THE CAMERA AND THE GUN

(tw: discussion/explicit mention of Ash Lynx's past)

I think that as a fandom, we don't appreciate the importance of Eiji being a photographer (or going to the US as one) enough.

Given Ash's past, cameras are something he's very vulnerable under. He's constantly been exploited for his body and image, and the child corn videos of him were still up for distribution until Max burned all of it. Even the sound of cameras can be a triggering memory, such as when he's confronting Kippard and he's transported back into a childhood memory with the incessant "click click click" of the camera.

Eiji, showing up to that bar, pulling up a camera with his job literally being to take pictures of him, embodied everything Ash should distrust. However Eiji asks is he can take the photos, and Ash replies "not the face", this obviously makes sense given he's a criminal, but with what we learn later it's obviously more than that.

Ash was carrying a gun, Eiji a camera, to both of them what the other person was carrying was the greater weapon. However, famously, Eiji asks for Ash's gun, takes it and gives it back and says "thank you for trusting me with it", which I think is really key. Ash has just seen that if he can trust Eiji with a gun, perhaps he can trust him with a camera.

Which he does. We never really see Eiji take pictures of Ash during the course of the show, but we know he did thanks to garden of light, where we actually see some of them. The fact that Eiji has a camera, giving him the power to make Ash feel vulnerable and observed, but doesn't at any moment, must've given Ash so much hope. In the same way he tells Eiji that it's the first time anyone has done something for him without "asking for something in return" this is probably the first time someone has had the power to hurt him and not used it.

The fact Ash can trust Eiji so fully with a camera, and feel comfortable and unguarded around him just speaks so so much to the nature of their relationship and just how deep and true it was. With Eiji, Ash really can just be himself "a boy of 17 years old" he's not afraid in the slightest, even if every single thing from his past should tell him to run. The trust Ash has in Eiji is just as great and moving as the trust Eiji has in Ash. Eiji tells Ash he was never scared of him, not for a moment, which is something that Ash finds great comfort in, but it's also true the other way around.

Eiji the one who trusted a boy with a gun and Ash , the one who trusted a boy with a camera. Gosh I love them.

🍌🐟

yeah asheiji is cute and i adore them but the relationship in banana fish that i am actually the most insane about is ash and max. because like. like. ash was groomed and raped and abused by damn near every adult man in his life up until he met max and ibe. the scope of that trauma is fucking breathtaking and heartbreaking. and then, ash meets max. and max looks at him and sees him for what he is: a teenager, a fucking child. and max, for all their banter and the rocky beginnings, shatters every single one of ash's preconceived ideas of how adult men treat him. because max cares about him. max protects him in jail. he stays with him in the prison infirmary. he calls jim out on his bullshit. he burns the photos. and ash calls him dad, mostly as a joke, but towards the end it's barely a joke anymore. max is the closest thing ash ever had to a real father. and it makes me insane.

This type of man is the best type of man

— do us part

Something that I love and appreciate about Ash Lynx that I don't see many people talking about is his lack of desire for personal revenge. It's such a small and obvious detail, that I don't think we stop to think about it enough, but Ash is not consumed by revenge. Even after everything that happened to him, we never see him express a desire to kill or torture Dino, or anyone else who hurt him, we just wants to be free. Even with researching banana fish he's just trying to figure out what's wrong with his brother so that he can cure him, his motive is never revenge. Wanting to destroy and make Dino suffer would be a completely understandable reaction, yet all he wants to do is prevent other children from experiencing the same things he did.

The only times we see Ash express a desire for revenge, is when people he loves are hurt. This is seen several times with Eiji, such as when he's shot and he chases the men and shoots them with rage in his eyes, or when Shorter dies and he kills Dawson as he begs for mercy. This is why at the start I emphasised *personal revenge*. But I just think that his overall lack of thirst for revenge and just deep desire to be free is an extremely important facet of his character, that really just highlights who he is on the inside beyond all the violence and suffering, and is also very telling of his strength.

