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pancake-breakfast · 9 months

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It's awfully late in the week for me to finally be getting around to the Volume 7 reading, but there's no such thing as too late in Trigun Book Club.

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts for TriMax Vol. 7, Chapters 1-2 below.

TriMax Volume 7 Covers

"Happy Days," huh? Pressing X to doubt.

NGL I kinda want to gather up a bunch of instances where Vash's expression is more like what we expect from Knives and vice versa.

Who the crap are these delinquent-looking fools? Though I do like how Kuroneko's apparently joining the fun.

Hmm. I don't feel good about that back cover image....

Chapter 1: Happy Days

CW: Dismemberment, vivisection, extreme medical malpractice, terminal cancer/cancer-like symptoms, gore

I love Wolfwood's little hunch and glare here. He absolutely looks up to no good.

"Cautious" is a very optimistic way to phrase this scenario. I also just want to note that this optimism is coming from Knives.

Waking up to an emergency alarm is not exactly an ideal for me. I feel a bit bad for these people.

I dunno who this guy is who's insulting Rem, but I don't like him.

They're awake, but Rem's already fixed everything. She's ready for them to go away now.

Wait... did the boys fix everything??

Oh, no. They're already thinking in terms of a scientific discovery.

Oh, no. They've already had a "scientific discovery."

It's good to know she has at least one friend here. Although I wonder why she didn't take that friend up on the offer; she really could use some help with the boys.

LOL, angry mom face.

I like how she knows the boys well enough to know it was Knives who interfered and not Vash.

Shit. William here is too smart for this.

WAIT, THIS IS CONRAD?!?! FUCK THIS GUY. (I forgot his full name was William Conrad. It's too boring of a name.)

Bless these children for immediately and enthusiastically responding to his question with affirmation of their love for Rem. Something something Knives later pretending he didn't care about her, that liar.

Knives is sooooo happy to be accepted by this new human, so relieved everything's going ok, that maybe they could be friends. Ugh.

Man, this is a pretty sharp contrast to the last time we saw him "just talking" to someone. That time, he knocked his "talking" partner unconscious, ran a bunch of tests on him, and forced him to destroy a city.

Huh? Who are they following? Like, I suspect I know because Stampede, but... is she like an apparition? A projection into their minds?

Ok, I just wanna note this suspicious flower. There's not a lot of organic anything in this series, so it's odd for someone to take the time to place a lily in a vase somewhere like this. Why isn't it on a counter or a shelf? Isn't that where you'd put something decorative? Why's it in this unused part of the ship? It doesn't look like it's been there long enough to go all wilty, so this is something someone (Rem?) is maintaining.

Knives has also noticed the flower is suspicious.

Just... look at the determination, curiosity, and just a bit of fear on Knives's face versus Vash's almost-deadpan expression.

Ohhh, Vash has noticed this room is particularly suspicious.

LOL, big sibling energy breaking the tension a bit.

And we get to meet Tesla. A great scientific discovery, indeed....

The cut from, "This will be the first time humankind has ever communicated with another sapient species," to Tesla on an operating table covered in blood with people basically vivisecting her is... rough.

"Trouble" over a question of ethics on day 100. We can see which side won. Also, it's a bit problematic that it took 100 days for there to be questions. They've already taken one of her eyes.

She's only been with them 110 days and they've already performed so many tests on her that she basically has cancer.

One of the more horrifying elements of seeing her body parts in the tubes is that her head appears to be mostly intact, but... it's not, and we know this because her brain (with attached remaining eye) is in another tube.

Also, I want to note a mass in her right arm that looks a bit like an angel arm core.

I'm sorry, what was the name of this chapter again? "Happy Days"??

At first it sounds like the hair loss is from stress... but... no, this sounds like the result of cancer/radiation treatments. Not saying it's not also stress, but the tumors plus the bone density loss (including its effect on her teeth) plus the septic odor (I know the scent can be different depending and it's not usually detectable to humans until the latest stages, but... yeah) on top of the hair loss.... Hang on, I... need to add more CW tags above.

