Trigun: Synthesis

[branchandroot]

So what, I wondered the first two times I watched the end of Trigun, is Vash so happy about just before he heads off to confront Knives? And what the devil does he think he’s doing bringing that psychopath back with him? What on earth is it that he realizes, after Meryl faces down the yokel that wanted to shoot Vash, that leads him to believe so strongly that he can save his brother?

Well, let’s back up a bit.

As he struggles with whether or not to shoot Legato, Vash hears two voices: Wolfwood’s and Rem’s. In alternation, they say “Luck and persistence won’t work forever”, “As we journey we search, and think of ways to make everyone happy”, “Don’t force your way of life on others”, “No one has the right to take the life of another”, “Don’t tell me about your dreams in a world like this” and “If you turn around you will see the future”. Everything Wolfwood says applies well to the fact that Meryl and Milly are about to be killed or possibly raped by the men Legato is controlling. In a world like this, Vash’s luck has just run out and he can either let whatever happens to the women happen or he can pull the trigger. Rem’s aphorisms remind Vash that pulling the trigger would not be right. He does it anyway. It drives him mad for a bit.

Then comes the scene with the Yokel, wherein he insists that because he and his mob have lost friends and family in the wake of Vash’s troubles they have a right to hate him and to kill him. Vash, sunk in self-castigation and unable to distinguish between Knives and himself any more, makes no protest. Fortunately Meryl is there to do it for him. No one, she grits out, has the right to kill anyone else. Everyone has a future. And someone has to stop the cycle of revenge. Hearing Rem’s ideas enunciated by someone else galvanizes Vash.

Of course, once it’s over he wants to know how they could be so reckless, and Meryl justly says he’s the last one to talk. Milly, perspicacious as ever, points out that it’s exactly what Vash always does himself and suggests that it’s also what Wolfwood would have done. Vash suddenly looks enlightened, says “that’s it” and gives Meryl a big hug. Vash thinks that “people have different ways of thinking. Even if you make a mistake, if you realize it it’s always possible to fix it. Then if you turn around you will see the future. This wisdom must be realized for oneself.” After he puts himself all together and takes off to find Knives Vash thinks that he finally understands what Rem meant, that he won’t mistake it again. “Humans are survivors. So I will take care of him. I’ll take care of Knives.”

Looking at this rather scattershot bunch of ideas I think Vash had several different realizations. For one, he figured out that the world isn’t always black and white, that mistakes get made and what one does with them is fix them not roll over and die in despair. For another, I think that being protected for a change instead of being the protector triggered the idea that having someone stand by him and protect him might just be what Knives needs. Vash acted to protect his friends and won them over to his way of thinking. Meryl turned that around and her action to protect him drove the words that went with it home to him. The last shot we see is of Vash, toting Knives, smiling and waving to what I can only assume are Meryl and Milly. He will stay with Knives, now, rather than running from their differences. Last, I think Vash finally gets the fact that there’s more than one path to saving people. “People have different ways of thinking” he recalls, just after Milly mentions Wolfwood; that resonates with Wolfwood’s comment about not forcing one’s way of life on others. Everyone has to come to their own realizations, and I think it may have finally occurred to him that, twin or not, Knives must follow his own path to his own conclusions.

This, I believe, is the point that’s established by Vash taking Wolfwood’s cross along with him. Just as Wolfwood wound up agreeing with Vash’s agenda of saving everyone, Vash has moved closer to Wolfwood’s conviction that kindness won’t get you everywhere. Where Vash starts out berating Wolfwood for injuring so many at the Quick Draw contest, he ends by using Wolfwood’s gun to disrupt Knives’ Angel Arm long enough to shoot him through both legs and shoulders.

Ow.

Another thread of this coming-together theme is, I think, embodied in Vash and Knives themselves. As I mentioned on the main page, each of the brothers absorbs the philosophy of one of their “parents”. Vash takes after Rem and Knives after Joey. That difference in philosophy drives them apart, which implies that for them to come back together they have to reach some compromise between the two worldviews. Something that caught my attention, in their final confrontation, was the incredible similarity of their moves. In some ways, I think their motivations were equally similar. Their little mental conversation over the Angel Arms (second go) features Knives saying “I guess I can’t talk sense into you hm?” My first thought was that Knives has an interesting notion of “talking sense into”, considering that they had just been playing Russian Roulette with their guns pointed dead center of each other’s foreheads. But, in the end, Vash’s goal does seem to be talking sense into Knives and he does go about it by shooting him first. Their minds seem to be working on very similar tracks at this point. My second thought, after the ending credits had rolled, was say again?! wait, no, you just brought Knives back home to meet the ladies? But considering how utterly shocked and betrayed Knives looked the first time Vash shot him and the care he always showed Vash (bar the whole killing all humans conflict) it occurred to me that if Vash tried he probably could get Knives to curb himself for the sake of his brother’s love at that. Particularly seeing as Vash really looks to have taken a leaf from his brother’s book in the sense of go ahead and injure someone if that’s what it takes to stop them long enough to talk.

I think that, at the simplest level, Vash finally shows enough determination and, let’s admit it, ruthlessness, to gain Knives’ respect as well as care. Little touches like the blanket Vash finds draped over him after the night he moves to bash in Knives’ head and can’t quite do it indicate that Knives considered it his place to take care of Vash. (It also raises the question of just how asleep Knives was while Vash stood over him with a rock.) But he never told Vash what his plans were, just made them and assumed Vash would go along albeit with occasional protests. I think it takes Vash shooting him, not in a panic but quite deliberately, before Knives can accept Vash as his equal. To be that, Vash has had to accept certain of Knives’ qualities… notably, the will to survive. I think Vash’s comment that “Humans are survivors. So I will take care of him” may reflect a certain meeting of minds between he and Knives. Knives has always been a survivor, doing what he considers necessary to insure his and his brother’s safety. So one implication, here, is that much as he may deny it, Knives has a lot in common with humans. This may be the point at which Vash realizes that Knives is as human as he himself, vehement protests to the contrary aside. Knives is not a monster that Vash can do away with. On the flip side, Vash has always been the self-sacrificing one. After his go round with suicidal despair I think he realizes that if he wants to be human and not some kind of (dead) angelic icon he has to take some care for his own survival too.

In the final analysis, if Vash wants to protect Knives he has to break the both of them out of their cycle of hurt-revenge. If he wants to do that, he will have to overcome Knives’ conviction that he’s the twin that knows best. To do that, he’s going to have to defeat Knives. He does. So who, in the end, is the more dangerous and more ruthless? The very fact that Vash leaves the gun and coat behind make me think that Vash might be becoming more dangerous than ever before. It’s his past that he leaves: the gun that has the catalyst for the Angel Arm, which he no longer needs if he’s got Knives (similarly disarmed) under his eye and (seeing as he won) under his control; the coat whose color encoded determination for someone else’s sake. Now he has a chance to be determined for his own sake. Vash has won against his past and can now turn his very formidable drive and focus to any other ends he pleases. Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Knives, honey, I think you’re in for a bit of a shock when you wake up.