About Blanca...
I insisted on reading Private Opinion. I didn't want to overlook anything, I didn't want to leave out a single point of view. By volume 18, I had calmed down a bit and was no longer rolled my eyes at every page where Blanca came across. Blanca lost my limited sympathy many times while reading Private Opinion. The more I learned about him, the angrier I became. Blanca is as divisive as Yut-Lung; we see their human side, we see their pain and, to some extent, their vulnerability—their cruelty or even maliciousness is not as simplistic as Golzine's. Blanca does not enjoy cruelty, while being capable of gruesome cruelty. Blanca never abused Ash the way Club Cod's clients did, the way Marvin and Froggy and Golzine and the other depraved monsters did—he perpetrated a different kind of evil against him. He betrayed Ash. He let him down as a human being. To make some sense of my rant, let's go back to the beginning, to Private Opinion, when he first appeared in Ash's life.
Their first encounter left a deep impression on Blanca. He found himself face to face with the distraught teacher, and then with Ash. His clothes were torn, he was almost naked. It was immediately clear what had happened. Dino brutally beat Ash several times in front of Blanca, then ordered him to clean himself up. Shortly after, Blanca learned more about Ash: that Dino employed him at Club Cod, what his IQ test results were, and that the "incident" with the teacher was not the first of its kind. In Banana Fish, Golzine reassured Yut-Lung that Blanca was a true professional. He didn't mix personal feelings with work. From this warning, it was evident that Golzine was aware that Blanca did not approve of his treatment towards Ash, but despite this, he did not take a stand against it.
Blanca hugged Ash in that filthy motel room where Marvin had raped him. Since Griffin, it was probably the first time anyone had approached Ash with tenderness, reassurance, and kindness. Blanca wanted to prepare Ash to the day when he become the head of the Corsican mafia—and so that he wouldn't be on his own until then, he taught him everything he needed to know to reign over a world of blood and violence. He did nothing more than that. Never considered that Ash could live a different life. Never toyed with the possibility of what would happen if he freed him from captivity. Never occurred to him that Ash would be emotionally destroyed if he remained in this environment. What Blanca did for Ash: showed him that there are adults in the world whose first instinct is not to take away from him. In everything else, Blanca failed because he didn't see his own shortcomings as failures. When he accepted the job, it may have crossed Blanca's mind that Golzine would find someone else to replace him. Perhaps someone like the math teacher he saw running away from his own depravity with his tail between his legs. That might have been better. Ash had learned how to deal with people like that. He understood their mindset and their aberrant logic. What he didn't understand and couldn't comprehend was that there were adults who saw him for what he was: a child, and yet refused to protect him.
The fact that Blanca stopped Marvin's violence but left Dino untouched is like when you beat up the schoolyard bully but don't bother with the bully's leader. The violence against Ash will not end as long as Golzine is alive. Ash will always be surrounded by people who want the same thing from him as his baseball coach, Marvin, and Froggy. Other monsters in suits, enjoying the prestige of their prominent positions—whom Blanca no longer stopped. During the two years that Blanca trained Ash, sexual, physical, mental, and emotional abuse were still a daily occurrence, and Blanca did nothing to prevent it. During the two years that Blanca armed Ash with his expertise, Dino entered the bedroom, closed the door behind him, then left, and the days continued as if Ash's violation was a natural part of life. Blanca saw all this, knew about it, and allowed it to happen. Then, after two years, Blanca packed up and left without looking back. It is possible that Dino blackmailed Blanca. Many of their conversations had this undertone, although it was never openly stated. Even so, Blanca was perhaps the only person in the world who could have destroyed Dino's kingdom on his own, single-handedly, and rescued Ash. He decided not to do it. He distanced himself from the very thought of it. I wonder... If he was given love instead of fear... And if he could rely on someone who wouldn't abuse him, but gently embrace him... Ah, no, it's useless to think about... Given that it's not as though he ever had a choice. He hasn't had one, and he never will.
