Trigun: Second Read - Vash and Wolfwood
I need to offload some Trigun thoughts and have no time to formulate a real essay, so here goes. I'm doing a reread of much of the manga, and as with great works in general, it improves the second time around.
* I've said somewhere or other that Gungrave (anime) is more tightly structured than Trigun, and this is a defensible statement insofar as Trigun is a sprawling epic and Gungrave a shortish tragedy, but rereading the Vash/Wolfwood arc, I am amazed at how structurally precise it is:
Vash and Wolfwood are philosophical opposites in many ways, Vash believing that we never have the right to take another's life, Wolfwood that killing is necessary to survival and protecting others. Much of the plot of Trigun is concerned with illustrating that they are both right (and both wrong). Wolfwood is right in a concrete, logical way: sometimes people must be killed or innocent victims will die. Vash is right in a deeper, more intuitive way: the violence perpetuated in society and in the soul only intensifies with more violence. So when Vash tells Wolfwood that by styling himself as a survivalist killer, he is "forcing himself to play the devil while his heart screams," he's right. This lifestyle devastates Wolfwood; there's a large part of himself that hates himself. He considers it a victory if none of the other orphans from his orphanage grow up to be like him. But by the same token, it's arguably his willingness to kill that shelters them from that necessity.
What's not arguable is that Wolfwood's willingness to be a "murderer" (his own word) saves Vash's home community on the Seeds ship when Grey the Nine Lives attacks it. Vash accepts this, and indeed, offers Wolfwood his gratitude and apology for not recognizing the truth that, in this instance, killing was necessary to save Vash's "family."
Wolfwood is equally correct in his assertion that Vash's moral high ground as a gunslinger who never kills is enabled by his superhuman Plant powers. Vash has the speed, agility, strength, and Plant energies to accomplish all sort of feats (and absorb all sorts of injuries) in the course of incapacitating people without killing them. A human who attempted the same thing, Wolfwood asserts, would die. The proof is in the pudding here: ultimately, Wolfwood does attempt it: incapacitating rather than killing Livio/Razlo, and it costs him his life.
So the upshot of Wolfwood finally doing what Vash repeatedly tells him he has to do to be a morally acceptable person is that Wolfwood dies. This is certainly not what Vash intended, and it wounds Vash profoundly. The bitter irony here is that Vash does not lay that sort of high moral expectation on everyone. In specific instances, he preaches for peace, mercy, etc., but only with Wolfwood does he categorically demand this as daily practice. His expectations of Wolfwood are exceptionally (excessively?) high precisely because he loves and respects him so profoundly. He comes to consider Wolfwood a true equal partner in life and, thus, hold him to the same standards he holds himself, even though, as Wolfwood observes, only a Plant could survive that way.
Sharpening the irony is the fact that Vash lays this enormous adult responsibility on a man who is, in fact, almost still a child, who dies a teenager. But this is the story of Wolfwood's life: he courts adult responsibility from his young childhood. He is always being asked (not least by himself) to be the responsible adult: the caretaker, rescuer, guardian, priest. He doesn't know how to be a child, and perhaps one of Vash's greatest services to him is encouraging him to be vulnerable, to face his own inconsistencies and insecurities.
In the end, Vash does help Wolfwood. He gets him killed (in a sense), but he also initiates that psychological transformation that allows Wolfwood to say he had a good run. In spite of his guilt over much of the way he lived his life, he died a death he could be proud of. He dies, more or less, at peace, mission accomplished, for the orphans, for Livio, and for himself. Vash is right that killing wounds the soul. In turning Wolfwood from killing, we might say he cost him in his life but won him back his soul.
The final movement in their philosophical exchange is Vash's transformation, however. Wolfwood is right that sometimes people need to kill to save others. It damages the soul, but even that sacrifice is necessary. And so it is that Vash finally brings himself to kill Legato rather than let Legato kill Livio. It does damage Vash's soul, but it is also a fitting tribute to Wolfwood that Vash kills to save the life that Wolfwood died to save. Or to look at it from a different perspective: Wolfwood destroys Grey the Nine Lives to save Vash's family; Vash kills Legato to save Wolfwood's family (Livio, who one of his fellow children from the orphanage) They learn from each other.
