To Love and Be Loved – Ash’s Legacy in “Banana Fish”

Note: This post contains spoilers through the very end of Banana Fish.

I suspect it’s common to go through periods of questioning one’s value to the world. At least, it’s common for me, because I have a terrible history of low self-esteem and imposter syndrome. If there are folks out there reading this who’ve always been perfectly confident about themselves or discovered the secret to mental well-being, well, please teach me your secrets. I spend possibly too much time worrying about what I have to offer to the world and whether I’m worthy of love, and I suspect that’s likely why I grew so attached to the narrative in 2018’s Banana Fish adaptation.

Banana Fish is probably best known as being a violent, sordid BL-adjacent story; many of the people I know who have seen it (which is a lot more now that my anime club has recently finished watching it) have spoken at length about how heartbreaking and tragic it is. I agree that on a surface level the narrative is pretty much a gauntlet of emotional pain; relationships are broken, there are multiple tragic deaths, and characters are made to re-live horrifying experiences in their lives by awful people. Having revisited it recently, though, I think my feelings about why the story is so devastating are more complicated than it being filled with a lot of outwardly disturbing actions and imagery. There’s a feeling of inevitability to the things that happen during the plot and I think, being someone who’s been through some pretty awful life-changing situations, it can feel pessimistic toward the prospect of getting through those things intact.

17-year-old Ash Lynx has led a difficult life, a survivor of childhood sex-trafficking and current gang leader who’s since left dozens of dead bodies in his wake. It’s not surprising to me that his death at the end of the series is an echo of the way he was forced to live his life – sudden and violent. A sad fate, but one that starts to feel inevitable as the story reveals just how impossible it is for Ash to escape from the environment in which he’s been struggling to survive for so long. Ash lives in a completely different world from Eiji, the young Japanese man who enters his life after experiencing a career-ending sports injury. Eiji’s trauma is no less real than Ash’s, but he has the benefit of having been raised in a safe place where his survival isn’t contingent on cozying up with violent people. He has a support system in Ibe, the journalist he’s been assisting. Yet, despite their differences, the two kindle a spark of kinship in one-another and form a bond that’s only breakable through death.

I think there’s an expectation that stories like this, ones which center troubled people, should have some kind of redemptive quality in order to be “good.” Ash is a “bad boy,” but as Eiji becomes his friend (and more) the expectation is that his positive influence could open a door for Ash to lead a changed life. And there are angles to Ash’s character that play into this. He’s got an incredibly high IQ, even though he’s never gotten the chance to use it in a way that isn’t at least peripherally criminal. He’s loyal, cunning, and he’s also just damn funny at times. One wonders what could have been if he hadn’t been kidnapped into a world of violence and abuse.

But are people who do bad things bad people? Are people who do bad things less worthy of having their stories told? I suppose that’s the root of the question I’ve been struggling with recently – should we expect the subjects of our fiction to embody our purest ethics, or is it okay for our fictional windows to peer down upon folks whose circumstances lead them to stray far from heroism? I think what I’m beginning to land on is that it’s all a matter of treatment. Fiction that unquestioningly indulges and celebrates character behavior that causes so many in real life to suffer (for example, the humorous treatment in anime of what amounts to sexual assault, in a world where survivors of these acts still have little tangible recourse and get “fun” takeaways like PTSD) doesn’t have the same value to me as fiction that focuses more on the real, lasting effects of bad behavior – violence, sexual violence, manipulation, etc. – whether from the perspective of the perpetrator or the victim. It’s sometimes a thin dividing line between the two sides, one which is made even more narrow based on the experiences of each individual viewer.

I think Banana Fish juggles these concerns better than most. Despite being overdramatic at times and occasionally featuring plot elements that stretch one’s tolerance for suspension of disbelief, at its emotional core its portrayal of Ash as a complicated person succeeds. And it’s only because of it that his mis-matched encounter with Eiji, a sheltered, pure soul in comparison, takes on its eventual meaning.

I think for some, this is the root of the tragedy – a relationship that can’t work or isn’t given the chance to do so. There’s some good writing on this story through the lens of dusty old tropes that allow same-gender relationships to exist only on the condition that they end in ways that society has historically deemed acceptable. Essentially, homosexual relationships haven’t been allowed to flourish in fiction due first to outdated Hollywood decency codes, and then due to “tradition;” the people in them are punished for the so-called transgression against hetero society. Or, in a twist that’s slightly more sympathetic but really no less frustrating, their love becomes “too pure for this cruel world” and ceases to exist through a tragic death. One of the reasons it took me so long to come back around and finish the Banana Fish anime was because I already knew, through fandom osmosis, that the series ended in Ash’s seemingly random, tragic death. This made sense to me as a product of the 80’s and 90’s, but in the modern day where these kind of tropes have been scrutinized heavily for years, letting Ash get stabbed in the gut as Eiji flies back to Japan seemed especially lacking in awareness.

So much of anime is created through the process of adapting pre-existing material, whether the source is a manga, a novel, or a game (or even a stage reading!). In the process of transitioning a story from one form of media to another, the folks doing the adapting have the opportunity to make adjustments. Sometimes this means cutting or rearranging material to make the narrative flow more logically, or altering dialog to fit a more time-sensitive visual format (for example, taking away inner monologues as a form of information-sharing, if it doesn’t fit the feel of an anime adaptation). Occasionally, it might also mean taking a hard look at the content itself, especially if the source material is chronologically far removed from the present. People thought differently about certain things in the past, whether from a general lack of awareness or social freedom to outwardly express hatred; this isn’t an excuse for prejudices, but more a statement of fact regarding them. A modern adaptation might provide the opportunity to examine a modern issue using the tools of the older story – Devilman Crybaby took the original Devilman story’s anti-war messaging, and used it to tell a story about prejudice toward homosexuals, for example. I think there was some small hope on my part that a modern take on Banana Fish might find some way to eschew what I sometimes refer to as the “tragic gay ending” and find some way to create a meaningful conclusion in a different way.

