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Original Tumblr Post: Meryl and her character
Meryl and her character
In repy to eilwen: Trigun Maximum Volume 8: Writing female characters
The takes are so fucking good, OP. I wanna add my own two cents about Meryl and her character in the manga, because I love her so much.
Just, man, she starts out reckless, forceful, questioning Vash’s good deeds but still backing him up on the sandsteamer. Yet, she feels self-conscious about her calculative nature, feeling bad about herself because she thinks she is cold. The rare times we have a female character written as being cold and calculative, relatively, but wanting to strive for a better understanding of other people’s feelings, it’s just the good shit. It’s different from the old-fashioned, traditional values that female characters are often written with in manga. She isn’t maternal, sees the good in everyone, a dreamer. She is forceful, calculative and goal oriented.
And yet, she grows to feel herself and those around her, gaining a deep understanding of Vash as a person, something she works hard on achieving and not something just given to her in the story for reader convenience. Despite the trauma she suffers from the revelations of Vash’s true nature, she wants to help him, understands that deep down he is still the same man. She knows, despite everything that happened in the world during the Age of Chaos and the Ark, that Vash will never stop as long as Knives is out there, she won’t even entertain the thought that he could be dead.
I know there’s a lot of people complaining the girls doesn’t get a lot of screen time in the manga, and I agree they don’t, but it’s unfortunately Milly that gets the worst of it. This is also where I wanna add to what you mentioned about her being the one to ask for help from another, but not to help her, instead to help Vash. I think, just as you do, that more screen-time doesn’t always mean that a character doesn’t have agency or impact on the story.
Consider this; if Meryl didn’t have Marlon make another gun, Vash would never have been able to go help Wolfwood. The orphanage would’ve been destroyed, the kids dead, Livio lost and Wolfwood would’ve died for nothing. Meryl didn’t just help Vash, she helped Wolfwood, helped Livio, helped all the people of No Man’s Land by ensuring their best bet for a future was ready and armed.
And despite Vash being considered humanity’s best bet on a future, it is still humans themselves that save themselves, Meryl and Milly, along with the forces from Earth. Through Vash as a means of communication, Meryl is literally a part of what saves the Humans and Plants alike. Her own words grew beyond Vash’s, her words bringing him Vash back from the brink. Not all strength comes from physical strength alone, sometimes just being a human, a woman, makes you a stronger person in a world like this.
She never gave up on Vash, and so in the end, he doesn’t give up on her and promises her that he’ll return.