounce of feeling in their heart, anyway, that Ash didn’t deserve a happy ending, or that he deserved to die after all the awful shit he went through. I think we can all agree that we would have wanted, if we had a choice, to see Ash have a happy, hopeful ending with Eiji in Japan. We all agree that Ash DESERVED a happy ending, because he was a good person who was dealt about the shittiest hand in life a person can have. And despite all that shit, he retained that innate goodness of heart that made him who he was. He never became a monster, like the people who used him up and abused him over and over again. That’s what makes him such an extraordinary character that’s deeply loved by so many people. He absolutely deserved to be happy.

But that’s the thing. Banana Fish is a story that deals in reality. Everything that happens in the story, despite the often extraordinary, larger than life circumstances, is dealt with in a way that is, very often, brutally, painfully honest and realistic. It doesn’t give us what should be, it gives us what IS. And that makes perfect sense in accordance with its relation to writers like Hemingway and Salinger. They wrote stories that dealt in brutal honesty and reality too, and both writers are referenced throughout Banana Fish. And it’s Banana Fish’s commitment to that brutal honesty and reality that makes it an authentic piece of art. People want a fairy tale ending, where Ash gets to ride off into the sunset with Eiji and live happily ever after, but at no point in Banana Fish are we given any indication that the story is, at any point, going to delve into the realm of unreality and fantasy, and give us such an ending. To do so would have been a betrayal of the genuine nature of the narrative. It would have ultimately robbed it of its authenticity as a piece of art, and the story, as a result, would have been left hollow and lacking.

Banana Fish, throughout its narrative, shows us that terrible things happen to good people, and that good people are often forced into doing terrible things. It never shy’s away from that cruel, heartbreaking reality, and the ending is no exception.

It affects us so deeply, and leaves us so upset, because it’s so REAL. It feels genuine to us, it feels real, because it refuses to betray its honesty for the sake of a happy fantasy. It remains loyal to the harsh truth of reality, and the harsh truth of Ash’s reality in particular. Ash is a deeply damaged, broken person, who’s experiences in life are the very definition of cruelty. Here is a boy who, since the age of seven, has experienced sexual, mental, emotional and physical abuse repeatedly and on a scale truly unfathomable to almost all of us. A boy who was forced into a life of prostitution in order to simply survive on the harsh streets of an unforgiving city. A boy who, again out of a necessity for survival, has had to kill other human beings. A boy who, out of a desperate situation in which he was forced to choose either to save his soulmate or watch him be murdered by his best friend gone berserk in a mad, drug induced insanity, had to kill his best friend by shooting him straight through the heart. A boy who, each time in his life that he’s tried to build real and meaningful relationships with other people, Griffin, the girl he liked when he was 14, Skip, Shorter, Eiji, he’s had to watch those people he allowed himself to grow close to either die or almost die, over and over again. All of that combined creates a level of trauma that’s so far beyond the normal scope or understanding of a regular human being, so far beyond any discernable mechanism for coping with trauma, that to expect Ash to just get over it, for it all to magically be okay just because he moves to Japan with Eiji, is the height of unrealistic, and, again, would be a betrayal of the authenticity the story marries itself to from start to finish.

Ash’s death is a tragedy, as his life was a tragedy, and the story is a reflection of that. It stays true to that narrative, and never compromises on it. That’s the point. Life doesn’t always have a happy ending. People that have suffered severe, irreversible trauma don’t always recover, and can’t always heal from it. People who have suffered in the obscene and brutal ways that Ash has aren’t always going to be alright. Sometimes it’s just too much. For Ash, it was just too much. Too much damage. Too much heartache. Too much pain. Too much loss. Sometimes we can’t overcome our damage, and that reality presented in this story scares people, I think, because it’s so nakedly honest and unapologetically expressed.

The ending is so god awful painful too because we see, in that moment after Ash reads Eiji’s letter, hope bloom inside him. For an instant, this belief that maybe he can have a happy ending, when he thinks he’ll catch Eiji at the airport, and maybe go with him. And in the next instant, he’s mercilessly reminded of that hope’s falsity. Hope springs eternal, but not always true. Hope and happiness were never meant for Ash. The chance for that was taken from him before he could even understand what those concepts were. The thematic arc of the story was telling us from the start that it was going to end in tragedy.

