Trigun Bookclub: deludedfantasy: Trigun Maximum Volume 14: Chapter 6-8

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Original Tumblr Post: Trimax Vol 14 Ch 6-8

Trimax Vol 14 Ch 6-8

Well, here it is. My last post for book club. I can’t believe we’re actually here! I’m a little emotional. This has been such a fun ride and the highlight of my day for the past few months. It’s weird that it’s basically over.

I still have a few things I’d like to talk about so this isn’t quite the end for me, but for now, onto the post! I hope it makes sense as I wrote this either on a train or while sick.

Ch 6

Once again, I ask, does Vash have some sort of telepathic/mind reading ability? Because Meryl doesn’t say that part about being scared out loud, but he responds to her anyway. Is it just in really emotionally charged moments that he can hear it or does it have something to do with how he’s connected to the Plants and they way all their memories are being projected?
At least Vash knows how terrified Meryl once was of Plants and himself (but I still wish they’d actually talked about it rather than Vash running away, but whatever, they don’t have time for that right now).
I wish Meryl didn’t think that about herself either. She’s allowed to feel things! Including fear. It shouldn’t be about never being that scared again, but about feeling that fear and not being overcome by it.
Ohhh, Vash did succeed in connecting with the Plants and what happened is their protective shells cracked and their memories started raining down on humanity.
Here are Vash’s beliefs again coming out in full force. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen and he’s not going to try and control the outcome. People and Plants should have the autonomy to make their own decisions. All he can do is make sure they see and try to understand each other, and he says it beautifully.

I remember this part really well and I still find it one of the most beautiful and moving parts of the manga. The feathers of memory falling on humanity, them experiencing all the good and bad of what Plants experience and suddenly being overcome by it all.
I love that the Plants call him Red Brother. He’s the familiar guy in a red coat who’s always there to help them.
And humanity is getting a full look at him too! Finally, they get to know him as more than an outlaw and the destroyer of July. They get to see him for who he truly is.
At this moment the Plants say, “What would Vash do?” Will he give up or will he keep going? The conclusion they come to makes me wanna cry. “Let there be love and peace in this world.”
That’s all Vash has ever wanted, all he’s fought for, and now the whole world is finally getting the chance to see it. The depths of his belief and everything he’s done to achieve it.
Something that has bothered me for most of the story is how much Vash is about understanding, but how little he lets other people understand him. It’s how he ends up being the boogeyman and the bad guy all the time. He doesn’t let people in. Although this is done through supernatural means, finally, the world is coming to understand him a little. He’s getting some of that same grace he offers to others. Though again, I wish he’d been able to do it with his words and of his own will at some point.
Even Knives is getting hit by the Plant memories. He’s trying to hold on to his connection with the Plants, but it looks like they’re falling further and further out of reach.
Also, this page looks a bit like Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam but with very different connotations.

Did Knives lose control of the Ark and cause it to crash? I’m not sure how we got from point A to point B. I feel like I missed something.
This entire sequence makes me so emotional. After seeing all of the Plant’s experiences, the people of the ground immediately rush to help them. They aren’t scared! They understand how much the Plants have been through and are determined to do better.
The Plant scientists, not even knowing what the feather will do to him, uses it to communicate with them. The Plants are crying and in pain, in danger of dying without support, and it would be so easy to be scared and overwhelmed, instead they do everything they can to save them. Not because they need Plants to survive but because they care about them and they can’t survive without each other.
And the scientist reaches out to touch the Plant without fear. It’s a very tender, intimate, and comforting touch. He strokes her hair. That’s not how you treat an alien entity, that’s how to treat a child, someone you care about deeply. I’m feel like I’m chewing on glass!!!
The Plant is still crying, but now she’s smiling too. They’re truly working together and understanding each other for the first time.
God, Vash. Never, not once in his whole life, has he ever promised to survive or come back. Something has changed though. He still wants to live and he wants to do it with his friends because he promises he’ll return to Meryl and Milly.
Then like a badass, he just jumps right off the ship. What a guy.

Ch 7

At the end, Vash turns back to the beginning, where this whole mess started for him: the day of the Big Fall. What were Rem’s final words to him and his brother? What final words of wisdom has been trying to recall/reconstruct over the years as he fought and chased Knives?
Knives can’t admit he was wrong even when he’s very obviously lost. He had to reconstruct his entire body and use up most of his power to do it. He doesn’t have the Plants anymore and he just watched humans fight to help Plants. Everything he’s known to be true has been proven wrong to him but he still won’t back down because he’s scared of the truth. He can’t face it and he’d rather fight Vash to the death. Much like his brother, Knives is too stubborn to give up on his ideals so easily.
It’s more than that though, as Knives himself admits. Also just like Vash, he doesn’t see a future for himself anymore and he wants Vash to be the one to kill him.
Amidst all the carnage on this page, the simple image of the twins as boys really stands out, along with the text on it. They can’t go back to the way things were. They can’t regain their lost innocence. They’ve come too far together to turn back now. The fight for humanity’s future might be over now that Knives has lost control of the Plants but the last fight, the more personal one between the two of them, still has to be fought.