* I've said somewhere or other that Gungrave (anime) is more tightly structured than Trigun, and this is a defensible statement insofar as Trigun is a sprawling epic and Gungrave a shortish tragedy, but rereading the Vash/Wolfwood arc, I am amazed at how structurally precise it is:
Vash and Wolfwood are philosophical opposites in many ways, Vash believing that we never have the right to take another's life, Wolfwood that killing is necessary to survival and protecting others. Much of the plot of Trigun is concerned with illustrating that they are both right (and both wrong). Wolfwood is right in a concrete, logical way: sometimes people must be killed or innocent victims will die. Vash is right in a deeper, more intuitive way: the violence perpetuated in society and in the soul only intensifies with more violence. So when Vash tells Wolfwood that by styling himself as a survivalist killer, he is "forcing himself to play the devil while his heart screams," he's right. This lifestyle devastates Wolfwood; there's a large part of himself that hates himself. He considers it a victory if none of the other orphans from his orphanage grow up to be like him. But by the same token, it's arguably his willingness to kill that shelters them from that necessity.
What's not arguable is that Wolfwood's willingness to be a "murderer" (his own word) saves Vash's home community on the Seeds ship when Grey the Nine Lives attacks it. Vash accepts this, and indeed, offers Wolfwood his gratitude and apology for not recognizing the truth that, in this instance, killing was necessary to save Vash's "family."
Wolfwood is equally correct in his assertion that Vash's moral high ground as a gunslinger who never kills is enabled by his superhuman Plant powers. Vash has the speed, agility, strength, and Plant energies to accomplish all sort of feats (and absorb all sorts of injuries) in the course of incapacitating people without killing them. A human who attempted the same thing, Wolfwood asserts, would die. The proof is in the pudding here: ultimately, Wolfwood does attempt it: incapacitating rather than killing Livio/Razlo, and it costs him his life.
So the upshot of Wolfwood finally doing what Vash repeatedly tells him he has to do to be a morally acceptable person is that Wolfwood dies. This is certainly not what Vash intended, and it wounds Vash profoundly. The bitter irony here is that Vash does not lay that sort of high moral expectation on everyone. In specific instances, he preaches for peace, mercy, etc., but only with Wolfwood does he categorically demand this as daily practice. His expectations of Wolfwood are exceptionally (excessively?) high precisely because he loves and respects him so profoundly. He comes to consider Wolfwood a true equal partner in life and, thus, hold him to the same standards he holds himself, even though, as Wolfwood observes, only a Plant could survive that way.
Sharpening the irony is the fact that Vash lays this enormous adult responsibility on a man who is, in fact, almost still a child, who dies a teenager. But this is the story of Wolfwood's life: he courts adult responsibility from his young childhood. He is always being asked (not least by himself) to be the responsible adult: the caretaker, rescuer, guardian, priest. He doesn't know how to be a child, and perhaps one of Vash's greatest services to him is encouraging him to be vulnerable, to face his own inconsistencies and insecurities.
In the end, Vash does help Wolfwood. He gets him killed (in a sense), but he also initiates that psychological transformation that allows Wolfwood to say he had a good run. In spite of his guilt over much of the way he lived his life, he died a death he could be proud of. He dies, more or less, at peace, mission accomplished, for the orphans, for Livio, and for himself. Vash is right that killing wounds the soul. In turning Wolfwood from killing, we might say he cost him in his life but won him back his soul.
The final movement in their philosophical exchange is Vash's transformation, however. Wolfwood is right that sometimes people need to kill to save others. It damages the soul, but even that sacrifice is necessary. And so it is that Vash finally brings himself to kill Legato rather than let Legato kill Livio. It does damage Vash's soul, but it is also a fitting tribute to Wolfwood that Vash kills to save the life that Wolfwood died to save. Or to look at it from a different perspective: Wolfwood destroys Grey the Nine Lives to save Vash's family; Vash kills Legato to save Wolfwood's family (Livio, who one of his fellow children from the orphanage) They learn from each other.