Philosophy in Trigun

I tend to find pacifistic characters boring, but Vash is a huge exception to that rule because, unlike most of his fictional peers, he doesn't try to prevent bloodshed by sitting in a drum circle and thinking happy thoughts. Wolfwood may call it silly and hopelessly idealistic, but at the end of the day, saving lives on an individual basis is all a pacifist can realistically hope to accomplish. That's precisely what Vash does and that, I think, makes him a lot more pragmatic than people give him credit for.

A scene that always stands out to me in the manga is the one between Vash and Wolfwood, when they're recovering in the medical wing of the SEEDS ship after fighting Leonoff and Gray. Vash acknowledges that Wolfwood is killing his opponents, but sincerely thanks him for helping anyway. He's in a position where he has to pick his battles, and he wants Wolfwood as a friend and NEEDS him as an ally, so he makes the decision that he's going to have to turn a blind eye to what Wolfwood is doing. He's not going to change his own standards, and he's not going to be okay with Wolfwood killing, but he's going to let it go. I was always kinda proud of him for that.

Oh godddd, that scene. It's one of the moments that makes me go "Oh wow, this series really digs deep." It disguises itself as a dark, gritty, action/drama, but it's also an excellent deconstruction of the setting and characters. There's so much grey in this world. Vash may WISH that it was more clearly defined black and white, but he can't simplify it to that point, and he doesn't TRY.

Another thing that really struck me about the manga (whereas I think this is ONE category where the anime misses the mark a bit) was the VILLAINS.

It gets to the point where I wonder if Nightow sympathized more with Knives than with Vash at some point. With the exception of E.G. Mine, I think, every single Gung Ho Gun is at LEAST sympathetic enough that I could understand why they chose to follow Knives, if not outright make me like them.

Hoppered the Gauntlet and Legato are outstanding examples of this, and Rai-Dei now that I've read his oneshot manga. While I can appreciate the more mysterious approach of the anime, that really only works for me if they plan on explaining things EVENTUALLY.

The fact that most of the deeper, darker parts of the characters' backstories still seem to BE canon in the anime, but aren't explained, must be incredibly frustrating to anyone who hasn't gotten that far in the manga.

I mean, Wolfwood is STILL only about.... 16 or 17 in the anime, if you listen carefully and note the times mentioned in episode 24. He doesn't seem to have a healing factor, and a few other aspects of his past have been changed, but still...

And Legato's backstory is left out of the anime, which can be good OR bad. On the one hand, the reveal of his overwhelmingly sad past would somewhat ruin his title as "most fucked up and despicable villain in the anime" since introducing that sort of sympathy would just make everything even MORE depressing, since I had trouble bringing myself to hate him, and Vash killing him becomes overwhelmingly tragic, more than it already was!

Knives is another story entirely. In the anime, I feel like the scope and scale is completely underwhelming. It's hard to remember that he's such a threat when Vash is the only good guy who knows what's at stake.

In the MANGA, he's a global-approaching-interstellar crisis, and the threat he presents actually means that Vash finally gets some of the physical and moral support he really needs.

While the anime doesn't drag Vash quite as far down into hell as the manga does, I would argue that anime!Vash is far worse-off than his manga counterpart, because he has NOBODY to support him besides Meryl and Milly, and he won't let them get close.

In the manga, there's a network of people who KNOW the real Vash, fight alongside him, and know the stakes and what has to be done. Despite everyone Vash loses along the way, in the manga, I feel like his decision to keep living and believing in people is more understandable, when a good portion of No Man's Land actually returns those sentiments after his heartwarming, overwhelmingly awesome way of spreading a certain message across the entire planet:

Love
and
PEACE

And he didn't even have to say it in those words. Everyone UNDERSTOOD him.

And Knives, bless him, finally pulled his head out of his rear long enough to acknowledge that Vash actually had a point.

It strikes me, as Karaii pointed out on tumblr, that Knives was the more optimistic and hopeful of the two as a child. He had such higher hopes and faith in humanity, so he fell that much FURTHER when those hopes were shattered by the reveal of Tessla. Knives is a creature of passion and emotions, and never stopped being that way. Vash is the cooler and more logical of the two, ironically enough.

Pathos and Logos, much? Anyway, I've had a theory that the mask Vash puts on (and gradually became part of him), the friendly persona he generally hides behind, is modeled after a combination of how Rem and KNIVES behaved, when they were children, since they were the only role models (and frame of reference) he HAD.

