Attachment in Three Favorite Love Stories
Jul. 4th, 2021 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiAs I continue to deepen my Buddhist practice, I find myself engaging with old favorite texts through a more Buddhist-informed lens, and this had led me to think about some old favs in terms of the characters' attachments. I wanted to explore some contrasts through possibly my three favorite love stories in the world:
Naoe and Kagetora in Mirage of Blaze
Vash and Wolfwood in Trigun
Ash and Eiji in Banana Fish [1]
(Spoilers follow for all three, not detailed but significant. This post assumes you know the basic stories—no summary.)
Naoe and Kagetora
I have come to believe Naoe and Kagetora are written to exemplify the Dharma. The ultimate message of their relationship, I think, is that attachment cannot be the answer. It is never going to "work" as full solution to the obstacles. The two of them are as obsessively, desperately attached as any characters I have ever encountered. They are willing to endure massive suffering in the name of their attachment. They eventually get healthier and form a somewhat less obsessed and needy bond, but it is still very strongly attached up to the end of the story. Throughout all this, there is never true fulfillment. There are happy moments, and there are transformations for the good, but nothing is ever quite "enough" to overcome the next conflict or separation looming on the horizon. This extends all the way to the death of Kagetora's soul.
The "happy ending" of Mirage, to the extent it has one, is in the illustration of the two leads getting healthier, and their health is proportional to attaching less strongly. I think the story points toward Naoe continuing this slow plod toward less attachment and, thus, toward being a more compassionate, more at-peace person. Thus, Naoe and Kagetora, those most attached characters, may ultimately exemplify the goal of non-attachment. (And to be clear, they do this in a very thoughtful, real way that absolutely shows intense respect for their love for each other.)
Vash and Wolfwood
Vash and Wolfwood are somewhere on the other end of the spectrum from Naoe and Kagetora—not at the extreme other end, which would be compassion for each other without any attachment, but somewhere where attachment is always heavily moderated by compassion and a sense of goals outside their love for each other. Both are primarily interested in acting as good people, and their attached love for each other becomes a reinforcement of that goal. (NB: Naoe and Kagetora also work damn hard to act as good people in the world. It just emotionally takes a back seat to the importance of their attachment. Their principal focus is on their love.)
I think Trigun's stance shows most powerfully in Vash, who is old enough and clear-sighted enough to more or less know what he's doing. Vash's principal goal is always to be a good person. Neither Vash nor Wolfwood tends to attach strongly to individuals around them and for similar reasons: they are always the protector. If I can riff off Vienna Teng: they need not to need. But Vash, I think, in particular realizes that he has a special connection with Wolfwood, one that allows for a more personal partnership. He and Wolfwood can be protectors together. Thus, he can open up to needing Wolfwood, to a degree, and vice versa.
Once they open up to each other, they learn a great deal from each other. They become better people through knowing each other, and they also become attached enough to be truly vulnerable through each other. This hits Vash very hard when Wolfwood dies. That kills a piece of him, I think, just like Rem's death did. And he knew it would, and he walked into it anyway because the value of that bond was too precious to pass up—not least because the vulnerability allowed him to learn to be a better person and to help Wolfwood be one too.
For Vash and Wolfwood, the attachment, while very real, is always first and foremost a support to their work as actors attempting to help the world. It is probably about as healthy as intense attachment can get because it is always driven by and acting toward compassion, not only for each other, but for everything.
Ash and Eiji
I have loved Banana Fish for years, and yet it came as a surprise to me to realize it has found such a high place of honor in my narrative pantheon. It may well be my third favorite love story, and it's worth asking why. Why did this manga about two boys becoming dear friends while fighting the mafia in a fantasy 1980s New York sink so deeply into my heart? I think its "attachment style" may be part of the reason; it's endearing and not quite like anything else I've ever read.
Ash and Eiji stand somewhere in the middle of the spectrum I've visualizing. If Naoe and Kagetora illustrate the heady futility of a single, obsessive attachment and Vash and Wolfwood illustrate the sacrifice and reward of attachment carefully modulated toward a higher goal, Ash and Eiji seems to illustrate a single, life-defining attachment as the essential sustenance for acting positively in the world. Ash, in particular, comes to rely on Eiji as a bedrock reason for living and uses this grounding as a motivation to keep fighting. Eiji somewhat more directly uses his drive to protect Ash as a motivation to stay in the larger fight.
Again, this is sort of true of Naoe and Kagetora too: Kagetora certainly does rely on Naoe as a source of strength to keep him going, but the whole is much more problematic. For example, at one point when they spend thirty years apart (up to the Meiji Era), this actually improves Kagetora's daily functioning and he resists teaming up with Naoe again because he recognizes that it generates an unhealthy dependence. Ash and Eiji differ in that their love does, indeed, work as a consistently positive support for good action in the world. They differ from Vash and Wolfwood in that this love is not primarily about the larger work.