"Specimen report." Cold.

Aight, I'm gonna take a short break and hang out with my cat for a bit.

Ok, I'm back.

Chapter 2: Separate Ways

Oh, baby Vash...

We don't specifically see a figure identifiable as Rem in the experiments on Tesla (although her friend actually does show up, so that answers that question), but even if she never put a knife to Tesla, even if she did her very very best to comfort Tesla in the midst of all of it, Rem recognizes that her inaction (or inability) to stop the procedures absolutely allowed the unfathomable cruelties to happen to Tesla. She is, whether she wants to be or not, whether she's guilty or not, representative of the humans who did all these things, and thus she realizes it's her responsibility to apologize.

It's also worth noting she hasn't actually got in the door yet. She's just guessing at what's happened. She's right, but it's still a guess.

To think, it was only... what, not even an hour before?... that they were both so hopeful.

It's notable that the last chapter highlights that Tesla had mastered human speech. She wasn't just imitating or talking in vague language. She could communicate well. And they still went forward with the experiments.

I wonder if part of Rem's weirdness at the birthday party was her own thoughts on how Tesla could have... and should have... been there. About how the boys managed to outlive Tesla at only a year of age.

Bless Rem, that woman just blowtorched her way in.

Vash puts two and two together regarding the year mark and comes (understandably) to the worst conclusion.

This suggests she might have been the source of the "ethics trouble" referenced in the report, and why she'd decide to endure raising two Plant babies all on her own. Good for her, though. Medical research loves twin studies. It would be incredibly difficult to argue against having a "control" twin and an "experiment" twin in this situation, and she would have had to take the "by any means necessary" method. Her current choice of lone wolfing it is her "by any means necessary." It's just the pacifist route.

Ugh, baby Vash looks like a cornered, injured animal.

Patient mother has brought new food to replace the food he threw across the room, but he still won't have any of it. So she waits. And watches. She's clearly worried, but she knows forcing things here isn't gonna help anything.

I'm not quite sure how all this got Vash so close to death so quickly, though. I'm guessing it's sort of a plant thing, like the one on the steamer back in volume 1. Like... when some level of cynicism overtakes them, it's just kinda draining. It doesn't drain their natural power such that their hair goes black, but it might explain why Knives constantly looks tired.

Rem shedding blood to save Vash. There's some religious symbolism going on here. The action seems to be affecting him, though.

(BTW, don't grab knife blades like this, folks. People do it in anime/manga and even Western media all the time, but your hand has tons of little tendons and nerves and you can do crazy levels of irreparable damage very quickly grabbing a blade roughly like that.)

Did he stab her??

Hahahahahahaha, Vash is still eating these words more than a century later.

Ah, yeah, she's super-stabbed. Her hand is shredded, too.

Where the heck is Knives in all of this?

Oh, my bad. Baby Vash didn't even last a minute before he starts shedding tears over her.

And the first thing she sees when she wakes up is him looking after her and... eating. Or drinking. Hard to tell with some of the space food.

The blank ticket!

Daaaaang, she had a little depression apartment for a while there, didn't she? I mean, understandable. I'm just impressed that Nightow.... I mean, why am I surprised? This man gets it. He knows. He understands, either from personal experience or from those around him. Most likely a combination of the two. And he portrays it all wonderfully and horribly and I know I'm not the only one who's grateful for it.

I hope someday Vash gets to see a train. A real train, in person. And I hope when he does, he has the freedom to admire it.

They both seem to be having a moment of, "This is weird, but ok. Things are better than they were earlier and I'm ok to move forward."

Ah, there's Knives. He looks a lot better health-wise than Vash did... what with those... puffy cheeks. I'm not big on kids, but I like that Knives once had the kind of cheeks my grandmother would have pinched while saying, "You're so cute! You're growing like a weed!"

He does look like he banged his head a bit (or... his cheek), but does he really not remember anything?