Trigun Maximum 12

Oh man.  Nothing is ever going to change the fact that I love Trigun and will blindly keep believing it’s one of the best series ever, but Jesus Christ.  This volume made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

It makes no sense in the same way that Hellsing makes no sense.  You KNOW something cool is going on, and you can get on board with that, but some of the details of what is actually happening on the page are clear as mud.  I mean, it’s cool that somehow there are spaceships firing on Knives from space, and Knives then takes over these ships from the ground and makes them start firing on each other.  At one point, these ships fire some sort of warhead at Knives and his ark, and he just teleports away.  That would actually be one of the most awesome things I’d seen in awhile if I hadn’t just been making my way through Berserk.  But I wasn’t sure why this was happening, or how it was happening, or what happened to stop it other than it was something that Vash did.   The teleportation scene nearly had me in tears because you don’t know what the hell is going on until several pages later after you piece the different reactions together (to be fair, the people in space pretty much come right out and say it, then I had to reread that part to make sense of it).  I finally figured out how it was that Knives was influencing the spaceships and how it was that Vash stopped him when a few nonsense panels clicked into place for some reason, but maybe others would figure out what happened right away.  I don’t know.

After this big confrontation with its vague action, Vash and Knives finally have the showdown you’ve been waiting for.  It is cool beyond belief, and while Knives is using everything at his disposal, Vash seems to be one-upping him with only his gun, and Knives apparently can’t channel his power in the way Vash can.  Vash tells him he’s just dealing with a simple gunman.  The action is all… I mean, they’re fighting with vaguely-defined powers, so you really can’t tell who’s doing what, and what exactly is being fought with other than Vash is apparently firing vaguely bullet-shaped energy and doing various kinds of harm… and possibly doing other things?  Knives gives commentary so you can tell who’s winning when, which was good enough for me.

We finally see how Vash lost his arm.  It was odd that it never occurred to me to think about this, but it was definitely one of the more awesome moments in the series.  Was an alternate version of the story shown in the anime?  YES.  Yes it was, I remembered just now.  In the anime, I think he supposedly lost it when he blew up July.  Yes.  Trust me when I say it’s much better in the manga.  It involves more raw emotion and not just a release of power.

We are also finally given the reason why Vash chose to live among the humans as a sort of superhero.  The explanation isn’t really definitive, and I actually had to infer meaning from what was said, but it’s still a good story, and is related to when he lost his arm.

During the battle, you have to wonder how much Vash has left in him since his hair has turned totally to black, and the answer comes by the end of the volume.  Also, maybe you were wondering about what the last of the Gung-Ho Guns were doing during this fight, or even what happened to Legato.  We get a superb Legato flashback that I was not expecting, and it explains how it was that he came to follow and worship Knives.

This volume was maddening to read and piece together, and I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but it is certainly the climax of the series.  It’s got several choice scenes along with a great final battle, so there’s not too much I’m looking forward to in the next volume other than Vash’s ultimate fate.   No amount of missing bits, confusing action, or detailed-to-a-fault art is ever going to convince me that Trigun is anything but awesome, but… yeah.  Some of the faults are really starting to show in these final sequences.