Obviously, that wasn’t the case. I personally struggled with this aspect of the anime series for a long time. Director Hiroko Utsumi, who I respect as a general purveyor of attractive male anime characters, made it clear that the anime would adapt the manga all the way through, and the only change would be to the setting’s time period. Fair enough. But why take the opportunity to adapt such a high-profile story and not also look at its political implications at the same time? Why potentially push certain audience members away when the possibility exists to help bring them in instead?

I don’t think I’ll ever get proper answers to my questions. While I believe in the maxim that “all art is political,” not everyone creating art has an interest in going as hard as I would like into actively examining the varied, sometimes troubling aspects of the society from which that art has spawned. In a way that makes me sad, but I also understand it; not everyone is comfortable courting controversy, and internet fandom can be a toxic place.

I also see these questions through my own tainted lenses; I spent a lot of my childhood being called lazy and blamed for not living up to my supposed potential, because I had learning disabilities that went undiagnosed and continue to go unofficially diagnosed. I often wonder if my general lack of achievement may have been mitigated by someone choosing to recognize me as the complicated I was and choosing to invest in getting me help and guidance, rather than dismissing my challenges as a choice I was actively making for myself. I even had the benefit of parents who otherwise loved and cared for me, but there will always be a set of “what-ifs” haunting me; maybe I would have gotten on the right track sooner and avoided some of my delinquency and depression, if I’d been afforded the special sort of “love” I was missing out on back then. Would I still be doomed to mediocrity, as Ash is doomed to die, in spite of it all?

Having had time to think about it more, I also think that the conclusion of Banana Fish does a great deal with the tools it has. As Eiji boards his plane back to Japan, Ash ponders a letter from Eiji he received via Sing, containing a ticket for Ash to join Eiji. It’s a ticket that Ash never gets the chance to use, because he’s quickly approached and stabbed by Lao, who’s still holding onto a misunderstood grudge. Ash stumbles into the New York Public Library and spends his last moments with Eiji’s words, before quietly passing away with a soft smile on his face. The entire sequence of events is heartbreaking; yet again, we get the painful opportunity to consider just how different Ash’s life might have become if he’d been able to just get out of his negative circumstances, while also dealing with the fact that Eiji is completely oblivious to Ash’s death. How could a relationship that formed the emotional core of this story be left to fade away, like the moisture on hot pavement after a brief Summer rain?

There are a lot of things to take in during the last ten minutes or so of the series, and while the events are maybe not what I would have wanted to have happen, I think there’s a lot of meaning to be taken away from them. I think my most meaningful revelation has to do with Ash’s character. He’s spent his entire life having to be on guard, whether protecting himself or his gang members and friends. Not a moment to stop and deal with his own trauma, no time to stop and just feel and be. And I can only imagine that after living life as traumatic as he has, any sort of introspection would become terrifying. Yet Eiji accepts Ash as he is, becoming a non-judgmental, safe presence in his life. His existence allows Ash to let his guard down and to imagine a life that isn’t defined by pain and violence. Thinking of it that way, it makes slightly more sense to me why the story concludes this way. Ash dies reading Eiji’s letter, and probably remembering the way being with Eiji allowed him the luxury of imagining a different life for himself. He passes away being freed from the burdens of his life in more ways than one.

I still think the implications of this is messy – is the story trying to claim that showing your own vulnerability is a (literal or figurative) death sentence? I’m guessing that’s not the message it’s trying to convey, even though if I were feeling less generous I’d emphasize that, yes, that’s pretty much what happens. Perhaps instead it might be that there are times where individuals are just in “too deep,” unlikely to defer the consequences of their past actions even if technically they weren’t entirely responsible for them. Maybe Lao would have killed Ash either way, it was just a matter of when and how. I find that to be a little cynical, but I can accept that as the arc of the character story. The difference, though – the difference that allowed Ash to die with a smile on his face rather than alone in some alley or as a tool of Golzine – was that he was loved, and in turn was able to share love outwardly. Love is an emotion with its own inherent benefits, not the least of which is that it has the potential to free us from some of our suffering, even if just briefly.

Even weeks later, though, I continue to question whether or not I’m really satisfied with the ending of this story. There are many of reasons why it continues to frustrate me, especially since, maybe selfishly, I feel like the characters “deserved better.” Yet I wonder if the story could have actually ended any other way. When I picture a happy ending in which Ash joins Eiji in Japan and they live out their lives together, it feels more like fanfiction than anything which could have actually happened considering the rest of the story. Perhaps the fact that I care so much about seeing the characters happy is its own answer. Whatever the case, I think that it’s worth reiterating that, in a world that is often traumatic, being loved and being able to love in return can be the one factor that makes the suffering worthwhile.

When I look back at my own life, I feel some of the same emotions regarding love and relationships in their many forms. I may have dealt with what I see as more than my share of trauma (what is a fair share to begin with, though?) but I can’t fathom being the person I am now without those struggles. All in all, things are honestly pretty okay. I don’t necessarily want to look at Banana Fish as simply a reminder of the fact that “things could always be worse,” because I think that cheapens the character stories it tells. But I don’t think it’s off-base to be reminded that positive relationships, wherever they may be found, can help eliminate some of the pain of living. In light of that, even loss becomes a little less tragic.

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Banana Fish is available to watch on Amazon Prime in the US. The series comes along with almost every content warning one can think of, including violence, sexual violence/assault/rape, sex trafficking, strong language (including homosexual slurs), drug use, unmanaged mental health issues, among others.