Controversy of Banana Fish’s Ending from a Realistic v Fictional Standpoint and Lao’s Reasoning [ Analysis ]
I always see fans complain how the way ash was killed off makes no sense whether it’s like”how does one stab kill him when he was injured dozens of other times and survived” or “it’s just unrealistic”. There’s two ways the ending is written which yes, it does make perfect sense lol
Now I don’t know if fans tend to forget but Ash’s character development spirals down throughout the story. His development basically works in reverse. He is super determined at the beginning of the story to kill dino get revenge for skip and his brother, find secret of banana fish. Then a little more than half way through the story his main focus is routed into exposing politicians for the sex trafficking ring, and gang tensions rise. He has to murder more people and ends up being captured by golzine where he feels defeated to the point he slowly starts wasting himself away.
From this point on his self esteem is completely crumbled he constantly self deprecates and thinks he’s a burden to Eiji even though Eiji CONSTANTLY tells him he isn’t. Which is legitimately why he decides not to meet with him in the final scenes and tells Blanca he’ll just go back to being a street punk when everything’s all over. Ultimately it gets into his head and he believes “this is the role you’re meant to play”. And he doesn’t see a way out of his situation. And so when he gets stabbed it’s a last reminder for him that “maybe I couldn’t ever make it out of this life” and finally, when he’s at his worst there he reads the letter from eiji and gets closure that Eiji truly loved and cared about him and he can let go. Ash thought he himself was a terrible person and didn’t deserve to live and in his last moments he has finally accepted his friend completely accepted him for who he was and that was alright.
Now from a realistic and real New York gangs and the time point of view with Lao’s beef with Ash.
Right after Ash shoots Lao, Lao tells him “I just couldn’t let you kill Sing”. On the surface level most of Lao’s disagreements with ash where over misunderstandings (shorters death, seeing sing as bootlicking ash as a leader) but it actually had to deal more with race than anything. Multiple times within the story had the Chinatown gang/Lee clan said they don’t want interference from outside groups especially white folk since they hold pride in their cultural roots. When tensions rise between 3 gangs Lao says some pretty dicey things like calling Cain a “Uncle Tom” (derogatory word for a black person that acts servant to white people) saying how everyone is sucking up to these whiteys. And the unique thing about ash being a leader was that he was white guy who had control over a gang that was made up of black and Puerto Rican and other races members.
In the 1970s there were approximately over 10,000 youth gangs in New York during its peak meaning at least 2,000 gangs per borough. Most gangs consisted of Black and Puerto Rican folks notably the Savage Nomads, Savage Skulls and Black Spades. Of course the racial disparity depended on location neighborhoods so obviously there was white and asian only gangs and more interracially mixed gangs etc etc so it obviously it’s not completely uncommon that there wasn’t a white leader in there somewhere but NYC gang history from 70/80s isn’t greatly well documented + with over 10K gangs at the time hard to keep track. Though one of the oldest feared members at the time in Savage Nomads was a dude named “Crazy Joe” who was half Italian and half Puerto Rican.
Keep in mind these kids where killing each other left and right most aged between 12-early 20s and gangs then where very different than today, almost the entirety of conflict was turf over racial disparities and the gangs formed to protect their neighborhoods from other gangs threats.
In 1971 the Hoe Avenue Peace Meeting took place. Similar to the scene out of the movie the Warriors, gangs gathered across New York to have a peace meeting in The Bronx after the murder of Black Benjy who was a turned peace keeper from the Ghetto Brothers gang. He was killed on the street after confronting two rival gang members and trying to negotiate peace with them, but unfortunately disagreed and beat him to death. While the meeting didn’t solidify standing peace, they did negotiate ways to avoid street conflicting keeping eyes out of the police (a lot of them had youth gang case workers, social workers that would work with these kids trying to put them on the right path, in Banana Fish’s case similar to Charlie and Jenkins role. So if the kids made agreements with the police/social workers surveillance on them or if they were facing sentences might be reduced) Kids got murdered over turf, race, drugs and money all the time. Stuff that doesn’t make sense to one persons lifestyle won’t make sense to another vice versa.
I wanted to talk about what Yoshida has said herself. She’s mentioned she writes stories where characters die in surprisingly meaningless ways. Or at least that’s what appears on the surface level (Eve falling out a window, ash being killed by a lowly gang rival) If you view these from a realistic standpoint I see it as in people die randomly everyday intentional or not. That is what is reflected in her works to me. If you’ve read yoshida’s other stories a lot of her works deal with unlucky grief or loss (it’s her style of writing people need to realize that) which I really wish fans read her other works before jumping to ridiculous conclusions like “she killed off ash because she doesn’t think CSA survivors can be happy” I really don’t think that’s the idea she was getting at…..now despite the infamous interview of her saying like people who kill other people have to pay up for it somehow I at least think it’s pretty obvious she’s talking about it in the notion of ash is in the gang life not that he’s a CSA victim lmao and I highly doubt she would believe something like that in real life because if she did then wouldn’t she had written that ash is found guilty for killing his abuser and gets sent to prison and never found justice?
But alas he was pardoned of his association with dino and of getting in severe legal trouble and decides to lay low as a gang leader which again, you could really do in real life despite gang activity being illegal as long as you weren’t caught doing mischief. By this point in the story because his self esteem is so low he decides to go the route of the gang life. By this point it doesn’t correlate with his CSA past. Though it does in a way because the root of why he’s in the gang in the first place is because of Dino. Which is meant to upset you that’s the point. It begs you to ask the question did he really get his justice is he really free? He killed Dino, which in his words is what would free him but he’s still stuck in this environment so is he really actually, free? Ash isn’t free there’s many attributes. He’s still under Dino’s name, he’s still a gangster and it makes you wonder if even though he is the victim in his case against Dino would he be held accountable for all the other gang related murders like when tensions where rising or against Arthur? (It’s possible he wasn’t it’s never explained really.) Too ash though he is free at least in his final moments when he read eiji’s letter that was his confirmation and he could die happy to himself.
Lastly, there’s always discussion ash could’ve made it out. If he didn’t have awful self worth, I definitely think he could’ve laid low and erased his records somehow due to him being so smart and being able to meddle with the government. Now Yoshida (lol) in canon says he was just never making it out period but something interesting I think she said is even if he did live he still never would’ve met up with Eiji but would that be before or after he read the letter? If it was after he read the letter, maybe he didn’t make it to the plane in time since realistically it would be an hour on the train to JFK and Eiji was basically leaving then and there and he just talked himself into it not being worth it. Another thing is I swear on my life if someone could help me find this read that ash is on universally most wanted list so he wouldn’t be able to leave the country (didn’t get this info from someone’s comment iirc I remember scanning through one of the interview articles/books and machine translating but I don’t remember) all in all I think people make to much of a fuss about the ending it’s a tragic genre manga story (Which is like, 95% of classic shojo/bl.) and really need to broaden their horizons on attributes like when the story was made and the environment it’s set in.
The story is meant to question themes of injustice. The irony of the story is ash is a white blond male poster child for American excellence and system has failed him completely if it can fail someone who looks like that, it can fail anyone just as much.
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