Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re racing towards a second extinction event, as the huddled humans of No Man’s Land await the judgment of either Million Knives or the very planet itself. Having fled our own home in arc ships after destroying its ecosystem, we sought refuge among the stars – but our reliance on the life-giving Plants sparked the ire of the young Knives, and we were thus struck down from heaven, and forced to survive among the wastes of a planet where safety is a fantasy and solidarity a lie.
But while Knives sees in us only brutality and greed, his brother Vash believes we possess something worth saving. A higher calling, a compassion hidden under rust, or perhaps simply the same right to exist as any other creature that suffers and strives, desperate to propagate its own tiny spark. Thus we arrive at a collision of near-gods, as the inheritor of our suffering faces the adjudicator of our sins, lost in the bowels of a city whose extravagance defies the planet itself.
Y’all ready for some Trigun?
Episode 11
We begin with Meryl sneaking down the corridors of this winding laboratory, now equipped with Roberto’s gun. She has essentially served as a parallel for Vash across this first season, with her journalist designation and lack of a weapon identifying her as a fellow outsider, an observer and recorder of mankind’s struggles rather than an active participant in them. Roberto’s death underlined that there is no impartiality in this conflict – her acceptance of his gun signifies her acknowledgment of that fact. By claiming Roberto’s gun, she is assuming a new responsibility, accepting her role as an active agent of change. Even inaction is a moral choice
She runs into Wolfwood slouching down the corridor, and once again embraces the role of forcing him into moral action. A performance that carries more weight now that she understands the stakes
Some excellent character acting as she swerves to block his passage. This production really does seem like a new peak for Studio Orange
Nice goofy metallic sound effect for her kicking his shin
Meanwhile, Vash sinks into a watery abyss, and is swiftly followed by Knives. He is soon forced to take a gulp of the liquid, and realizes it is either breathable or that he simply doesn’t need to breathe. A pointed choice – like Evangelion’s LCL, Vash is being returned to the water of the womb, the origin point from which he can presumably assess his life journey
As the doctor manages some sort of synchronization process related to Vash, Meryl arrives, demanding he stop the machine
He states that the plants as we know them are just husks, and that their true form exists on a higher plane or dimension
We drain the energy from that dimension, essentially using the plants as tethers
He intends to give the other plants souls, making them all Independents in the style of Vash and Knives. That’s certainly a setup for a difficult moral question; relying on the plants feels more like a passive, or even symbiotic relationship when they’re simply floating silently in jars, but the more we draw them towards recognizable humanity, the more our actions seem like exploitation or slavery. Is our survival built on the confinement of another intelligent species?
Meanwhile, Knives has dragged Vash into a memory of the confrontation in which Vash lost his arm, where he declares he’s found a way to free the plants
“Let us save our brethren together.” Knives talks a big game about sin and punishment, but those words arise from much more conventional instincts: a desire to protect his own “tribe,” and beneath that a yearning for his own community
In contrast, Vash’s morality is universal; he cannot blame the humans for exploiting his brethren, because they were only forced into that fate due to crashing on this planet
The doctor states that Vash is the only one capable of both giving and taking from the plants’ higher dimension
But in order to complete this process, Vash must be “remade.” Thus he will be forced to unwillingly die for his own species, rather than willingly sacrifice himself for humanity
Nice compositions of Meryl banging on the cage’s glass, with the juxtaposition of her against the floating Vash emphasizing his godlike presence relative to us tiny mortals
Elsewhere, Wolfwood takes a cigarette from Roberto, saying “I owe you one.” Some of us have to trick ourselves into being our best possible selves; I could easily see Wolfwood repaying this “debt” by returning to help Meryl
Vash is next confronted by the painful failures of his philosophy, all the humans he couldn’t save. His path is heart-wrenching at the best of times, even putting aside humanity’s tendency to crucify those who stand up and try to save them
“You’re just a coward who can’t stand to watch anyone die.” Knives of course frames Vash’s philosophy in the manner most flattering to his own values, implying that death is necessary in pursuit of his higher ideals