What makes their love so endearing is their immediate, instinctive, selfless need to support each other, and the way this mutual support strengthens both of them, even as it opens up sources of pain.
The price of this kind of attachment is intense dependence, more on the order of Naoe and Kagetora than Vash and Wolfwood. Vash, in particular, has to live on without Wolfwood, and he can. He knows how. Eiji has to live without Ash, and he also makes a good go of it, living a decent, productive life. Yet it's plain that he has a problem; ten or so years on, he's still grieving. He doesn't really know how to move on. As for Ash, I think it's a decent reading to say that he dies, in part, because of his attachment to Eiji, because, at the end of the day, he'd rather read Eiji's letter than get himself to a hospital.
That's the canon story, but, as I've often mentioned, I wrote a future fan fic about it that has become my fanon. It posits that Ash doesn't die and tracks most of the rest of their lives. This becomes purely my own conception, but I see Ash, in this scenario, very much using his relationship with Eiji as the fuel that keeps his life going. It's not his only source of joy or love, but it probably is the only one to really give his life enough meaning to keep living. He lives for Eiji. He can do good in the world because he has Eiji. And if Eiji were to pre-decease him, I suspect he would kill himself, not in a fit of agony but because his life would simply not have enough of value left to make the adversity worthwhile. That is a heavy dependence, yet one he embraces willingly, and Eiji also embraces.
Unlike Naoe and Kagetora, their relationship does not arc from total obsession toward non-attachment. Unlike Vash and Wolfwood, it is not moderated by an ultimate self-sufficiency. It stops in the middle, at a bargain that embraces dependence in exchange for support. It embraces need as the price of finding strength to do the work. And they are okay with that. It works in a way it doesn't work with Naoe and Kagetora—and, from a Buddhist perspective, it raises questions about where they might go next (in this life or the next). What would moving past the attachment look like for Ash and Eiji? What would it look like if, for a very long time, they don't?
I set out to make this discussion very analytical and logically clear—and I failed because love is like that. I don't know if my sense of a spectrum here comes through or makes sense. I'd be glad to know what other fans of any of these works think.
[1] It's worth noting that these are all Japanese texts featuring male/male pairings, which probably says something both about me and Japanese pop literature. It certainly speaks to my gender dysphoria and just finding female characters (often) tiring to have to spend time with, male characters more escapist. It's also relevant that, of these three pairings, only one is canonically sexual, which definitely speaks to my being a friendship bonder. I don't really care much if they're sexual pairings or not.
Naoe and Kagetora in Mirage of Blaze
Vash and Wolfwood in Trigun
Ash and Eiji in Banana Fish [1]
(Spoilers follow for all three, not detailed but significant. This post assumes you know the basic stories—no summary.)
Naoe and Kagetora
I have come to believe Naoe and Kagetora are written to exemplify the Dharma. The ultimate message of their relationship, I think, is that attachment cannot be the answer. It is never going to "work" as full solution to the obstacles. The two of them are as obsessively, desperately attached as any characters I have ever encountered. They are willing to endure massive suffering in the name of their attachment. They eventually get healthier and form a somewhat less obsessed and needy bond, but it is still very strongly attached up to the end of the story. Throughout all this, there is never true fulfillment. There are happy moments, and there are transformations for the good, but nothing is ever quite "enough" to overcome the next conflict or separation looming on the horizon. This extends all the way to the death of Kagetora's soul.
The "happy ending" of Mirage, to the extent it has one, is in the illustration of the two leads getting healthier, and their health is proportional to attaching less strongly. I think the story points toward Naoe continuing this slow plod toward less attachment and, thus, toward being a more compassionate, more at-peace person. Thus, Naoe and Kagetora, those most attached characters, may ultimately exemplify the goal of non-attachment. (And to be clear, they do this in a very thoughtful, real way that absolutely shows intense respect for their love for each other.)
Vash and Wolfwood
Vash and Wolfwood are somewhere on the other end of the spectrum from Naoe and Kagetora—not at the extreme other end, which would be compassion for each other without any attachment, but somewhere where attachment is always heavily moderated by compassion and a sense of goals outside their love for each other. Both are primarily interested in acting as good people, and their attached love for each other becomes a reinforcement of that goal. (NB: Naoe and Kagetora also work damn hard to act as good people in the world. It just emotionally takes a back seat to the importance of their attachment. Their principal focus is on their love.)
I think Trigun's stance shows most powerfully in Vash, who is old enough and clear-sighted enough to more or less know what he's doing. Vash's principal goal is always to be a good person. Neither Vash nor Wolfwood tends to attach strongly to individuals around them and for similar reasons: they are always the protector. If I can riff off Vienna Teng: they need not to need. But Vash, I think, in particular realizes that he has a special connection with Wolfwood, one that allows for a more personal partnership. He and Wolfwood can be protectors together. Thus, he can open up to needing Wolfwood, to a degree, and vice versa.
