Hi:) May I ask what your personal interpretation of the Bf ending is? Did Ash chose to die or not? If he did, what do you think was the reason for his decision? And did he believe Eiji's letter? Sorry if this has been asked before and I bother you with these questions...
Hello Anons! It’s not a bother at all! Thanks for asking! I’ll club these two together since there’s going to be a lot of overlapping parts.
I feel like the more I try to delve deeper into why and how the ending was written the way it was, the more number of interpretations open up. I’ve talked about my views on the ending in the above posts, and as for whether he believed Eiji’s letter, my answer is yes, definitely. I’ll elaborate why below.
First off, when I read the manga and later, GoL, it always occurred to me that Ash’s death wasn’t immediate, that he had time to drag himself back to the library and collapse slowly from blood loss, and the same is repeated by Sing in his musings in GoL “in the long long hours before death, as blood slowly drained out of your body”….so, I believe that the stab wasn’t lethal, and that Ash’s death was, ultimately, by his choice.
Now coming to why he chose what he did. These interpretations are entirely my own, and they are called ‘interpretations’ for a reason, there will be other equally valid points held by the fandom, and that’s completely okay. This is just how I see it. I re-read the manga recently, and this time, I tried to look closer at all the subtle hints at how the ending was kind of… foreshadowed in a way?
I’ll begin with the way Ash was constructed as a character : he was multifaceted, complex, a genius with superhuman reflexes and intellect, he rejected all kinds of authority and the law, since he never had reason to trust them all his life. Ash conditioned himself to be ruthless and put on a hard front at all times, since that was the only way he could have survived in the world he was thrown into from the tender age of seven or eight. He used his physical beauty as a weapon, a shield to disarm opponents, so that they never got any hint of his lethal side until it was too late; it was simply another tool in his fight for survival. Eiji is probably one of the first and only ones to get a measure of what Ash really is like, by the time we get to the arc of Shorter’s death. He comments on this :
Curiously enough, we, as readers get to know this along with Eiji, that Ash has this duality to him : on one hand, he is the cold and ruthless killer and gang-boss, the wild, untamable Ash Lynx. on the other hand, only with Eiji, he can be the carefree 17 year old Aslan, the little boy Griff loved, who’s scared of pumpkins and gets flustered when teased, and loves to bicker with Eiji over silly things.
Its this humane side of Ash we all latch onto. The facade of a killer that Ash has to put on for the rest of the world, falls apart when he’s with Eiji, and we can see that : we realise that it’s a shield he has to hold up for his survival so that the truly compassionate, softer side of him can survive. Eiji sees through it, we see through it. But does Ash? His self image is exceedingly negative.
This becomes a recurring point of arguments between Eiji and Ash throughout the manga. A constant pull and push of opinions on who Ash truly is, who he can be. Eiji tries so hard to pull out the humane side of Ash, the one who is Aslan, back to the surface, so that Ash Lynx may not forget who he really once was. Eiji lets Ash be vulnerable, he makes him laugh, allows him to be silly, he tells him that it’s okay to be scared, to be hurt, because Ash is deeply hurt, only he has trained himself to never acknowledge that even to himself.
Does Ash consider himself entirely worthless? I beg to differ. He relies on his intelligence, his skills and capabilities, and he had confidence in them. He has his gang members to protect and lead, even before Eiji shows up. He has his pride as a boss, and his constant refusal to be controlled by Dino or other characters who hold authority (and consequently, abuse their powers to further their own greed).
But was that enough to hold out till the end? More than the battles with Dino or Mannerheim or Foxx, I think Ash had to fight bigger battles with himself, about his own perception of what it means to be accepting of who you are as a person, and what you choose to believe in within yourself. Throughout the manga, we see this constant warring : we have literally everyone telling him that keeping Eiji by his side, is him being selfish, that Eiji isn’t there to salvage Ash’s guilt, that letting him go would be better for both of them. And Ash is conflicted, he wants to have this connection, this friendship with Eiji above all else, it becomes his single motivator in the entire second half of the manga : to protect and keep Eiji safe
By the time Yut Lung manipulates Ash into giving up Banana Fish and go into Dino’s captivity for Eiji’s safety, Ash is already too far gone on his bond with Eiji. he pulls the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. If it meant keeping a loved one safe at the cost of his own death, Ash was ready to make that choice, perhaps for a very long time.
Ash was someone whose actions always did the talking. The fact that he had allowed himself to care, to demand or crave for himself the comfort of a selfless friendship, or even love, is more of an indicator of him slowly growing to value himself as a person, to try and love himself a little more. He acknowledges this openly to Blanca : that there is nothing that made him happier than being with Eiji, of knowing that at least one person in the world had tried to see himself for who he really was, had tried to make Ash see that too.
The conversation between Ash and Eiji about the leopard in the mountaintop, about Ash’s views on death and what it means to live, is one of my favourite moments in the manga. Ash had never feared death, but he had never wanted to die himself. Even though, at numerous points in his life, death had seemed like a peaceful, enticing alternative, compared to the hell he was going through. Ash states that he views himself as the leopard, trudging on and on upwards to the summit, until it collapsed. His conflict was on whether the leopard was facing downwards or up? Was he trying to came back home, or simply go on until he could no longer carry on?
