Trigun Stampede – 11

「新世界へ」 (Shinsekai e)
“To a New World”

Trigun Stampede’s 11th episode interrogates Vash’s presence in the world as Knives keeps pressuring him to join his cause. But when Knives’ resolve causes him to venture down a bloodier, more disturbing route towards vengeance on humanity, Vash must fight off his brother’s toxic influence.

CONUNDRUM

I can accept that the original anime is similar to FMA anime in that its unique personality came from the fact that it was unfinished at the time and liberties were taken to strike a balance between Vash’s lonely angst and his wisecracking coping mechanisms. At the same time, I think a deeper issue with Stampede is that it shines a light on Vash’s status as an Independent not to show us the kind of strength Vash has as a character, but as a device to pit him and Knives against each other in a battle between indifference to atrocities and committing even more atrocities.

Knives has the Kilmonger conflict where he’s the most ideologically correct between the protagonist and antagonist, but his morals and actions make him more of a villain than an anti-hero. After humanity turned the Plants into living generators for humanity, it makes Vash’s kindness and compassion for humanity all the more unwarranted.

It even made me really dislike this iteration of Rem given how she compassionately raised Vash and Knives as her own sons even with the knowledge that her crew is butchering other Plant race aliens in their laboratories and experimenting on them for an alternative power source. Vash looked at everything humans have done to him between when he discovered the corpse parts on the ship and when he was held hostage by humans who would enlist him to calm down their enslaved Plant generators, and said, “Yes, I want them to keep on using Plants as generators instead of find an alternative fuel source for survival.”

And just so that you don’t question Vash’s complicit nature, Knives isn’t any better because William’s experiments are his fault. His obsession with human genocide couldn’t be complete without a twisted doctor who likes to experiment on humans to create homicidal oddities that could potentially help Knives with his mass murder plan. Giving Plants the same souls that Independents are blessed with could have been beneficial, but from the looks of it, they are just being used by Knives for a selfish murder plot.

It’s a very nihilistic and cold message to ask viewers whether they want a hero who could mournfully shrug off the subjugation of Plant aliens or a villain whose plan to free the Plant aliens involves ending the lives of every human on the planet. Questioning whether humanity can survive without exploitation or whether the planet can thrive without exterminating the human race comes off as defeatist and apathetic as Vash is.

If we align with Vash, the message is, “there is no ethical consumption, so we should save humans and allow them to exploit more people and do nothing about it aside from pat ourselves on the back for being morally upstanding until our failures cause us to be sad again.” If we align with Knives, the message is, “the only way we can progress as a society is to get rid of nearly every living organism on this planet.”

There’s likely going to be a better resolution for Vash given how they probably wouldn’t want to end on the note that he’ll just find a new conflict to martyr himself over. After all, the Tomb Raider reboots were supposed to explain how she stopped getting mutilated by fetishistic quick-time events by the end of them. But it looks like it’ll take having to fight through his mind palace to escape from Knives’ captivity and his own personal prison in which his failures trap him.