THAT exacty why we weren't move on and sullen with the ending
And in my theory the reason ash want to die is because as long as he is alive he will keep wanting eiji and eiji prolly always by his side, he will eventually drag him into his messy life again, danger him. So if he can choose the way he die, why not while his heart is full and so happy?
exactly（/TДT)/ I'll just imagine that in some alternate universe out there, they're all happy and free of worries especially ash and eiji ♡(◡‿◡✿)
ash DID survive in the anime, just not the manga sadly and i dont even know which ending i prefer ;-;. I just want my bby to be happy mannnnnnn (╯°Д °)╯╧╧
ash did die in the anime. He was bleeding out in the library, he died with a smile on his face
no he didnt, go check out the banana fish website's character chart. You'll know wat I mean
i'm pretty sure he died tho? the ending was a bit ambiguous but it seems he really did die
Came here to read garden of light after finishing the anime. There's a lot of spoilers on twitter so I already knew ash was gonna die (I just didn't know when and how) so the whole time I was watching the anime I was always on edge because I was expecting him to die anytime. But when I got to the last few minutes of the last episode, I thought, "ash survived? maybe those twitter peeps were just trolling like with daichi's case" so ofc I felt very relieved and was just focusing the last few moments. Just as lao stabbed ash, my tears started to come out, I wasn't making any sound, I was just numb. those twitter peeps weren't lying.
The ending really hurt, although garden of light somehow comforted me, it only took, like, 5% of the pain. I wouldn't want the ending any other way, I think the only way for ash to be truly free from all that pain was to finally rest in peace.