There's so much foreshadowing in "Banana Fish" for Ash's death. It's why I'll never understand people who complain about the ending or act like it makes no sense. It makes absolute sense. I could list endless examples where the story is essentially telling you that Ash is going to die in the end. But I wanted to highlight this one in particular, because it also captures the brutal tragedy of it so well.
Eiji convinces Ash here that he needs to relax, and questions why he's so nervous, why he feels the need to get up and go when he's clearly past his limit. All Eiji can see is that Ash needs to rest and recover, and he believes they have time for that because Sing and Cain and everyone else have been preparing for this very scenario.
He ends up convincing Ash that it's okay to relax, to rest, and we know, as a result, things end up going to hell again.
Eiji is shown throughout the story as a distraction to Ash. He lulls Ash into a sense of safety with his friendship. He makes Ash let go of the instincts that have kept him alive for years, simply by virtue of his kindness and compassion. It isn't something Ash is used to, and in a way, he becomes seduced by it. By the feeling of safety he gets when in Eiji's presence.
It's not an exaggeration to say that Eiji, unintentional though it was, had a direct hand in Ash's death.
The thing people don't understand, though, is that it's not meant to be thought of as a bad thing.
Ash was living a brutal and lonely existence before he met Eiji.
Nobody in his life treated him as human. Not even his gang or Shorter. Everyone treated him like he was either something more or less., and they saddled him with the weight of that expectation. His gang relied exclusively on him to keep them all safe, to fight their battles for them, to represent and lead them. Even Shorter thought of Ash as a kind of angel, something otherworldly and superior. Then there's all the adults in Ash's life, who treated Ash as a commodity or an object, or even feared him at times, like Max. Or someone like Yut-Lung, who wanted Ash to serve as his foil, as something to define himself by. None of these people ever truly saw Ash for what he actually was.
But Eiji did.
It's why Ash felt safe around him. And why he let his guard down around him, too. Because Eiji never expected anything from Ash. Never wanted anything from him. Never burdened him with any sort of preconceived notions about what he was or what he should be.
He just accepted Ash as he was.
Ash dying is unspeakably tragic, there's no denying that. His whole life was unspeakably tragic.
Just like there's no denying that his friendship with Eiji is, ultimately, what led to his death.
But I think we're meant to understand the value of that friendship to Ash through the brutal and bleak reality of his life.
Eiji served as a light to Ash in an otherwise dark existence. He gave Ash a sense of comfort and safety in a life otherwise totally devoid of those things. He allowed Ash to just be himself. Not an angel or a demon. Not a genius or a prostitute. Not a leader or a boss. But just a boy.
In the moments Ash had with Eiji, he was finally able to escape the loneliness and sadness of his life. He was able to let go of the constant, unending misery of always having to watch his back, of always "expecting the worst", as Ash says in the panels above. Around Eiji, he was finally set free from the pain of struggle. From the agony of trying to survive in a world that tried its hardest, day in and day out, to destroy him.
If you were to ask Ash which he would choose, to go on living the life he was without ever having known Eiji, or to have known Eiji for the brief time they had together, but die in the end, is there any question as to what his answer would be?
So while Eiji's friendship was, ultimately, the thing that led to Ash's death, something that's alluded to again and again throughout the story, the thing is, to Ash, it was worth it.
Getting to know Eiji, getting to be his friend, to feel Eiji's love and care for him, to Ash, that was worth more to him than the life he was living. A life he would have continued to live after Eiji was gone.
That's why Ash dies with a smile on his face.
Because he would rather have known Eiji and died as a result, than continue living the tragic life he'd been cursed with without ever knowing Eiji at all.