People weren’t meant to LIKE this ending. It wasn’t meant to make them feel good, or okay with what happened, or fulfilled. In fact, I’d say, it’s meant to make you feel completely devastated. As the story reflects reality, so often too does real life end in a way that leaves us feeling lost and confused and heartbroken. Banana Fish is so good because it stays true to that sense of reality, right until the very end.

The ending doesn’t leave us feeling happy, but it sure does leave us FEELING. Like any real piece of art would. The emotions it conjures are immense and, for some I guess, too real. That sense of loss and hopelessness and pain it leaves us with is so effective because, again, it’s so honest. And I guess that because those emotions are so real, and felt so deeply, and with such intensity, it leaves some readers and viewers feeling angry. Lashing out at a reality which they don’t want to accept. The irony, of course, is that their hatred and rejection of the ending is testament to just how deeply the ending touched them. It didn’t leave them feeling nothing, it left them feeling too much, and they then go into a state of denial, which is really just a stage of grief. A refusal to accept. You know Banana Fish is a true piece of art for that, in how it conjures sincere feelings of grief and mourning in us for its lead character in Ash. We CARE about him, deeply. We want him to be alright, because we love him.

But real art isn’t concerned with placation. It’s concerned with truth. So many great pieces of literature have unhappy endings, because that’s the truth of the human condition, and the condition of life in general. Real art won’t shy away from those painful, awful truths, nor is it afraid to conjure the feelings which go hand in hand with those truths in its audience.

With all that said, the tragedy of the ending doesn’t demand a feeling of meaninglessness or desolation at all.

Eiji’s love for Ash and Ash’s love for Eiji is still so pivotal and, ultimately, essential in how the story ends. It’s what allows, maybe not a feeling of hope, but a feeling of peace.

You sense throughout the story that Ash knows he’s going to die. Like he senses that his life is too fucked up, that he’s been through and had to do too many horrible things for it to last very long. It’s like the saying of he who burns brightest burns twice as fast. Ash is burning, and he knows it. He’s already accepted it as an inevitable conclusion. He doesn’t actively seek death, but he doesn’t fear, nor fight against it. At points throughout the story, even, he asks for it, when the horror of what’s happening to him becomes too much. He knows death is coming for him. The only thing keeping him from giving in so easily I think is his lack of agency in how he will. Everything has been taken from Ash, and he doesn’t want to give this last thing away. This choice in how he dies.

Eiji’s love is what finally gives him agency in that decision.

Ash died knowing Eiji loved him, and that knowledge, that certainty that he was loved, genuinely loved by another human being, without any strings or conditions attached, simply loved for himself alone, is what allowed Ash to finally find the peace in death which alluded him in life. He no longer feels like he has to keep fighting, or struggling on through an endless malaise of misery and pain, because he’s finally found the calm and acceptance which comes with knowing he has this one, pure thing for himself, which nobody, none of his abusers, can ever touch or take away. With everything else that’s been stolen from Ash, his innocence, his sense of agency, his own body, his own mind, Eiji’s love for him is the one thing nobody could ever steal away. And that’s, I think, why Ash dies smiling, because it’s that knowledge, that he was worthy of another human being’s true love, that at last shows him that he was a human being himself. Not an animal. Not a monster. He was a human being worthy of love.

Ash’s death is heartbreaking, and brutal, but there’s deep consolation to be had in knowing he spent his final moments with the feeling of Eiji’s love for him alive inside his heart, allowing him at last to feel like a person deserving, worthy of love.

It’s that which allows Ash to finally let go of his struggle, and let’s death’s embrace take hold of him. It’s his own. Eiji’s love, and his choice to let go of life.

It doesn’t make the ending any less heart wrenching or brutal. It doesn’t make us any less devastated by Ash’s death. But it gives us a sense of peace, in knowing, even if we are left feeling lost and heartbroken, Ash himself left life with the fulfillment of knowing he was loved.

ash-in-the-rye

And I thought the whole discourse about the ending stopped 😂

But yeah, as heartbreaking, sad and utterly devastating it is, it just fits. Banana Fish was never a happy story to begin with. We would have never gotten that overly happy ending with Ash and Eiji going together to Japan.