And that's the point. That's the point of it all. Ash had no choice; he was just a child, both in the past and in the present. Blanca always had a choice; he was an adult, both in the present and in the past, with the responsibilities and free will of an adult. And he chose to ignore that it was a choice all along. Blanca did the same thing to Ash that the leaders of the Soviet Union did to him: he turned him into something Ash didn't want to become. Following Golzine's orders, convincing himself that it was for Ash's own good. People are very rarely ready and very belatedly able to admit to themselves that what they have done can not be attributed to noble motives. Blanca created in Ash a killer guided by his instincts, ready to deal with the enemy under any circumstances, raising Ash's self-hatred to a whole new level. Ash could never forgive himself for the murders. He did not look for excuses, even though in every case he had engaged in combat out of self-defense. And it never occurred to Ash to hate Blanca for that. Perhaps that is the saddest part of it all. Blanca was able to walk away from the responsibility he had for the child who looked up to him with admiration and love, and who never expected him to be his savior.
Blanca does not find joy in cruelty, but he does find joy in his work. He relished in the cat-and-mouse game he played with Ash. Testing his endurance, driving him to the limit. Let's not forget who he chosed as his plaything: a person whose days are spent in constant vigilance, always looking over his shoulder, always watching for danger. He increased Ash's anxiety with a smile, even laughter. He told Yut-Lung that he hadn't had this much fun in years. In volume 12, every single thing he said was outrageous. And the reasons with which he defended the way he crushed Ash's life—I've never cried in anger in my life, but Blanca made me do it.
Later, we learned that Blanca had previously had a lover, Natasha. He lost her under tragic circumstances. "I finally become fully human," he said about her, using exactly those words. It was as if this was a continuation of what Ash had told him: "I'm happy, goddamit. I know there's at least one person in this world... Who cares about me. Who doesn't want anything from me. Do you have any idea what that's like? I never did... Not once in my entire life – until now. And that's worth more to me than anything else." After a whole life lived with no one around you seeing you as a real human being, after being nothing more than a useful tool to everyone, a weapon to be deployed, finding someone who accepts and loves you for who you are – something neither Blanca nor Ash ever dared to hope for. Or want to. “That cold heart that’s not afraid of death… the cold mind that plans and leads and schemes… It’s just because you need it that way, inside, don’t you? You… you need to push it all under ice…” Eiji understood perfectly how people like Blanca and Ash – and Yut-Lung – worked. In some twisted way, Blanca wanted to protect Ash from this: from the pain he knows so well. He put ice between himself and the pain, and he wanted the same for Ash: a life under ice, where he no longer had to fear his heart being broken. Better the pain you know than the pain you don't—following this mentality, Blanca betrayed the love and trust Ash had for him. I don't know if there is anything more unforgivable than stabbing someone in the back like this. Ash was hopelessly distraught when he learned that Blanca was behind the assassination attempts on Eiji's life. As he sat there in the open street, drenched by the rain, staring at the river with that empty, quietly lost expression on his face—it was betrayal. The most heartless betrayal.
Blanca is a hypocrite. He tore off the chains imposed on him by the Soviet Union, but he himself helped Golzine keep Ash under control with an even stronger collar than before. Blanca can live freely, make his own decisions, while depriving Ash of the same liberty that every human being is entitled to. Few people know better than Blanca what Ash had to go through. He knows about the baseball coach, he knows about Club Cod, he knows about Golzine, he knows about Marvin, he knows how many people took advantage of Ash's defenselessness and how many times they did so. Yet he was determined to reinstall him in a place of violence, exploitation, and inhuman treatment. Hostility—that's what Blanca called Ash's attitude toward Dino. As if the fact that Dino had exploited Ash in every sense of the word, treating his life, his body, his mind as his possessions, was something that could be overcome. Something that could ever be forgotten. Blanca never forgave the leaders of the Soviet Union, his own Dino Golzines. Stood up to them, and after Natasha's death, he turned completely away from them. To expect Ash to bow his head in a way that Blanca was never willing to do—that's what the word hypocrite was invented for.
