Trigun Maximum 14
May 5, 2009
And here we have the end of a legendary series. It’s got an awesome cover, too (the back has Vash’s hand making the “love and peace” gesture), but I wish it had been called something besides “Mind Games,” since I’ve had the John Lennon song stuck in my head all day.
Trigun Maximum… it’s hasn’t really been good at all since Wolfwood left. As excited as I was about finally getting to read the end of this series, I started the volume and was nearly in tears because I just did not understand what was going on. The fights are visually confusing. As I mentioned last time, it’s suddenly revealed that Legato fights using invisible wires. This is referenced a few more times here, but… the wires are invisible. You can’t see them. I can’t follow what’s going on if I can’t actually see the weapon. I understand that he’s supposedly holding Vash stationary with the wires, but I do not understand how Vash is breaking free, then. It does not make any sense.
A new element of confusion is added to their fight when he mentions that Vash is fighting with tipped wings, or something. This isn’t clear, either. You just see speed lines. It’s so frustrating, because I wanted so much for this fight to be good. But it’s not. It’s just not.
The aftermath of the fight is spectacular, though. Vash wins, but doesn’t kill Legato. Legato doesn’t like the fact that Vash chooses not to kill people, so he offers Vash a choice. The outcome of this choice is pretty powerful stuff, and goes back to what makes Vash an awesome character.
Then there’s the fight between Knives and the Earth Defense Force (or whatever they were called, the colony ships from Earth he’s fighting). I couldn’t even begin to understand what was going on here. The important parts are pretty clear though, like the fact that the Earth Defense Force is using measures that could kill the civilians and wipe out cities on the planet’s surface. The final solution is to blow up the planet and kill everyone along with Knives. They are afraid he’ll just jet around the galaxy and destroy other colonies if they let him live.
The decision to sacrifice all the lives on the planet takes the story back to Vash’s philosophies about how every life is precious. In order to stop this, a colony on the planet tries to stop Knives in their own way, and Vash helps the best he can. The problem is that the humans have been abusing the plants for years, which is why they fused with Knives, so Vash has to try and convince people to treat the plants better and get the plants to believe that they should help humans.
Which leaves Vash and Knives. The entire series builds up to this fight. I was… disappointed, to say the least. Disappointed and deeply confused.
And there’s some silly aftermath that takes the series full circle. The series ends on a lovely 2-page color spread of Vash the Stampede, which I did not expect. It was a nice parting gift after all these years.
Now, Trigun wasn’t the first anime I watched, but it was the first one that I fell hard for. I’ve never liked an anime in the same way I loved Trigun back when I first watched it. I was super excited when Dark Horse licensed the manga too, and I’m beyond happy that I finally got to see the end of the story after… well, it’s been ten or eleven years since I’ve seen the anime, I guess. It’s a shame that things got so messy in the end, and perhaps a re-read is in order to see if that clarifies anything. I may have been too harsh with it.
In any case, Trigun will always hold a special place for me, and I will always love Vash the Stampede. He’s just an awesome character.
May 6, 2009 at 7:16 am
[...] (Manic About Manga) Connie on vol. 18 of Skip Beat (Slightly Biased Manga) Connie on vol. 14 of Trigun Maximum (Slightly Biased Manga) Tiamat’s Disciple on Issue 4 of Yen Plus (Tiamat’s Manga [...]
May 7, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Well, if you’d been paying attention up to this point, and to the dialogue: A) you’d realize Nightow is a fucking madman and draws the most insanely arbitrary fights. (I still don’t know what Rai-Dei the Blade is doing in their fight) and B) the tipped wings have been in effect since at least volume 6, it’s Vash’s angel abilities manifesting themselves and purely reactionary, purely defensive. Like his philosophy. In contrast to Knives’ killer philosophy and his use of his angel powers to make energy to destroy.
A re-read IS in order, but EVERY volume of T. Max requires a re-read. I love the story, but Nightow really does need to be less subtle. Once you get it, it’s very fun. But Wolfwood fanboyism will never let some nerds enjoy the series past volume 10.
May 8, 2009 at 2:26 am
Yeah, I figured part of my enjoyment was handicapped by the gaps between the volumes, since I would forget a lot of the subtleties of the situations when the new volume came out. I’ve never been more compelled to re-read a series than I was when I finished this volume, simply because I knew there was a ton of stuff I’d pick up on with a second go-through. I know I didn’t have this much trouble with the early volumes, but that may be because I did read those ones over and over again. Of course, that may also be because those volumes made more sense and came out before the series was popular, so Nightow was probably allowed to do less of whatever he wanted. I’m still not entirely clear on what Knives is doing to Legato that put him in the coffin, but I’m pretty sure it involved folding him in half.
I liked Wolfwood, and I had a hard time reading these later volumes, but I can’t imagine reading the series for that long and then giving up before getting to the conclusion. It’s pretty clear before Wolfwood dies that some epic stuff is going to go down, I don’t know how someone could quit after enjoying the story for so long.
May 9, 2009 at 11:04 am
As a Meryl fangirl, I was both pleased at the way she was involved in the solution and really let down by the way she was dropped in this volume.
It’s not like I was hoping she’d get shipped with anoyone, I just wish the girls weren’t dropped as soon as they’d fulfilled their purpose.
May 11, 2009 at 2:34 am
Yeah, actually, it was kind of strange the way he just sort of gave them a role/appearance at the end of the story. I was pretty excited when she started helping Vash, because it was kind of awesome that all these horrible things were happening and it was a regular person coming through in the end, and the scene where he promises to come back was awesome. But then… yeah, there wasn’t a lot of follow through on that. And I was kind of disappointed with their tacked-on appearance at the very end, but I suppose it was fitting.