His emulation of Knives' friendly and optimistic attitude combined with Rem's passion, protectiveness, and forgiveness gradually became more exaggerated over time, as well as truly becoming a permanent facet of his heart.

Vash was the most skeptical of humanity's acceptance of Plants, but he overcame that in the end. The brothers sort of swapped roles, in the end.

OT, but this sort of blew my mind once I finished the manga and went on to watch the anime again. There were so many things that just clicked neatly into place knowing what I knew now about the GHGs. What JesuOtaku said about certain aspects of the anime's storyline being "manga-contingent" is very true.
The manga's fleshing out of the GHGs' backstories reveals why anime!Legato lets the slave girls live even if I feel that giving him a backstory at all takes away from him as a character, but that's entirely a discussion for another day, why anime!Hoppered the Gauntlet takes so much joy in terrorizing Vash and telling him what a destructive monster he is, and why anime!Midvalley constantly talks about Knives as a force that can't be opposed, as though he was pressed into Knives's service.

Oh man, this. I think that this is what makes an excellent story - the fact that people do absolutely appalling things, things that would give me nightmares if they happened in the real world, and yet are so real and so human that they are relatable, even pitiable. I think the fact that we are removed from them makes it easier to relate to them and to feel for them.

The real issue with having human, relatable characters is that their tragic stories do not excuse their behavior. You can like a character, even love them, but still absolutely abhor what they've done. I think that that's another facet of Vash's character too; as was mentioned earlier, he doesn't attack Wolfwood even though Wolfwood is killing people in self-defense. Those people are trying to kill them both, but Vash still holds back and only fights against those who are attacking him or the innocents around him. I think that this is because he cares for all the people, to an extent especially the villains.

Vash is old. Vash is really old. You know how you feel when you see a child, and how you feel when you see that child grow up? Vash is 131 in the anime. Every single living person on the planet - with the exception of Knives - has been born since they arrived. What's it like to have the desire to be a big brother to the whole planet? To see your family - a family made up of those who survived incredible tragedy - KILL each other? Vash embodies that. He loves them all.

I have to admit that Rem (and Vash's) deadly mistakes were really something that initially bothered me about the manga. The anime characterization was so well-established in my mind that I just couldn't imagine the pure, loving Rem Saverem doing or being complicit to such a terrible act, even if by her own admission she had made mistakes in her past (the anime doesn't tell us what kind of mistakes she made, but they're most likely not on par with that). But then over the years I thought about it some more, and I can now say that I have an enormous amount of respect for the manga for including those scenes.

The anime kept things "simple" (but still wonderfully effective) to an extent due to time constraints, but the manga was long enough that it was able to attach a more complex rationale to the ideas of Love and Peace, the blank ticket to the future, etc. These ideas are powerful and appealing specifically because they offer hope to those who have done terrible things in/with their lives. What Rem did was horrible -- and human. As most people in her position would have done, she chose to do what was easy instead of what was right. But instead of allowing her guilty conscience to deny her mistake or decide that there was no hope for her to ever be a good person again, she moved on with the knowledge that she could still pursue goodness and rectify -- if not ever truly "make up for" -- her past wrongdoing. She remembers and values the past, but looks towards the future with the knowledge that she can do better this time.

It's the same with Vash. He fell into depression after seeing what happened to Tessla, decided he hated humans (and Rem), and tried to kill her after she wouldn't let him kill himself. On its face, it sounds horrible, but his actions also make sense. He was a child who felt frightened, betrayed, and desperate. After he realizes the terrible mistake he made, Rem clarifies for him further: "Even if you're in darkness now... that ticket in your hand is just waiting to be filled in. So don't ever let go! Don't say that you'll die!" It's a message that I personally found very powerful. Vash doesn't preach Love and Peace out of any misguided or naive sentiments, but because he's been in that dark place of violence/despair and he knows there's a way out and wants to share that knowledge with others.
(Of course it doesn't change the fact that he's a MASSIVE HYPOCRITE because he still won't extend forgiveness to himself for July, but that's part of what makes him such an interesting protagonist. Jeredu calling him an "atoner" who feels he's had "too much blood on his hands to ever make up for it" is very appropriate.)

Like I said, all these same themes are in the anime, but they do seem more intense in the manga.