This is also one of the reasons why I dislike the "yut lung is just ash without eiji" rhetoric, because I feel like it does such a disservice to both their characters. Yes, they've lived through similar trauma and are in several ways parallels to each other, but they're different people with or without someone to support them. First of all, before Eiji, Ash did have someone, Shorter, and he had other people he cared about such as Skipper and his gang. Obviously none where as influencial or life changing as Eiji was, but painting him as being completely alone before meeting Eiji simply isn't true. Secondly, Ash and Yut lung are very separate people with separate personalities and with indivual nuances to their stories despite their similarites. One of these is the desire for revenge. As I established Ash isn't consumed by personal revenge, but Yut Lung very much is, his entire first arc is his search for revenge agaisnt his own brothers, whom he wants to kill.

Yut Lung isn't Ash without Eiji, he's just Yut Lung. He's a different person with different responses and reactions to the world around him, and of course, having someone to love and care for him would be monumental, but he'd still be a completely different character to Ash, and in my personal opinion, would have a harder time accepting that love than him (as we see briefly with his connection with Sing).

Of course there's also differences in their stories that I think are worth noting. I won't do it on this post because frankly I've been procrastinating making lunch and I need to do that rn. But reducing Yut Lungs's character to an "ash without eiji" is truly tragic in my opinion, and not only a disservice to him as a character but also to his story. Yut lung isn't just there to be a parallel to Ash, and I feel like we sometimes forget that. Anyway I'll get more into the nuances of Yut lung's character, and the nuances of his and Ash's stories and they way they both parallel and differ from each other if y'all want. If not I'll probably forget, and it'll just live in my mind, keeping me awake at 4 am.

if you do, i'll swear never to lay a single finger on eiji.

umm ummm im normal about this scene

TW: Discussions of SA and SH

So I was thinking about those two scenes in Banana Fish (the anime) where SA/SH is presented to the audience as funny. The first with the nurses in the hospital, and the second with the random doctor at the National Institute of Mental Health. Any scenes where SH or SA is depicted as humorous leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (Big Bang Theory is probably the most prominent example of this I can think of). But these scenes came off as particularly off-key, because it's literally Banana Fish. Like, did the writers legitimately forget their own narrative's theme? A good chunk of the show is dedicated to presenting and then repeatedly reinforcing the concept that SA is bad, which it is. So why would the writers of BF, who showed careful, deliberate attention to every other part of the show, put these two scenes in?

Both scenes involve women and/or femininity in some way.

The scene that takes place between the nurses and Ash involves four female characters. These characters have already decided that they will take turns "assisting" Ash, and inform him of this in a way that is distinctly uncomfortable for both Ash and the audience. The important thing to remember in this situation as that the ones doing the harassing are meant to be interpreted as female. With the exclusion of the other scene I mentioned, every other time a character commits SH or SA, they are always male and it is always painted in a light that is meant to be unsettling and disturbing. But here, when the ones doing the harassing are female, it's supposed to be funny. Because women are not seen as capable of sexual predation, it's generally considered okay, entertaining even, to depict scenes like the one above. After all, they're women, what harm can they do?

Immediately after, Ash is shown to be highly uncomfortable. His boundaries have been threatened by people who are not supposed to take advantage of his situation. The nurses' actions obviously cause harm.

Next, the scene with the random doctor. He enters the elevator with Ash (who is pretending to be a female nurse), Max, and Ibe (though he doesn't know Ibe is there). Although he is in the elevator with what he thinks to be two other people, he only pays attention to Ash, specifically. He proceeds to call him "sexy" and gets very much in Ash's personal space. After a brief attempt to keep up the façade, Ash punches him, and calls his actions what they are: SH.

The key detail here is that Ash is presenting himself as a woman. He is wearing a skirt, unnecessarily large fake breasts, and is speaking in a higher, softer voice than normal. Ash (and the writers) are doing their level best to make him come off as feminine at first glance. This scene would not be acceptable otherwise.

It's up for debate what the audience is supposed to take from this scene. Are we supposed to laugh at a female victim of SH, or are we (an audience that the writers probably assumed would be mostly women) supposed to get catharsis from someone who looks female punching a sexual harasser with the "physical strength of a man"? Possibly both? There's no real way to know.