Blanca is no better than Golzine and Yut-Lung. The three of them decided where Ash belonged, and, unwilling to budge from their beliefs, they pushed Ash into a corner that would not have been possible without Blanca's involvement. Blanca had a choice. Blanca could have refused the job and turned down the opportunity to side against Ash. He decided to add Eiji to his death list armed with that freedom of choice, which he had stolen from Ash. He is no different from the countless men and women who threw their money at Ash's raped, wounded, bleeding body and then held the door open for the other men and women coming after them.
Blanca was genuinely astonished when he saw the result of his actions. Ash was physically sickened by the fact that he had once again been forced to perform to the best of his abilities in a situation that disgusted him. Meanwhile, I was astonished by Blanca. That he was confused. Not that it came as a surprise. Golzine warned Ash within earshot of Blanca and Yut-Lung: "You'll only be returning to the path from which you've strayed. Only this time, you will be working as the lowest sort of prostitute. Not even the most seasoned whore could withstand the degradation you will be experiencing. I shall destroy you, little by little... Until you go out of your mind..." Dino was true to his word. He demoralized Ash to such an extent that it could not have been foreseen. Dino made him an accomplice to atrocities that claimed lifes of victims, and this was unbearable for Ash. Enduring the horrors of Club Cod, suffocating in Golzine's iron grip, turning the perversity of the rapists against them—he already had experience in all of this. But there was no way he could protect himself from the task he had to carry out on Golzine's side this time. Eventually, his mind broke. This was not what Blanca had expected at all.
But why not? How could someone with an university degree in psychology and psychiatry be unable to imagine such a turn of events? The only plausible explanation for Blanca's horror is that he truly believed what he told Ash. Believed it, knowing Ash's character and background. His sensitivity and vulnerability. Ash never did anything to feed Blanca's belief that he wanted to take the place that Dino had secured for him. But again, it wasn't a question of wanting. It was never about what Ash wanted or what was best for him. Blanca, Golzine, and Yut-Lung had control over this issue, stripping Ash of all his previous defense mechanisms and leaving him completely exposed. Blanca, a prisoner of his own perspective and worldview, made Ash a captive.
"You should have known that this moment would come one day. So why did you let him stay if you knew that?! You couldn't guarantee his safety!!! You just wanted him around to assuage your own feelings of loneliness, didn’t you? Well, Eiji doesn't exist to make you feel better! You selfish bastard!" Blanca was talking more to himself than to Ash. Blanca was once again projecting his own experiences (and perhaps his self-loathing?) onto Ash. How many times over the years must he have thought that if he hadn't met Natasha, if he hadn't opened his heart to her, she would still be alive, and Blanca would never have known what it's like to live outside the ice? Probably countless times. It's understandable that after something like that, someone would shut themselves off from all emotional connections. It's also understandable that it feels safer to return to your original mindset. To a life where no one sees you as equal to other human beings, and you slowly accept that you can never truly be. Blanca called Ash selfish—and in general, perhaps he was. It was selfish to keep Eiji with him. He never stood his ground to send him back to Japan—Ash is extremely stubborn, if he had really wanted to tear himself away from Eiji, neither God nor man could have gotten in his way. But Blanca's accusation is fundamentally wrong. If there is a character in this story who truly desired someone who could free him with their selfless love, it is Yut-Lung. Ash never looked at Eiji as if he existed solely for him. Ash tried to push Eiji away. In California, in New York, in Coney Island. He always believed that Eiji would eventually become disenchanted with him. Ash never really believed Eiji when he promised him forever. But Ash wanted and desired to be close to Eiji, just for one more day, just for one more hour, to talk to him, to dream with him about the future. And after spending your whole life in a no-man's-land without food or water, surviving on scraps and chewed bones, can you be blamed for not turning away from warmth, connection, and the deepest and purest love? Blanca's words cut deep because they fed on Ash's worst fears: that he really was selfish; that Eiji would be better off without him; that he could only do harm.