If anything, they had said godbye to each other with the hope of Eiji coming back to New York one day. That’s the only alternative ending I can imagine for this series. Ash would have been too scared to go with him to Japan right away. Too scared of both, himself and the possibility of putting Eiji in danger again. And I think people often tend to ignore this simply because they want an ending where they ride off into the sunset and where everything is fine.

Yes, it’s an ending none of us wanted, but as you said, it fits the realism of the overall story.

However, I personally think that there would have been a way for Ash to overcome his trauma, that death wasn’t the only solution for him. He just would have needed enough time and space and eventually, things would have gotten better. Slowly, but it would have been possible.

I think the realism about his death wasn’t “Ash could have never healed” but rather “It takes one single occurence to completely let your mentality spiral downwards and let you lose all kind of hope you had left”.

I strongly believe that if Lao hadn’t been there, things would have been different, that we really had gotten the open ending with Ash and Eiji simply parting ways. But the moment Lao attacked, things could have only gone one way or another, and sadly, what we got in the end was the most tragic one.

cosmicjoke

Yeah, I do agree with what you say here regarding Lao’s attack on Ash being the action which instigates Ash’s basically fatalistic acceptance of his death. I think, given Ash’s mindset, how he views himself as a danger to Eiji, and all those he cares about, how he’s convinced that allowing himself into any of their lives would ultimately lead to them either being hurt or killed, he then takes Lao’s attack on him as a sign from fate that “no, you aren’t allowed to be with Eiji. You aren’t allowed that happiness.” And he just sort of accepts it, and accepts and is satisfied with knowing Eiji loved him and cared about him. For Ash, that’s enough, because it’s more than he thought he would ever have anyway, and more than he probably felt he ever deserved. He’s okay with dying then, because he knows someone really loved him, without condition, and that’s all he ever really wanted. It’s heartbreaking, but in a way, it also ends the story with a sense of peace, because Ash felt the joy and warmth of being loved in those last moments.

Like you said also, Ash’s fear would have been too great to simply go with Eiji. Another thing people assume is that Ash was running to catch up with Eiji at the airport and go with him. But it’s just as likely that he simply was going to say goodbye one final time. Not necessarily go with him. More than likely not, in fact, given Ash’s feelings about being around Eiji and how that put him in harms way. Ironically, too, I think people tend to ignore Ash’s actual feelings in order to satisfy their own desires for Ash and Eiji. Ash is extremely damaged, because his life has been so filled with absolutely devastating, horrible circumstances and experiences, and people want to believe Ash could have gotten over his trauma’s, that he could have overcome his trauma’s if he just tried hard enough. Maybe. But maybe not. It’s hard to fathom what Ash was going through mentally and emotionally with regards to everything he’s been through. Something, I think, would be impossible for any person to understand who hadn’t themselves gone through similar ordeals. I say it’s ironic, because people who wanted the ending to be happy want that because, obviously, they care deeply about Ash, but people who are angry about the ending and say it was “bad”, and trash Akimi Yoshida for it are failing to consider Ash’s own feelings about everything he’s been through. They say they care about Ash and that he deserved to be happy, without stopping to think about how Ash must have felt.

Whether Ash could have ever recovered from his trauma is, sadly, something no one will ever know. Of course, some trauma’s are just too much to recover from, and I just feel like Ash’s life was so screwed up from the start, that for him to ever really be okay was always going to be a long shot. Maybe he could have, maybe not. Again, I think, it plays to the realism of the story, that so many people who have suffered severe trauma’s, end up damaged for life.

ash-in-the-rye

I’ve also never had the impression that Ash actually intended to accompany Eiji to Japan when he started running towards the airport. It just would have been too sudden. We saw him express several times that he wanted to cut ties with Eiji right then and there. During his last conversation with Blanca:

And during his conversation with Sing:

We all know how much it pained Ash to make that decision, but that was the only possibility he saw in order to keep Eiji safe and he was keen on going through with it.

There’s no way Ash completely changed his mind after having read the letter. Yes, he wanted to run to the airport, to Eiji. But I always had the feeling he just wanted to at least tell him goodbye, that reading his letter made him think: “I don’t want things to end between us like that.” He still would have stayed in America, thinking that this is the life he’s supposed to live, that he’s not deserving of a second chance and a new beginning. It’s a mindset that wouldn’t have changed that quickly within only a few seconds.