For the second time in this volume, Vash points his gun at someone with the intent to kill. But the moment he does, he finally remembers what Rem told him. “Don’t leave Knives on his own.” It’s why he stayed with him for 80 years after the Big Fall even though a rift had already developed between them. It’s why no matter how many times he faced him over the next 70 years, no matter how much he said he would kill Knives and get his revenge for what he did to Rem, he never did, why he hesitated every time he pointed a gun at his brother’s head.
I truly believe Vash still loves Knives. That love is complicated after everything they’ve been through and the terrible things Knives has done to him and to the world. But it’s there. It’s one of the many things that has stayed his hand every time he’s confronted Knives and why he kept begging him to find a different path when most other people would’ve given up. He loves his brother. In the beginning, Knives was all he had. In some ways, Knives is the only person in the world who can truly understand everything Vash has experienced. It’s no wonder, then, that when Chronica points her guns at Knives, Vash uses his powers to save him.
I’m 90% sure that Vash also used his body to shield Knives and took the brunt of the blast wave. (Edit: Whoops, I read that wrong. Vash doesn’t take the blast, he takes Knives’s blades in order to shoot a gate bullet at Chronica’s attack. But my point still stands.) He’s never been so protective of Knives. The look on Knives’s face when he sees Vash to do this is so unlike him. It’s shocked and surprised and suddenly very vulnerable. I think it’s Knives realizing Vash actually cares about him. There’s also something about being on the receiving end of the mercy Knives has mocked for years that probably breaks something in him because he didn’t think he deserved it or that Vash would ever offer it. Maybe this is the moment he realizes how wrong he was about everything.

There’s something really poetic about Knives then using the last of his own powers to also manifest wings and fly away to save his brother. Knives has claimed from the start that everything he was doing was to save Vash from himself, but really, he was doing anything but that. This time, though, he does save him.
Livio, being so polite and welcoming even when he’s threatening someone. He’s amazing, I love him.
Wolfwood’s ghost has been haunting the story physically and metaphorically for four volumes now. This scene in particular makes me wonder if the ghost of Wolfwood thing wasn’t a literary device but an actual ghost watching over Vash and Livio to make sure they made it through the final battle. Now that it’s over though, now that Livio has survived his first conflict as a new man with his new ideals, Wolfwood’s watch is over. He disappears and goes to his final peace.
His final words give Livio hope for the future, that he has one at all, where he can keep learning and doing better and being the person he wants to be. There’s more to come, indeed. The thing that makes me really sad though is Wolfwood never got to do the same. In the end, he proved himself to be more than a killer, but he didn’t get the chance to keep learning and improving. He didn’t truly get to live a life as a man who was more than a killer. He was forgiven, but didn’t survive to see the fruits of his own labors or the bright future they might lead him to. There will never be more to come for Wolfwood and that breaks my heart.