Blanca is unfaithful, even though he may think of himself as loyal. He is unfaithful to Ash, cheating on his trust and love; he is unfaithful to Yut-Lung, exploiting his role as bodyguard to hinder him, then ultimately abandoning him, just as he once did with Ash. He is loyal to his own principles, but above all to his role. His smile is insincere, his politeness feigned, his kindness superficial. There were moments when his true feelings and thoughts were revealed. He said to Golzin: "Playing god bears witness to nothing, but foolish arrogance." His mask slipped. In Banana Fish, Blanca rarely allowed himself such sincerity towards any of his employers. After chaining Ash to Golzin, Blanca, with his typical cowardice, was ready to move on. Ash's deterioration prevented him from doing so. He stopped several times and just looked at Ash. He told Yut-Lung that he didn't regret what he had done to Ash. However, his face suggested something else: growing doubt. Blanca said that if Ash had decided not to eat of his own free will, it wouldn't have been such a big deal; later, when he and Sing realized that Ash's plan from the beginning had been to sacrifice himself for the hostages and the gangs to escape, Blanca dismissed it as an understandable move. Later, he rationalized his decision to siding with Ash by saying that Ash, wounded and weakened, would not stand a chance against Foxx and Golzine. Blanca cared about Ash to a certain extent. Blanca was tender toward Ash. But not nearly enough to truly love him.
What prompted him to take Ash as his pupil is open to speculation. He watched closely how Ash behaved in different environments: at Dino's house, on the street with kids his own age, in self-defense, and after he was brutally beaten and raped. Blanca was impressed by Ash's ability to turn apparent weakness into visible strength: his beauty, his reflexes, his abilities. Then came the hotel, and Blanca was confronted for the first time with the hopelessness of Ash's situation. His first instinct was not to start thinking about rescuing Ash. What he did was agree to the job and thus to teach Ash self-defense—and killing. Ash already had a lot of unprocessed shame, pain, and guilt accumulated from years of sexual abuse. This: that Blanca had turned him into a killer, tore Ash apart. Blanca only made Ash even more vulnerable to Dino: jobs that made Ash cry, targets whose blood dried on Ash's hands. Ash didn't know how to stop himself until the juvenile detention center, until Shorter—and the laughter, the sincere, stunned joy that appeared on his face after that; he always wanted to stop.
This would be a completely different assessment if Blanca's position had been more solid. He saw Ash bedridden, he saw him wasting away, succumbing to despair. He backed Sing, Eiji, and the others in their efforts to rescue Ash. Then, on the same night, he gave advice on how to surround him and actively supported the operation that would have returned Ash to the IV tube, to a vegetative state, to slow annihilation. He then backtracked when he didn't like the idea of facing Ash as an enemy. For me, this was the ultimate proof of how fickle he was: he never really committed himself to supporting Ash, but he also shied away from pushing him into certain destruction.
Blanca seems to me to be the type of person who believes that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. As long as you can endure it, you can keep going. This is a very dangerous way of thinking. Depending on their personality, people can cope with a lot of things. Ash is a living example of this. Even with countless injuries and traumas behind him, he was able to keep climbing, forward, always forward. He considered himself a coward for this, even though it was an useful survival mechanism that ensured his sanity. Ash was never really able to escape the war zone that was his life: wherever he was, on the streets, with his gang, at Dino's house, each stop was a place of survival. This lifestyle subjected him to extreme physical and mental stress; nightmares, ghosts of his past everywhere: like bogeymen under the bed, skeletons hiding in the closet. We saw him rest for short periods, then move on—out of duty to his gang and to all those who fell victim to Dino's lust for power.