So he never was “on the road towards happiness” like people like to call it. He simply would have told him goodbye and that would have been it. It’s even comfirmed by Yoshida-sensei herself that this is approximately how the alternative ending she had in mind would have looked like.

People tend to say the ending is “bad” or “bad/lazy writing” because they see Ash’s death as the message: “All people who have gone through such trauma deserve to die/can only find peace in death.” To be honest, I’ve never got the impression that this is what it wants to tell us.

Yes, Ash smiled in the end, but not because he thought: “Yay! I can finally die!” but because of Eiji’s words that had touched him so deeply. Because he felt loved. Another thing he didn’t think he deserved to ever experience. And sadly, Ash also thought that this is all he could ask for, that asking for more would only put Eiji in danger again and maybe really get him killed.

That’s also why he rather went back to the library instead of seeking medical help after having been atacked by Lao. Because he saw this as a sign that dangers would always follow him, that he’ll always have enemies somewhere. He knew that they’ll target Eiji again when he comes back (and you can be certain he would have come back. He even said so in his letter that they’ll see each other again someday). We don’t know if that’s really how it would have turned out, but that’s what Ash thought is bound to happen. Just as he said, he always imagined the worst-case scenarios and the worst-case scenario he could imagine in that moment was Eiji coming back one day and dying due to him still having enemies. And in order to prevent that from happening, he let his life slip away like that, thinking that the unconditional love he had experienced is already more than he has been deserving of.

Ash always thought of himself as an unredeemable murderer, that he’d always be the cause of other’s misery and problems, that he can’t escape this life he was leading, that death may be the only way to pay for all he’s done in his life (he mostly killed out of self-defense, but for him, this wasn’t an excuse in any kind of way). What’s important to note about all of this is the fact that this is Ash’s point of view. This was how Ash thinks about himself and his life. This was how his mind worked. This doesn’t have to be the actual reality of it.

So does this tell us that every person having experienced such trauma deserves to die? I don’t think so.

At no point in the story, I had the feling as if the narrative was telling me that Ash deserves to die. On the contrary, we have Eiji and other characters who often express how much they want to protect Ash and how much they want him to live. And also the overall depiction and characterization of Ash makes us readers feel for him, sympathize with him and root for him. None of us wanted him to die nor thought: “Yeah, he deserved death”.

If it really was trying to send the message that Ash deserved to die, then we wouldn’t feel so devastated by his death. We would honestly think that this was the only and correct way for Ash’s story to end, but we don’t. We rather think of it as unfair, sad and heartbreaking.

Ash may have been happy in the moment of his death (again, not because he was dying but because of Eiji’s words) and thought that this was the right thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to think of it as the right choice as well and I don’t think it’s even framed as such.

That’s why GoL is so important. Because it shows us what Ash’s death has done to other characters. We see their grief and them mourning Ash even years after he had died. We see how much pain it had caused and that it actually solved nothing. We see how much they miss him and how much they wish he was still there with them even though it’s never really said out loud. With that, the whole epilogue basically tells us that Ash shouldn’t have died, that he didn’t deserve to die, that it was unfair.

If the message really is “all trauma survivors deserve to die”, then we wouldn’t have GoL in the first place or it would have been framed differently with everything being fine. But it’s not and that makes all the difference.

Again, I strongly believe that Ash would have been able to overcome his traumas with enough time and space. However, as I already mentioned, he didn’t thought so himself.

Throughout his life, he always had been treated like a monster, like a toy, like a “thing” rather than a human and this deeply scarred his soul. It’s understandable that he didn’t think highly of himself, that he always saw himself as “evil” without seeing any kind of goodness in himself.

Eiji was some sort of light at the end of the tunnel for him. He could sense his pain, comforted him, reminded him of his humanity and let him experience unconditional love. And this love was very important for Ash at this crucial point of his life.

However, that doesn’t mean that Eiji’s love was the ultimate salvation or solution for every problem. It would have been a highly romanticized view of love and we all know such stories:

A person who is deeply hurt meets someone they fall in love with eventually and suddenly everything is alright and nothing hurts anymore.

