On My Monthly Banana Fish Reread. Ash’s Death Was Predicted From The Very First Volume (his Life With

it's his birthday

"The title of the movie poses an interesting question that is asked time and again throughout: what does it mean to be human? When someone hears the word “monster,” they likely picture an otherworldly, grotesque creature that bears no resemblance to a human. In the beginning of the film, Minato asks his mother if a person would still be themselves if their brain was replaced with a pig’s brain. Saori begs the elementary school administration to respect her as a person as she confronts them about Mr. Hori. More than an attempt to get to the truth of the situation with Minato and Mr. Hori, Monster is a delicate exploration of humanity. It’s easy to call something or someone a monster, because that strips the soul out of the situation. It allows us to separate the darkness that people are capable of from humanity itself, but that’s not the truth. We all have the ability to be awful and good and cruel, but that doesn’t make us monsters, it makes us human." (x)

MONSTER 怪物 (2023) dir. Hirokazu Koreeda @pscentral event 31: faceless

"It was like, all his goodness and trust and -- warmth would come flooding in my body, and... I could feel it filling me up."

My poor baby 🥺

✨New official art of Ash and Eiji✨

by Banana Fish (supervising) anime director Ayumi Yamada (山田 歩).

Please follow and support her on Twitter/X: @ 24_ayame

Happy birthday, Ash Lynx🎉

New Birthday art of Ash Lynx by Banana Fish (supervising) anime director Ayumi Yamada!

I can’t believe Eiji bought natto on Ash’s birthday🙃

I headcanon that once eiji found that his feelings for ash were mutual he started doing like pretty bad attempts at flirting knowing it makes ash laugh and now i need drabbles of eiji making ash laugh with his awful flirting moves

includes nongraphic nsfw jokes

A good amount of desperation led Eiji to this point.

In his defense, English isn't his first language. Everyone knows that. He's been getting more fluent with the submersion into the language that being in America offers, but there are still certain things—certain nuances—that Eiji doesn't quite understand.

Especially when it comes to pickup lines.

He started off by asking Alex—which, in retrospect, was probably not the best idea. This led to a whole coaching session by the gang, and resulted in Eiji saying, "Ash, since you lost your virginity, do you want to take mine?"

Eiji still gets flustered just thinking about it. But the best part—the part that got Eiji invested in the idea of bad pickup lines in the first place—is that Ash laughed when Eiji said it.

This was pretty shortly after Eiji met the whole gang, and he didn't really understand what he was saying. He knew it had sexual connotations, of course—he knew the word virgin, but at the time he wasn't entirely sure what he had just asked Ash, other than that Alex had insisted on it.

Ash, on the other hand, did understand what Eiji was saying, and seemed to know immediately that the gang was responsible. And he laughed. Didn't take it seriously, leaving Eiji flustered and a million sorts of embarrassed. But he had laughed.

Ever since then, Eiji's been trying to have a repertoire ready of bad pickup lines—never quite as bad as that first one, but just enough to throw off Ash's game and, ideally, make him laugh. He's grown a little bolder since he realized that his feelings toward Ash are reciprocated. Alex assured him early on: If anyone else had tried to pull that shit with him, Boss wouldn't have laughed. And the other guy probably wouldn't have made it out alive.

It took a few months and several conversations with Ash himself before Eiji actually believed it, but now—during these times when he's holed up in the condo with the gang, Eiji discusses whatever pickup line of the day he found online, screening it with them and judging based on their laughter if he's missing on something vital.

"What about this one?" Eiji asks, reading off of one of the many tablets scattered across the room. " 'Can you pass me an inhaler? Because you just took my breath away.' "

Bones snorts. "Corny! I like it. But what about something a little nerdier? 'Feeling thirsty? Because my body is over 50% water.' "

Eiji feels himself flush. "I'm not going to ask if he's thirsty, Bones." That was a mistake Eiji made early on.

"I've got it!" Alex yells. " 'Do you like plums? Then can I offer you a date?' Get it? Because you're fruity."

"Oh my god," Eiji mumbles. "Next!"

Bones tries again. " 'Do you have a name, or can I just call you mine?' "

"He literally has two names, Bones, and I know both of them. No."

Kong starts laughing suddenly, and Eiji perks up. "Got a good one for us?"

Nodding, Kong says between bouts of laughter, " 'Do I ... Do I need a library card, or can I just check you out?' "

... Huh. It really is perfect, in a way. It's the sort that'll make Ash laugh, for sure, and it's got the library in there. "All right, men," Eiji says triumphantly, "I think we have a winner for today."

Anne Shirley (2025)

i think about them constantly