Once they open up to each other, they learn a great deal from each other. They become better people through knowing each other, and they also become attached enough to be truly vulnerable through each other. This hits Vash very hard when Wolfwood dies. That kills a piece of him, I think, just like Rem's death did. And he knew it would, and he walked into it anyway because the value of that bond was too precious to pass up—not least because the vulnerability allowed him to learn to be a better person and to help Wolfwood be one too.
For Vash and Wolfwood, the attachment, while very real, is always first and foremost a support to their work as actors attempting to help the world. It is probably about as healthy as intense attachment can get because it is always driven by and acting toward compassion, not only for each other, but for everything.
Ash and Eiji
I have loved Banana Fish for years, and yet it came as a surprise to me to realize it has found such a high place of honor in my narrative pantheon. It may well be my third favorite love story, and it's worth asking why. Why did this manga about two boys becoming dear friends while fighting the mafia in a fantasy 1980s New York sink so deeply into my heart? I think its "attachment style" may be part of the reason; it's endearing and not quite like anything else I've ever read.
Ash and Eiji stand somewhere in the middle of the spectrum I've visualizing. If Naoe and Kagetora illustrate the heady futility of a single, obsessive attachment and Vash and Wolfwood illustrate the sacrifice and reward of attachment carefully modulated toward a higher goal, Ash and Eiji seems to illustrate a single, life-defining attachment as the essential sustenance for acting positively in the world. Ash, in particular, comes to rely on Eiji as a bedrock reason for living and uses this grounding as a motivation to keep fighting. Eiji somewhat more directly uses his drive to protect Ash as a motivation to stay in the larger fight.
Again, this is sort of true of Naoe and Kagetora too: Kagetora certainly does rely on Naoe as a source of strength to keep him going, but the whole is much more problematic. For example, at one point when they spend thirty years apart (up to the Meiji Era), this actually improves Kagetora's daily functioning and he resists teaming up with Naoe again because he recognizes that it generates an unhealthy dependence. Ash and Eiji differ in that their love does, indeed, work as a consistently positive support for good action in the world. They differ from Vash and Wolfwood in that this love is not primarily about the larger work.
What makes their love so endearing is their immediate, instinctive, selfless need to support each other, and the way this mutual support strengthens both of them, even as it opens up sources of pain.
The price of this kind of attachment is intense dependence, more on the order of Naoe and Kagetora than Vash and Wolfwood. Vash, in particular, has to live on without Wolfwood, and he can. He knows how. Eiji has to live without Ash, and he also makes a good go of it, living a decent, productive life. Yet it's plain that he has a problem; ten or so years on, he's still grieving. He doesn't really know how to move on. As for Ash, I think it's a decent reading to say that he dies, in part, because of his attachment to Eiji, because, at the end of the day, he'd rather read Eiji's letter than get himself to a hospital.
That's the canon story, but, as I've often mentioned, I wrote a future fan fic about it that has become my fanon. It posits that Ash doesn't die and tracks most of the rest of their lives. This becomes purely my own conception, but I see Ash, in this scenario, very much using his relationship with Eiji as the fuel that keeps his life going. It's not his only source of joy or love, but it probably is the only one to really give his life enough meaning to keep living. He lives for Eiji. He can do good in the world because he has Eiji. And if Eiji were to pre-decease him, I suspect he would kill himself, not in a fit of agony but because his life would simply not have enough of value left to make the adversity worthwhile. That is a heavy dependence, yet one he embraces willingly, and Eiji also embraces.
Unlike Naoe and Kagetora, their relationship does not arc from total obsession toward non-attachment. Unlike Vash and Wolfwood, it is not moderated by an ultimate self-sufficiency. It stops in the middle, at a bargain that embraces dependence in exchange for support. It embraces need as the price of finding strength to do the work. And they are okay with that. It works in a way it doesn't work with Naoe and Kagetora—and, from a Buddhist perspective, it raises questions about where they might go next (in this life or the next). What would moving past the attachment look like for Ash and Eiji? What would it look like if, for a very long time, they don't?
I set out to make this discussion very analytical and logically clear—and I failed because love is like that. I don't know if my sense of a spectrum here comes through or makes sense. I'd be glad to know what other fans of any of these works think.
[1] It's worth noting that these are all Japanese texts featuring male/male pairings, which probably says something both about me and Japanese pop literature. It certainly speaks to my gender dysphoria and just finding female characters (often) tiring to have to spend time with, male characters more escapist. It's also relevant that, of these three pairings, only one is canonically sexual, which definitely speaks to my being a friendship bonder. I don't really care much if they're sexual pairings or not.