That’s pretty unrealistic. You can love someone as much as you want, but that won’t prevent someone’s inner demons to catch up with them at some point - the same that happened to Ash in the end.

That doesn’t mean that Eiji’s love was meaningless, though. Without it, Ash may wouldn’t have died, but he most probably would have turned into the monster Dino and Yut Lung wanted him to become - a fate he feared.

And still, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be enough to defeat Ash’s inner demons. Because the only one who could have been able to would have been Ash himself. But sadly, he lost that battle in the end and that’s a cruel but realistic fate one doesn’t necessarily have to meet but can meet.

cosmicjoke

Perfectly said, everything you wrote here.

That’s exactly what I was trying to get at as well, when I said that it’s ironic that the people who hate the ending so much, because they didn’t get what they wanted to see, what Ash even deserved in a second chance and a happy ending, aren’t taking into account or considering Ash’s own feelings and view point. They’re angry on Ash’s behalf, without realizing they’re dismissing Ash’s own thoughts and feelings. You’re totally right when you say Ash’s view of himself is very skewed and warped. He sees himself in this ugly light, sees himself as this horrible person who brings only misery and pain. But like you also said, we know he’s not, both through our own observations of his actions as readers/viewers, and through the observations and reactions to him of the other character around him. Ash is actually an incredibly good person. Someone with deep feeling and love in his heart. But see, that’s where the difficulty for him comes in.

He can’t justify his own actions to himself. Every life he’s taken has taken a massive toll on him. To take another life isn’t some frivolous, easily excusable thing for him. It’s a serious, deeply consequential action, which Ash, no matter how justified he was in taking that life, can never square with himself. Can never be okay with himself for. It’s because Ash has such a good heart that the crimes he’s committed weigh so heavily on him, I think. Why he can’t let it go, or forgive himself for it. He cares too much, feels too much. In the end, it’s what makes him unable to forgive himself, or accept himself. It’s what makes him unable to believe he deserves anything good. It’s tragic, and again, it makes sense with the narrative of the story, and with Ash as a character. He’s a tragic character that ends tragically.

There’s definitely every possibility that Ash could have recovered, for sure, given enough time and help. Like you said, I don’t believe the narrative is telling us at all that people with severe trauma like Ash “deserve” to die. I’m not even sure how anyone could take that message away from the story. I think what the story is telling us is that, in reality, people that have suffered severe trauma often come to a bad end, because of that trauma, because it throws their life and the choices they make in that life so completely off track, and that it’s horrible and unfair and cruel, but it’s reality. Ash himself was subjected to so much cruelty and abuse by so many people around him, that he often literally had no choice but to do the things he did in order to survive, and nobody with any heart or compassion blames him for that. But Ash blames himself. And that’s the inherent tragedy in his character. Like you said, he never felt he deserved a second chance. And he never felt that he deserved another person’s love, and never believed he would receive it.

I agree completely that the reason Ash is smiling when he dies is because he knows he’s loved by Eiji. That knowledge, that feeling of love that he has, is far more than he thought he would ever receive, and because of that, because it’s more than he thought he would ever have, he receives it with gratitude and satisfaction. For him, that was enough to die in peace.

But you make an excellent point about the grief we see left over from Ash’s death in those who cared about and loved him. Ash’s death in the end caused immense pain in those he left behind, and that too is testament to his value and goodness as a person, and to the fact that the story was never sending the message that he “deserved” to die. He was someone who made the lives of people around him better, and more fulfilled, even if he could never see that about himself. And with him gone, it leaves a huge empty space behind in those people.

It’s maybe the most heartbreaking aspect of Ash’s death, that, like you said, he thought of allowing himself to die as the right thing to do, when in reality it wasn’t. The world wasn’t better off without him in it. The people he loved and who loved him weren’t better off without him in their lives. But Ash, in his misguided view of himself, believes that he’s doing the selfless and correct thing, that he’s ensuring the safety and happiness of Eiji’s life, and everyone else he cared for, by letting himself die. Ultimately, it shows the true consequences and devastation of all the trauma and cruelty that Ash has suffered in his life, the devastation of all the abuse he’s suffered at the hands of others who had power over him, that his view of himself could be so wrong and warped, as to believe the world and the people he loved were better off without him.