I have a hunch about what Banana Fish would have looked like if it had ended differently: if Ash had made it to Japan. It wouldn't have been easy. With the space and time to process everything that had happened to him, there's a good chance that all the traumatic experiences he had bottled up until then would have come flooding back at once. What doesn't kill us, we often wish it had. Death is the end of everything. Life is always the continuation of something. Blanca seems to constantly contradict himself. Expressed his shock that Ash had gone to war with Dino, even though in Private Opinion he had warned Golzine that this would happen: "He might revolt against you... (...) The act of trying to hold control over a human being is nothing to be taken lightly. I, myself, am a good example here. When the time is ripe, he might become your uttermost relentless enemy, putting everyone and everything else in the shade. Are you prepared for this?" Dino's response dripped with arrogance and conceit: "There's no need to prepare for anything. I will enforce obedience from him by all means." I had two reactions to this dialogue: I laughed at the fact that the prophet spoke from Blanca, and immediately after my good mood faded, I was overwhelmed by gloomy anger. Blanca was the means by which Golzine extracted from Ash the obedience that could not be forced out of him in any other way. With Blanca's knowledge and participation.
Cape Cod and New York, Golzine and the coach, Blanca and Jim—the two situations are identical in every significant respect. Everyone in the vicinity considered the baseball coach to be respectable and likable. He was well-loved. The locals were so enamoured with him that it never occurred to them that what he was hiding in his basement was so dark and horrific that words cannot describe it. Golzine is publicly regarded as an industrial tycoon with extensive business connections, with many politicians and businessmen in his pocket, with influence reaching all the way to the White House. His deviance is an open secret, but even those who gossip about him could not have guessed what kind of establishment Club Cod really was. Blanca advised Ash to be patient, to move on, to let go, to pretend—to play a role for the rest of his life, to close his heart, and to bury himself forever under ice so that everything others would give their lives for—money, wealth, fame, and a future—could fall into his lap. Jim told Ash to ask money for the rape. Blanca and Jim—they don't go down to the basement, they don't open the door at Club Cod. Jim mentioned money, Blanca mentioned position—one of them is Ash's father, the other is Ash's mentor. They knew what they were asking from him—from a child. Ash turned away from fame, rank, and power. For him, growing up, money meant the lack of something, living on the streets, for which he had to sell himself. At Club Cod, others' pockets swelled with money at the expense of his suffering and humiliation. Money—ever since that first incident in Cape Cod—had symbolized what had been taken from him by force and with despicable intentions. Jim put the money Ash had brought home since he was seven years old into the cash register. Blanca was paid with money amassed by pricing and selling Ash and children like him. Can you even comprehend how tragic this is? The knowledge that there is a cost for which you were sold, and that there are people who pay for your slavery.
Blanca and Ash were the ones who knew and understood Dino best. In the end, Dino decided to lower his weapon—not out of goodwill. There was not a spark of kindness in that pedophile rapist. No sensitivity, no remorse, nothing human. Yet many people wonder why he didn't pull the trigger. Why didn't he take his "creation" with him to the grave? He could have done so. It could have been the last act of his life, but the gun was lowered, and he was swallowed up by the flames. I would bring this back to what has been repeated several times throughout the story: Ash belongs to him; his body, his mind, his soul. In Dino's world, he controlled Ash completely. He abused, raped, crushed, beat, tortured, and coerced him. Whether he lived or died was also within his power. And he decided that Ash would outlive him, his "creator." This is particularly ironic after Private Opinion, when he assured Blanca that he would break Ash, take him under his wing, and try every method possible until Ash had no trace of resistance left in him. Foxx had the same plan. Two abusers, ended up becoming each other's executioners, both falling into the same trap. The moment before Golzine died was horribly cruel. Ash stood there, devoid of any joy, empty of any emotion he should have felt after seeing his primary tormentor fall. He had kept him in slavery, holding him in that living hell for many years, from which he had to claw his way out with his teeth and nails. He had cast him in roles that made him hate himself profoundly. He injected Shorter with Banana Fish as a guinea pig, nearly raped Eiji and Yut-Lung, and stripped Ash of all self-respect and self-love. This inhuman demon simply died. But before he did, he left behind this last act of himself, which Ash could perhaps never understand or forget. Thus, Golzine would have remained a part of Ash forever, and the mere thought of this is cruel. And Blanca allowed that too. He could have shot Foxx so that Ash wouldn't feel he owed his life to Dino; he could have shot Dino so that Ash would think Blanca saved him from following Foxx in line.