Ch 8

So here it is. The last chapter. It’s bittersweet to be here at the end after all these months because I don’t want the story to be over. I don’t want to let Vash go. But here we are.
It’s never stopped pissing me off that the Earth Federation put out another bounty for Vash. It’s not made clear for what exactly, but after this read, I have a feeling it has something to do with how he let Knives get away. He’s been branded an accomplice. The Earth Federation is trying to find a scapegoat for why their rescue efforts failed so fantastically and Vash was conveniently on hand. It’s so unfair, especially because he was the one who saved them.
Personally, I believe many, many people saw what he really did in Octovern or experienced who he was through the Plants memories. Most people would probably be more like the doctor and be willing to hide or help him. I don’t know, I just don’t like the thought of Vash constantly being forced to live on the run and never have peace now that the big threat that’s been hanging over him his whole life is gone.
Knives desperately begging humans to save his brother is such an about face for his character. Right at the end, something happened to him. Something broke in him after seeing all the Plants’ memories and Vash ultimately being unable to kill him. I wouldn’t say he believes in humanity, but he understands now. Especially he understands how important humanity is to Vash and how important Vash is to humanity. Vash is the bridge between the two and it’s only through his conviction in their ability to communicate that allowed any of this to happen. He’s part of humanity’s future. He has to be if they want to survive and Knives saw that.
Oh…did Knives use his powers to heal Vash? I mean, from what we know about Vash, the wound could have closed on its own because that’s just how his body works, but there’s something to Knives being the one to do it that makes my heart twist. Just like Vash, Knives couldn’t kill his brother, despite the many times he said the opposite. He couldn’t let him die. He used up most of his power healing him and when he started to run out, he asked humans for help. I’ve already said it, but I can’t help stressing how unlike Knives this is, at least, the one we’ve come to know. It feels like a different Knives, the younger one we briefly met. Who could he have been if he hadn’t seen Tesla in that tank and gotten so twisted up on the inside?
The fact that Knives’s final act is one of creation rather than destruction says a lot. He makes an apple tree that will provide sustenance and be helpful for the family that’s helping Vash. Sure, it’s to help keep his brother alive, but it’s also a small gift to the humans who took him in. It’s an astoundingly kind action for someone who has been hellbent on the destruction of humanity for 150 years.
Vash’s face after being told he should go live a quiet, peaceful life somewhere and that he’s done more than enough is peak Vash fake smile. It says, “I will never do enough to deserve a peaceful life.” I want to shake him like a rag doll, he’s so stupid. Yes!! Yes, you have done more than enough. He himself once said that there’s nothing wrong with a normal life. I frankly believe that’s what he wants deep down. But he doesn’t think he deserves it and he has a mission and an ideal he’s devoted to that supersedes his own wants. Sometimes, I wish Vash could learn to be a little selfish, just a bit. After everything he’s been through, he’s more than entitled to a little peace and quiet.
The silly tone is very reminiscent of early Trigun and it’s so nostalgic. It’s a return to that old world, a sort of reset and coming full circle. This is Vash’s life after all. It’s equal parts tragic and silly and ridiculous and it all comes in cycles.
The push and pull between being Vash the Stampede and just living a normal life fascinates me. Vash dons the red coat again to help the people who saved him. He says it’s just this once, but we know it’s a lie. Every time someone needs help, he’ll put that coat on again. But, and this may be my own biases talking, I’ll say it again: I think Vash does want that peaceful life, deep down. He wouldn’t keep bringing it up if he didn’t. A life where he isn’t the famed outlaw, Vash the Stampede and can just exist. But he also doesn’t know a life without his mission, so he keeps falling back into it.
Yay, insurance girls! Or more accurately, reporter girls!
Vash, you do not deserve the reporter girls. They spent six months looking for him! He promised them he would return, one way or another. But he never kept that promise. The girls could’ve assumed he was dead like everyone else, but they didn’t. To then find him alive and well and up to his old tricks…I think he deserves a little more than a light scolding from Meryl. At any point during those six months, he could’ve tried to send them a message or something to let them know he was alive. Vash, king of avoiding all important human relationships. Ah, well, some things never change.
Vash has suddenly discovered something more terrifying than insurance girls, reporter girls, with cameras and microphones and what I personally believe is a mission to clear his name. They are stubborn and will follow him everywhere. It’s his worst nightmare (I say this affectionately).
Oh my god, Meryl and Milly gave him a little theme song. That’s so cute.
“Stay tuned for wardrobe malfunctions too.” Meryl and Milly are giving the fans what they want: Vash the Stampede fan service.
These last few pages are beautiful. We get to see some old faces we haven’t seen in a while as they find out that Vash is still alive and doing his thing. The panels we’ve been getting throughout this chapter, of an empty horizon, are repeated over and over again as Vash starts to run. And then there’s Vash laughing. Because this is his life and he gets to live it, however he wants for as long as he wants it. To me, it feels like he’s realizing that he has a future. It’s compounded by the focus on him running into the bright, empty desert, a mob at his heels. But it doesn’t feel like he’s running away from them so much as he’s running towards that empty horizon. It might be optimistic of me, but I think that’s what Vash would want.
The last page took me out. We’ve come full circle. This is how Trigun started, with that same song of humanity still singing. At times, that song was cruel and devastating, but also full of love and hope against all odds. Things aren’t perfect. They never will be. This ending is, after all, bittersweet. Vash has lost so much and still hasn’t truly found peace. In some ways, he sees a future for himself, but even then, it’s just a continuation of the life he’s always lived rather than something new. He has a bounty on his head, but he has his friends by his side. He’s helped people and had a deep impact on them along the way. But still, humanity continues, the world keeps turning, and in the end, that’s all we can hope for. To be there to experience life in all its glory, both good and bad. It truly is a never ending song.

Thanks for following along! It’s been a blast sharing my thoughts here weekly and reading everyone’s amazing takes. A big thank you goes out to @revenantghost for organizing this whole thing. Trigun kinda took over my life in the past four months and book club has been a great place to channel all that obsession. Fun fact: the Google doc where I prewrite all my posts is 100 pages long. Honestly, this is the most fun I’ve ever had in a fandom. I don’t really know how to close this all out and I’m full of a lot of emotions about this coming to an end so uhhhh thanks again for reading all my thoughts and see you around Tumblr. Love and peace!

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