And I think that’s in keeping with the realism of the story. The story wants to show us the damage done to those who have suffered and experienced things like child sexual abuse and people who have been forced into a life of violence and crime. It wants to show us realistically the fallout of that kind of abuse and cruelty, of what happens to a person who’s been subjected to those kinds of cruelties from other human beings. It never shy’s away from that, and that’s why the ending is so perfect, in my opinion. It doesn’t undermine or trivialize what Ash has gone through. I think if the ending had been what people wanted, where Ash went to Japan with Eiji and everything was all better, it would have done just that, trivialized Ash’s trauma, and subsequently, trivialized the trauma of sexual abuse and mental, emotional and physical abuse just in general. It would have been sending the message that those things aren’t all that bad, and you really shouldn’t let them effect you so deeply, which is absurd beyond words. By giving us the ending that it did, Banana Fish acknowledged the seriousness of those abuses, and realistically depicted what those abuses can do to a person, emotionally and mentally. Ash hated himself because of everything that was done to him and because of the things he was forced into doing just to survive, and even Eiji’s love in the end wasn’t enough to fix that. I think it’s a brutal but honest and realistic depiction of the consequences of abuse on a person, especially a young person like Ash.

And the ultimate fallout from it in Banana Fish is that Ash views himself as a monster, and as someone not deserving of love, and who considered himself beyond lucky, to have been the recipient of love anyway.

I think that’s incredibly courageous, to depict that in a story the way Banana Fish did. To show the true damage caused when a person is treated like disposable trash.

I’m really glad I’ve been able to have this conversation with you, by the way! You’re really helping me to work through and sort out my emotions regarding Banana Fish, and organize my thoughts into understandable words! So many people rail against and flat out reject the ending, and I think it’s just misguided and a failure to appreciate the courage and honesty it took to have that ending, so to find another person who really gets it and appreciates it the way you do is amazing!

ash-in-the-rye

Same ^^ I always enjoy talking to people about the way they interpret the ending and what they think of it. The ending is really hard to digest, especially since nowadays we’re so used to everything having a happy ending and I think it’s totally fine to not like it or to not agree with it. I personally also would have chosen a more open ending with Ash saying goodbye to Eiji at the airport and then staying in America, leaving it open to the reader what happens next. But the way things canonly ended, as cruel and unfair as it is, makes sense to me, too. Like I said, the way things turned out, there were only two possible options for an outcome: Ash dying or an open ending.

I’ve never been angry at the ending or felt “betrayed” like others did (seriously, the author didn’t promise anyone anything, how can people feel betrayed? 😂). I rather felt sad because it really didn’t have to end that way if certain things had been different. And things like sexual abuse, child abuse, the consequences victims of these things have to suffer from and have to endure are very much still an issue nowadays in the real world. So if anything, Ash’s death also teaches us that such things finally have to disappear if we don’t want people to have to go through the same like Ash did. Maybe we need to see him die in such a tragic and unfair way in order to let that fully sink in.

But sadly, as soon as some people know the ending, they immediately judge it, hate on it, bash the author and sometimes even those who like the ending. Like, don’t do that. Let people have their own opinions on it, it doesn’t make them a bad person. And it also doesn’t mean that they think “every person who has experienced abuse deserves to die” (yes, I saw this accusation on twitter once). You can still be fine with the ending and like it and still think that Ash actually deserved to live.

And hating on the author so much is just a no-go. It’s okay to criticize things about a story, but people calling Yoshida-sensei names, like “bad/lazy writer” or saying she doesen’t deserve rights/her characters is beyond simple “critique”. It’s her story and she ended it the way she wanted it to end. There was no ill intention behind it. And the accusation of her “clearly hating Ash” is still beyond my reason. Like, she modelled him after her favourite actor. He was such a deep and complex character. How could she hate him? People really need to learn that “killing a character ≠ hating them”.

Things like that are the reason why I rather talk to people about the ending who either like it or at least accept it even though they don’t like it. I find it more difficult to talk to people about it who just outright hate it and call it “trash” and “bad writing” because I have the feeling that most of them aren’t interested in different interpretations or opinions of others. “Ash dies and this is bad and insulting” and that’s all there is to it which is sad because the most interesting aspect of literature is how people’s views on it differ.