No matter how comfortable life under the ice was, Blanca was not immune to feelings. He felt remorse. Standing over Ash's sickbed, looking at the result of his doing. Later, he openly confessed to Yut-Lung how cruel it was to tear Ash away from Eiji. "Sir Yut-Lung. Taking that Japanese boy away from Ash means creating another one of us, you know. One more wretched being, unloved and unloving, whose only sustenance is hatred and nihilism - rather than hate and being triumphant, Ash chose to love and be destroyed. He staked his life on that choice. Please, try to accept it. One who does not love cannot be loved, either. Ash, at the very least knows what it is to love. (...) Sir, there must be someone who loves and cares for you, too, I'm sure. You are unaware, that's all." Okay, listen up. If Yut-Lung and Blanca don't have a single hater, then I'm six feet under. BUT – even I was glad that Blanca's farewell words to Yut-Lung were sincerely kind. He addressed him like an adult would a child frozen in hatred, not denying him understanding and guidance – everything that Yut-Lung had been missing his whole life. He gave him advice and pointed out that the lifestyle Yut-Lung clung to so desperately out of habituation was about to take away from him every chance to experience what he so eagerly envied from Ash. Ash was admirable—he never gave up on his feelings, his soul, his heart, his love for Eiji, even when everyone else in his life, especially Blanca, encouraged him to do so. Loving someone with all your heart and staying true to that love even when it hurts the most is still better than "living on a stage set and pretending it's real."
What Blanca never acknowledged, however, was the extent of the damage he had caused to Ash. By equipping him with a weapon and the knowledge of how to use it most effectively. By never placing Ash above Dino and his work. By not burning down the empire of misery, the inheritance of which was yet another burden in Ash's life. By never turning his weapon against Dino and the other rapists. By packing up after two years and leaving Ash behind within the walls of his prison, chained and wounded. "You wanna take me along to assuage your own feelings of loneliness?" Ash accused Blanca of this when he invited him to accompany him to the Caribbean. Despite Ash's assumption, I think this was the only time Blanca came closest to realizing how badly he had failed. I believe this may have been a belated attempt on his part to make up for all his faults. I interpreted his retreat as a realization that it was too late for that. The damage was done, and there was nothing he could do about it now. Ash pardoned him and bid him farewell with sincere good wishes. I can't help but wonder: did Blanca deserve forgiveness? Did he atone enough to be worthy of it? I don't think so.
You don't have to personally join the cycle of violence to be part of it as a spectator. Dino Golzine, the coach, Marvin, Froggy, Kippard, and everyone else in the Cod Club's network of human traffickers—monsters, hunt, kidnap, and imprison childrens. Beasts, man-eaters. They don't scare you under your bed or hide in your closet. They buy you candy, then shove you into the trunk of their car. They promise to drive you home after baseball practice, then send you back to your parents in torn clothes. People respect them, adore them, idolize them, and they support their charity and kindness with donations and public works, and then when the police dig up the basement, they bag up the decomposing bodies of children. These monsters wouldn't be able to keep up their facade for so long if it weren't for complacent observers like Jim and Blanca. People who watched the monster walk down the road to his house with the little boy in his arms and didn't go after him. Those who did not worship the monster, but neither did battle with it. Jim had a gun, he could have grabbed it. Blanca had the strength, he could have used it. The fact that they let the monster run rampant makes them monsters too.
I don't know if Akimi Yoshida deliberately created Blanca to be so difficult to interpret. I don't know if she wanted different interpretations of his character to emerge. Opinions about him are varied. Some believe he deserves redemption, while others are inclined to judge him harshly for the duality of his personality. What I do know is despite Blanca, despite Golzine, despite Foxx and everyone else, what Ash left behind. His true legacy was love. The people who always remembered him—his kindness, his tenderness, his shining nobility. He lives as a hero in Michael's heart. Sing's admiration and appreciation have not diminished over the years. Max and Jessica were able to stay alive and find each other again thanks to Ash. Eiji—Ash lives forever in his heart. Blanca sought to make him recognized through blood and violence. Eiji made Ash immortal with his photographs and his love.