I honestly can't tell if the writers did this intentionally or not. It could be a way of talking about SA perpetrated by and/or against women and how this particular category of SA is viewed differently in society. The scenes do have a very, very different tone from all instances of SA/SH within the show that exclusively involve characters who are intentionally presenting themselves as men. However, it could also be a reflection of the writers' own personal biases and stereotypes. With the attention to detail present in Banana Fish, I think it's likely the former.

ash & eiji in every episode ↳ EP13 | THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO

“humans can be funny. they don’t understand death, but they instinctively fear it. there were so many times when i felt death would be better. dying would seem so sweet and tempting then.”

Your almost cold-blooded leadership. Your fearless willpower. Is it all to cover up a fragile soul?

8.12 Happy Birthday Ash Lynx, my most beloved ❤️

I wanted to experiment with colours and go for a more cartoon-y/ anime art style. I love how the colours look in this. Eiji looks deranged though... I will try to fix it. I wanted to draw them as slightly older than canon.... where no one dies and they are just chilling somewhere in Cape Cod, living in peace with their friends. Shorter and Skip are cooking dinner inside and Cain has gone to buy some beer. Eiji has recently started to grow out his hair and Ash is thinking of cutting his short

Song "Daddy" by Korn and Ash Lynx :(

Me: You know if I am going to start actively targetting CSA trauma processing again, I think a self assigned homework should be to watch Banana Fish to get my brain back on the topic

XIV: *silently glaring loudly* Riku.

Me: What

XIV: the therapist ASSIGNED you homework which was to look into CPT.

Me: Yes yes Ill do that but ALSO

XIV: RIKU YOU JUST WANT AN EXCUSE TO WATCH BANANA FISH AGAIN EVEN THOUGH ITS TOO REAL

Me: AND THATS WHY IT WOULD WORK TO GET MY BRAIN BACK ON CSA TOPICS

XIV: THATS CALLED TRIGGERING YOURSELF STOP SAYING IT LIKE ITS NOT

Me: its t h e r a p u t i c

Will forever point out Eiji's tiny blush when Ash pulls him closer for the shooting training

i had literally never heard about the BANANA FISH antisemetism; what happened? (i haven't watched it because i am semi-allergic to horrible major character death lol)

There's two main parts that I remember distinctly after not revisiting the series for like four years. And I'm not Jewish, so this is just what I noticed.

One is more obvious than the other.

The first one to happen is this nerdy scientist who created the BANANA FISH drug was, in fact, Jewish. One: hell of a stereotype about Jewish nerds. But more importantly, he was referred to as a slur for Jewish people and then...decided to....BANANA FISH them?

Now, BANANA FISH is clearly like, based off on MK Ultra or some shit: there's no cure and it controls people's minds and makes people basically trapped in a living hell and makes them very violent.

People he tested this thing on include Ash's older brother, Griffin, whom our racist scientist admitted had done nothing actually to him. But other soldiers they were in the military with were abusive to him and called him a slur for Jewish people.

And so...he just. Killed people in a gruesome, horrific way because he was oppressed. Ash murders him, and we're not even supposed to feel bad because his actions were completely inexcusable and disgusting.

The more obvious one is this fucking line after Blanca shows up about Union Corse wanting to be the next "Jewish American community" like, excuse me, what, the pedophile mafia?

This obviously traffics in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are rich and powerful and control things behind the scenes, and it also draws a connection to another antisemitic conspiracy theory that (Christian) children are in danger from Jewish people (yay, blood libel!) both physically and sexually and etc. This is where the QAnon pedophile conspiracy comes from.

This line about the Jewish American community was actually removed from the original English translation of the manga. It was in the Japanese, and whoever looked at it when translating it into English in the 90s clearly went, "Whoa, okay, no," and they changed it to the "Rockerfellers" which frankly makes more sense anyway.

The anime kept it.

So, uh, yeah.

Not great.

i love their dynamic so much you dont understand