You can still not like it, of course, but stay respectful towards others who do like it.

cosmicjoke

Exactly. The backlash is just bizarre to me, especially considering the form it takes. It’s painfully clear to me that Yoshida loves Ash and cares and sympathizes with him deeply. Her depiction of him throughout the story, the way she shows how deep his trauma is, how horrifically and heavily the abuse he’s suffered and the things he’s been forced to do in order to survive weigh on him, I think is all the proof anyone should ever need of this. But, like you said, there’s people out there who are so rabidly opposed to the ending, and who take such offense at it, that they accuse anyone who defends if of being a victim blamer or of thinking absurd things like victims of abuse deserve to die. I seriously don’t understand the leap in logic there, because it’s so nonsensical. I don’t think anyone is meant to “like” the ending of Banana Fish. I think it’s meant to break your heart, because you’ve spent all this time with Ash, you grow to care deeply about Ash, and then you have to watch him die for no, real good reason. But again, that goes back to the way the story remains faithful to it’s realism. Most of the time, when people die, there isn’t any logic or reason behind it. There’s no greater meaning. They just die, and it’s awful, and that’s the point.

And like you said, because of the circumstances of the story, of Ash’s story, the things he goes through, the trauma’s he suffers, and how those trauma’s lead to this situation in the end where he gets killed, it’s really a warning against allowing kid’s like Ash to fall under the radar. To allow the sorts of things that happened to Ash to happen to any child. One of the most damaging things to happen to Ash, of all of the damaging experiences he went through, I think, was his father allowing him to fall into the hands of the first person to sexually abuse him, even after knowing it was happening. It set Ash on a path of destruction towards himself, because it had such a severe impact on how he viewed himself, had such negative consequences for how he ended up seeing himself as this terrible person who didn’t deserve love, or happiness, or a second chance. It set him on this path of self-loathing, despite his actions always being driven by a sound moral center.

That’s the greatest tragedy about Ash and his story. That he’s a good person, with a good heart, who, because of the way he’s been treated all his life, perceives himself to be the opposite. When Eiji tells Ash that he doesn’t feel “nothing” over the people he’s killed, that’s about the most accurate statement about Ash anyone makes. Ash feels an unbearable guilt over the people he’s killed, he constantly makes reference to the fact that he considers taking a human life an awful, horrible thing, and each life he’s taken haunts him and eats away in the most awful way at him, and this aspect of Ash is testament to the goodness inside him. The fact that it hurts him so much, that he cares so much. He’s suffering immensely for it. But in the end, again, he just accepts his fate and the knowledge of Eiji’s love as more than he deserves, because he’s been so screwed up psychologically by what others have done to him, and ultimately, that leads to his death. The story is really about the consequences of trauma and what severe enough trauma, whether that’s child abuse, sexual abuse, physical and mental and emotional abuse, can do to a person. With Ash, it had a terrible, terrible affect. I think people that trash the ending, and trash Yoshida, just simply don’t understand that. They want a happy ending, sure. Everyone WANTED a happy ending. But the point of the story is that Ash’s trauma is immense and so overwhelming, that, even despite Eiji’s love and support, Ash just couldn’t get over it. He couldn’t get over the way it had warped his perception of himself. It’s tragic, and I just wish more people could appreciate it. I think it was incredibly courageous to have it end the way it did, because it refused to bend to a more palatable conclusion which would have, in my view, compromised the realism of the story and undercut Ash’s experiences as an abuse victim. An open ending could have worked, but an out and out happy ending would have trivialized Ash’s horrible experiences and what it did to him. So yeah, I don’t blame anyone for not “liking” the ending, or for wishing it could have had a happier ending. But I just don’t agree with anyone who calls it “bad writing” or “lazy”, because that’s flat out wrong. It’s the opposite of all that. Ash dying is the definition of unfair, but then, everything that happened to Ash throughout “Banana Fish” was deeply, deeply unfair. He didn’t deserve any of it. The ending is consistent with that. Horrible things happening to good people, and the way, as human beings, we’re forced to cope with it, when there’s nothing to hold on to, and no way to make sense out of any of it. I mean, it’s such a human story, and that’s why it’s so incredibly good.