Trigun Bookclub: domfock: Clarifying Wolfwood’s timeline

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Original Tumblr Post: Clarifying Wolfwood’s timeline

Clarifying Wolfwood’s timeline

pancake-breakfast asked:

Someone help me out here.

In Volume 6 of Trigun Maximum, we get a flashback to Knives recruiting Wolfwood, but for the life of me I can’t figure out when this happened. It seemed like he might have been working for Knives before 5th Moon? But Knives just spent a whole bunch of time being patched up post-July… which I thought happened around 50 years ago? I know Wolfwood’s age is wonky, but I’m pretty sure he looks older than he is, not younger.

Was Knives just like, “Oh, this guy pulled a gun on me during my recovery period. I’m gonna go hunt him down and make him work for me finding and protecting my baby brother”? If so, why the heck was Wolfwood even at 5th Moon, since he wouldn’t have been recruited by Knives until after that?

Do I need to just keep reading and all will be answered, or is this one of those things where I shouldn’t worry about it too much because clearly Nightow didn’t?

Yeah, more answers will come in the future, however there’s a few things we can already deduce from the information that we have up to Vol 7.

The scene with Wolfwood holding a gun to Knives is right after Juneora Rock, as we can see Knives with this long hair, probably recovering from the destruction caused by Vash’s angel arm.

A little side theory I have, a headcanon if you will, is that Knives BDSM suit from Vol 1, 2 and 3, you know the full body ones with the spikes? I think it’s a protective suit to preserve Knives’ health, as he was literally just born as a full grown adult. Who knows how easily he could get sick, how fragile his skin would be, how much time his body needs to process before he is ready for a full exposure to the hostile environment.

Anyway, back to Wolfwood.

What we do know of Wolfwood is that he says he’s doing everything for the sake of the kids, probably for all the innocent, but more specifically for the kids of the orphanage. We know that when Legato saw him at first he asked if he was “Chapel”, meaning they were expecting another Gung Ho Gun to show up named Chapel, somebody who was supposed to come from the Eye of Michael, something Knives states in that flashback.

However, we see Midvalley question Wolfwood going by that name, specifically referring to him as “Chapel” with the quotation marks. This is something Wolfwood doesn’t even seem to deny, his loyalty to the GHGs constantly being questioned.

This mystery only deepens when you see something else shown briefly in that nightmare Wolfwood has in the beginning of chapter 2 of Vol 6.

A hand reaching out to him, someone that Wolfwood shot, someone with a cross on their grey sleeve. Now, where have we seen an arm like that before?

In Vol 4 chapter 2.

A member of the EOM in the GHG line-up, probably the actual Chapel. Wolfwood doesn’t have crosses on his sleeves, and this suit is grey or white instead of black.

And now in Vol 6 we’ve got more members of the EOM showing up, presumably Livio the Double-Fang, Razlo the Tri-P of Death, but then we got three extra people in the form of three people carrying Punishers. Who’s who, where does this lead. More on that in the next Volume, I promise.

pancake-breakfast replied:

Sorry, I don’t think I worded myself very clearly in my original post; I didn’t have easy access to the manga at the time to appropriately reference it and crossed a few scenes. But thanks to your explanation, I do think I’m following a bit better now.

I got that the scene where he pointed a gun at Knives and Knives was like, “Oh, you’re Eye of Michael. That means you work for me.” was shortly after the Fifth Moon Incident. (BTW, love the theory that Knives’ particularly dumb BDSM outfit was more like a Darth Vadar suit than an simple fashion choice.) The thing that’s been throwing me off is this scene.

The way Wolfwood frames it makes it seem like he’s aware that Knives destroyed the orphanage, and having that scene surrounded by Wolfwood’s flashback with that “Chapel” arm there and Elandira seeming to address Wolfwood to tell him she told him so just left me rather confused.

Obviously this scene happened in the past because Legato is traipsing around free of his bagworm costume (unless he’s got a *lot* better recently???), but one of the first things Knives did when he got brought back was squish Legato like a spider, so this would have had to have happened before Fifth Moon, and presumably before July… except as best I can tell, no one’s ages line up with that.

This might be a bit of a wait-and-see thing, as I’ve seen ‘98 and know about that major spoiler re: Legato’s arc (and the most traumatizing way it differs from the anime to the manga), so I have reason to believe Legato will eventually emerge from his cocoon into the beautiful bagworm moth he was always meant to be. But framing it as if Wolfwood is aware of it is… confusing, and making it difficult for me to determine when this is happening.

The whole scene with Knives, Elendira and Legato at the orphanage is more like an actual nightmare, like imagining what’s going to happen to the kids if he doesn’t do what he was tasked to do.

So everything’s a mix of memory and fears, basically Wolfwood’s got a lot of shit tangled up upstairs, but we all knew that.

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