Ooh, I like this. Vash realizes he is in a dream because his hand has been restored – the “real” him is the one who’s suffered all this time, and picked up the battle scars to prove it. He refuses to sink into an ideal of the past
Some lovely backgrounds depicting the meteor shower from humanity’s arrival on No Man’s Land. Vash is dwarfed by the scale of the violence falling from the heavens
“They’re just feeble creatures that don’t even live for a century.” Knives constantly undercuts his own alleged philosophy, revealing time and again the animalistic might-makes-right beliefs that he hides beneath his high-minded rhetoric
Classic, evocatively realized trick of the dissolution of this mindscape echoing the erasing of Vash’s memories
But some memories are too core, too precious to lose. Thus the degradation of these surface memories only leads Vash back to Rem, to the promise of human kindness that is the cornerstone of his entire being
“Love for humanity versus love for a younger brother.” If that’s Knives’ wager, he’s in for a rude awakening. Vash has always sought the greatest good, even at the expense of himself and those near to him. He embodies the better-than-human ideal of collectivism, the eternal martyr
The growing “flower” of Vash’s transformation is contrasted against a geranium Rem once showed the brothers
“Nai, just because you’re the one with special powers…” “Right, right, it doesn’t mean I should show off.” Even back then, Rem was attempting to teach Knives that greater power is not a symbol of righteousness, but simply an arbitrary difference. He’s basically like our modern capitalist overlords – convinced his greater ability to shape reality makes him inherently suitable for the cause, a natural leader of the unworthy powerless. Sadly, the villains of reality don’t all have saint-like brothers to quash their ambitions
“You are who you are, and that’s all you need to be.” Vash is just as worthy in spite of his apparent lack of powers. All souls are equally precious
Sneaking into the arc ship’s private records, they discover the fraying but apparently still-living remnants of an Independent who was born on the ship fifty years ago
“That was but one grain of sand. Humanity repeats the same tragedies.” Yep. On the grand scale, loving humanity demands a nearly infinite capacity to forgive. It’s generally on the individual level that we tend to shine; the generosity of spirit embodied by the kindest among us must counterbalance an enormous weight of violence and cruelty
“Without any powers, you were too weak to live as a plant. That’s why you craved the love of humans over all else.” Knives can only attempt to undercut Vash’s philosophy by framing it within his own power-based worldview. The weak could never naturally desire coexistence; they must only cling to it because they’re not strong enough to thrive within his own framework. A common technique used to invalidate the very idea of kindness, promoted by those who wish to believe everyone is secretly as ruthless as they are
Knives says he crashed the ships to essentially “free” his brother from his loyalty to humans, which Vash of course interprets as the crash being his own fault
Some lovely imagery of a digital apocalypse as Vash’s final memories begin to collapse. Orange are pushing the surrealism hinted at in their earlier shows to an evocative extreme
“I’ve finally got him back!” And Knives actually believes he is doing his brother a favor, because he simply cannot imagine any alternative to his own worldview being more than a delusion
Ooh, love these blooming flowers whose petals appear like visions of the cosmos. An excellent way to expand our general plant imagery while evoking the sense of a portal to a higher dimension
“Today is the battle of Har Megiddo.” Knives makes explicit his desire to bring about the biblical apocalypse, referencing the historical site that inspired the very word “armageddon”
The plants form a vast colossus over JuLai, an In the Hills, the Cities-style abomination
And Done
My god, what an episode! Diving through Vash’s memories allowed his and Knives’ philosophies to be challenged and contrasted like never before, emphasizing both the intimate ties that inspired Vash’s humanism and the near-megalomania that informed Knives’ refusal to accept it. Whether it was fear of seeing others die or a rejection of his allegedly “lesser” nature, every compassionate instinct of Vash’s was perverted by Knives’ narrow-minded philosophy, his determination to justify his own supremacy over all beings. And the imagery here easily counted among the production’s most captivating visual wonders, portraying both the dissolution of Vash’s memories and the emergence of Knives’ armageddon with evocative distinction. From its reframing of prior themes and incidents to its continuation of Stampede’s visual motifs and philosophy, this was a confident and enthralling episode, setting us up for a genuinely apocalyptic conclusion. Fantastic work!
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