It still hurts. Episode 9 is like the Red Wedding episode of Banana Fish. It breaks you, but it’s really. Really. Excellent writing. Shorter deserved none of it
I really enjoy Shorter’s character because of how fiercely loyal he is, and he inspires that same loyalty in his followers. He’s a foil of Ash, Sing, and Arthur, as someone who also knows Ash from his childhood days. Unlike Arthur, though, he’s not jealous of Ash and respects him, and thereby commands respect of his own. Arthur’s subordinates are terrified of him; Shorter’s, like Ash’s, are willing to break into Golzine’s mansion to save him (though it’s too late). Also in contrast to Arthur, Sing will not take advantage of his boss being taken away and running afoul of Golzine, even when he’s given an appointment as boss of Chinatown. He decides to rescue Shorter instead of taking advantage of his ambition. So, like Ash, Shorter commands respect, and it’s because he likely doesn’t ask his guys to go any further for him than he would for them. He repeatedly goes pretty far to save his friends: firstly Ash, and Skip, and then Eiji.
Like, the Lees thank Shorter and offer him essentially prestige for bringing Eiji to them even though they know he was blackmailed into it. He refuses, because his priority is protecting his friends. It’s his greatest strength as a leader, and his greatest weakness, because of course, as is a shared hypocrisy with Ash, you can’t protect friends while you’re also playing with fire by living a pretty murderous life. It’s this tension that eventually kills him.
So basically, Shorter is in many ways, like Ash in that he refuses to cave to pressure: he wants to be free. Yet he’s ensnared in a system that gives him no choice but to betray Ash or lose his sister who raised him, and he can’t lose either of them. It’s these loyalties that enable him to fall into Golzine’s sadistic plans. Shorter’s guilt, as well, is painful to watch. Because his betraying Ash–even though Ash does not fault him and he gave everything in the end to save Eiji anyways–was something deeply scarring for Shorter. To have his loyalty, his best quality, broken by the Lees was humiliating and awful.
In fact, Shorter is used as the ace card several times to rescue our heroes in distress. Firstly, he warns Ash of Arthur’s impending attack in episode 1 and shows up to rescue him in episode 2 (and would have been successful if Marvin wasn’t a little bitch and decided to kill Skip). Eiji and the doctor from Arthur in episode 4. Then Ash and his father in episode 6.
Hence, when there is no ace card and when Ash has to kill Shorter, the entire series changes fundamentally in tone. It’s where I think the characters really start to self-destruct in some ways, but also start to grow in others. Once Shorter is gone, the status quo is too. Shorter’s death is like the loss of a kind of innocence for Ash (yes despite him already being a murderer), for Eiji, for Yut-Lung as well. There is no going back, no way to return to what they had before, and the way forward looks absolutely terrifying.
Moonlit Spires 