The journey of the leopard paralleled Ash’s own. All his life, he had been forced to go on a steep, uphill climb, against whatever harsh trials his life threw at him. In the end, would he be too tired to carry on? Too tired that he would want to give up? Or Would he still have the strength to try and find his way back down?
Eiji pulls him back once more : he reminds Ash of his own humanity, that people were not obligated to remain as the leopard in the story forever. In the end, we are all human beings who can have a choice, to find our way back home. And Ash, after a thoughtful pause, agrees with him.
But agreeing with an idea on principle is a far cry from putting that into practice.
As the arcs progress, Eiji gets shot, and Blanca again harshly reminds him of what his reality was, that Ash and Eiji’s worlds were, as he saw, too far apart for them to exist together. And Ash is torn by guilt. His one objective, of keeping Eiji safe, had somehow started backfiring. He pleads with God, to take him instead, in exchange for Eiji’s safety. And that was when I personally got the foreshadowing, that maybe the ending could only be either one way or the other.
It’s interesting that Eiji voices almost identical words, that he’d take Ash’s place any day if he could, that he wished Ash would never have to hold a gun anymore, before he takes a bullet for Ash without a minute’s hesitation
There was always a residual sense of guilt with both Ash and Eiji about Shorter’s death. Eiji breaks down crying in front of Sing, and he wasn’t even an instigator in all the events that happened. I can’t imagine how much more Ash would’ve been carrying around with the knowledge that he was the one to pull the trigger, under extreme duress or otherwise.
That brings me to the involvement of Lao. Shorter’s death had triggered a mistrust between the Chinese gang and Ash. Even though Sing, because of knowing the truth, had ceased blaming Ash altogether, Lao didn’t go anywhere near. His only goal was to protect his brother, and his hatred for Ash magnified when Ash pointed a trigger on Sing in the mad rampage immediately after Eiji was shot. Sing understood Ash’s rage, and he apologized and desperately attempted to make up for what he saw as a ‘betrayal’ from the Chinese side. But Lao, stubbornly refused to acknowledge Ash, even though Sing tried multiple times to reason with him. Had Yut Lung’s childish grudge against Eiji not prompted him to abuse Lao’s familial ties with Sing, had Lao been more reasonable, had Sing communicated with him better after the end of all the fighting…. The list of ‘what ifs’ go on.
In the end, Ash’s decision was prompted by all these moments adding up together. He had vowed just the day before to Blanca, that this time, he’d never see Eiji again, in order to keep him from harm’s way. Did that mean that ultimately he never learnt to love himself? That’s difficult to answer.
I believe that to some extent, he did realise how much he was valued as a person : by his friends, his gang, Max, Blanca, Cain, Shorter, and most of all Eiji. He never admitted out loud how much Eiji meant to him and vice versa, but it was always proven by their actions and confirmed by the words of those who were close to them.
Ash knew how much it hurt him to see Eiji wounded because of him, and I get the inkling that he could at least guess that Eiji would be equally devastated if their places were reversed. But he ultimately chose to eliminate himself from the equation : the solution, according to him, that would keep all the danger away from everyone he wanted to keep safe. That is the dark side of love, of how far you’re willing to go to protect those you hold dear.
Just as Eiji took the bullet for him, just as Ash himself had no hesitation in pulling the trigger back then, I see this last choice also as a final act of sorts, keeping good on his prayer to God : Eiji’s safety in exchange for his own. It wasn’t a perfect decision by any means, there were n number of ways a different choice could’ve been as good, but I feel than in his final moments, Ash was really too weary to keep on pushing forward.
It brings me to your question, anon, in the end, was love enough to save him from himself? Did Eiji’s constant attempts to bring out Aslan, win out against the shackles Ash Lynx put on himself?
In those few moments immediately after reading Eiji’s letter, we see the way Ash reacts : his eyes fill with hope, disbelief, love, and a hundred other emotions as all thoughts other than Eiji’s words flee his mind. Eiji’s reference to the leopard was especially important : he gave Ash a reminder, once more, that even lost souls have a way of coming back home, and that one’s humaneness was something we discover throughout our whole lives, it’s not just expressed by a handful of actions. Eiji reminded Ash once more, that it was okay to hope, to dream, and to live for himself. And that was what prompted Ash to take off running. In those few moments, it really looked as if Ash had finally broken free of all that was holding him back.
But at the end of it all, I feel that Ash Lynx won out. The question of saving us from ourselves, of realising our self worth, is a complex one. Ash was happy in the simple knowledge that Eiji had loved him back unconditionally. All his life, it was the one thing he had never received, and in his final moments, that mere confirmation was like a closure of sorts for him. It wasn’t fair to either of them, but it was how things finally ended.
In an ideal world, we’d have no doubt seen Ash and Eiji having their happy forever after, given everything that happened, but sadly, the author chose to write in Lao, as if to prove a point : that more often than not, dreams and reality are separated by just one moment of carelessness, one second of letting your guard down, and for Ash, that moment was fatal.
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