Fatmanonice
Banned via Warnings
Link to original post: [drupal=4420]Lessons of Mercy, Redemption, and Forgiveness from the Galaxy's Greatest Gunslinger [/drupal]
I’ve been a fan of Japanese animation (AKA anime) since about 1998 and in that time I’ve come across a large number of great series and movies in the genre. One of my favorites is called Trigun. The series was showed in America on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim from 2003 to 2005. This was when I first saw it and, even eight years later, I still think it’s one of the best that I’ve ever seen. I recently watched the whole series again about a month ago and I’ve come to realize that the messages the series presents have a surprising amount of depth to them. The main messages of the series revolve around redemption, mercy, and forgiveness and, when I first watched the series, a lot of them went over my head. Now that I’m older, I’m now better able to see those messages and I wanted to take this time to talk about them.
The series follows the travels of Vash the Stampede, an outlaw who has never stolen a thing in his life and who has never deliberately hurt anyone. He’s a pacifist who has a constant craving for donuts and is about as slick with the ladies as a freshly unwrapped tampon. The problem is that, despite his peaceful nature, he’s constantly thrown into situations where his luck runs out and things go terribly wrong. How did he become an outlaw then? He accidently leveled the largest city on the planet during an argument with his brother. Yes, the event was a complete accident but nobody believes him. This started a long chain of miserably unlucky events for him. Wherever he goes, he’s pursued by bounty hunters so even when he tries to lay low, a wave of destruction follows and innocent people get caught in the crossfire. All these events have resulted in his bounty being worth 60 billion dollars. He has unintentionally hurt nearly every person on the planet and is trying his best to make up for all that has happened.
The people that Vash runs into are generally unforgiving because they live on an unforgiving planet. It’s called Gunsmoke and it strongly resembles the Old American West. Except for a few patches of land, the planet is an ever stretching desert with two suns. Water exists deep in the planet but only a few towns have the resources to extract it. All the others have to buy it from “water tycoons” who sell it like gasoline. Of course, there’s plenty of corruption in this market and, if a town can’t dig its own wells, it’s forced to pay high prices or its people are forced to move elsewhere. To add to the planet’s woes, electricity and overall industry in the towns are controlled by technology that is over 200 years old. The main problem with this is that it is very expensive to upkeep because only a few knowledgeable engineers on the planet know how it even works. This need for money explains why Vash has so many pursuers and why even entire towns have held him at gunpoint. Outlaws, bounty hunters, and common people are interchangeable as they all fight just to stay alive.
Despite his outlaw status, Vash often sticks his neck out to try to help people including those that want him dead. Throughout the series, Vash goes from town to town and finds himself face to face with people who feel that they are on the edge of oblivion. There’s an alcoholic who was once a gunsmith until the guns he made were used in the shooting of his wife and son. There’s a woman who watched as her parents slowly went insane and eventually died after they were forced to live in the rubble of the city that Vash accidently destroyed. There’s an old couple that’s pressured on a daily basis to sell their land by outlaws hired by the local government. There’s a young couple that’s trying to escape a caravan that forces their women into prostitution. There’s an outlaw who knows the mayor of his town once lead a massacre and fights for a personal vendetta. There’s a wandering preacher with a dark past and an even darker secret that he’s been trying to run away from all his adult life. Vash always approaches these people with an unusual air of optimism that’s virtually unheard of in this world. He’s a wanted man but he always puts others before himself despite the fact that nobody truly understands the depth of his suffering.
Vash suffers not only because the events that made him an outlaw but because of his twin brother Knives. The story between the two is a futuristic spin on the story of Cain and Abel. Both Vash and Knives are organic androids that strongly resemble humans and were created to help the people who left Earth to colonize new planets. Only a few people, including their adopted mother Rem, treated them like humans while everyone else feared and hated them. Vash, following the kind nature of Rem, learned to forgive his oppressors while Knives let his hatred for humans grow inside him. In an act of betrayal that continues to haunt Vash, Knives triggered a series of events that led to not only the deaths of a vast majority of the humans about to colonize Gunsmoke but Rem as well. The end result was Vash and Knives being stranded in the desert, depending on each other to survive. Knives openly proclaims that he eventually intends to wipe out the rest of the colonists but Vash, despite being filled with hate and pain from the passing of Rem, can’t bring himself to kill him. They live with each other for many decades until one day they have a heated argument and Vash accidently shoots Knives. Feeling pain for the first time, Knives disowns his brother and Vash runs away ashamed as his brother squirms and cries in pain. Many years later, they meet again and Knives causes Vash to accidently destroy the largest city on Gunsmoke, causing Vash to become the most hated and wanted man on the planet.
Vash once thought that his brother died with the destruction of the city but discovers about half way through the series that he’s alive when he comes across a town empty of people and the name “Knives” written in blood on the town’s fountain. Knives sent a band of professional assassins called the Gung Ho Guns to hunt Vash down, knowing full well that Vash refuses to hurt anyone despite being an expert gunslinger. What resulted deepened Vash’s suffering. Trying to ward them off, innocent people were hurt, more small towns were abandoned, the second largest city on Gunsmoke is heavily damaged and a hole is put in one of the planets’ moons when Vash tries to stop one of the Gung-Ho Guns, a testament to the whole planet every night to how dangerous Vash actually is. This was all according to Knives plan to punish Vash for being “weak” and riddle him with guilt for not joining him on his mission to exterminate humanity. As you watch Trigun you realize that Knives’ cruelty actually isn’t all that extreme. Aside from Vash and the two girls who represent a major insurance company on the planet (with Vash being such a huge liability and all) that follow him throughout the series, a vast majority of the characters encountered have hardened hearts, selfish ambitions, or a lack of compassion that makes the viewer realize that the real villain of the series is more than a vengeful brother or a band of mercenaries.
People can be unforgiving; that goes without saying. In times of desperation and loss, people can become truly bitter and cold, making empathy practically impossible. People even sometimes go out of their way to make others’ problems worse for them to vent their frustrations. Vash knows this all too well. Most of Vash’s life has been spent trying to convince people that he doesn’t deserve the title of the most dangerous man on the planet only to be constantly rejected. Even when he saves entire towns, people are suspicious of him. Even when a town’s children treat him like a big brother, people are fearful of him. Despite this, Vash insists on doing good for the people who openly persecute him.
Many things can be learned from Vash the Stampede and the world of Trigun but there are three key points that I think are particularly important. The first is the importance of mercy, even when presented with people who don’t intend to show it at all. Vash is an impeccable gunslinger but he only disarms, never kills. Even when his life is threaten and he’s ambushed by scores of attackers at once, he makes sure that nobody is killed even if his attackers are infamous outlaws who kill for sport. Despite easily having the skill to easily dispatch of anyone who attacks him, he shows control because he doesn’t believe that he should be judge and jury. These are the same people who have made him miserable and an outsider nearly his whole life so why does he show mercy to the merciless?
One of my favorite scenes in the series is when the wandering preacher I mentioned earlier is having a conversation with one of the insurance girls. He carries around a giant cross covered in a tarp and the insurance girl tries to lift it. She asks him why it’s so heavy and he replies “it’s because it’s full of love and mercy.” His response provides a fantastic analogy for love and mercy. Metaphorically speaking, both are “heavy.” It’s hard to love and easy to hate and it does create a burden on the person who shows compassion instead of apathy. To show love and mercy to even the unlovable and merciless is far from an easy path to take. Vash’s life has been a testament to this but there’s a reason why he continues acting the way that he does.
There are some things in life that are worth taking a beating over. In one of the episodes, one of the insurance girls walks in on Vash while he’s not wearing a shirt and it’s revealed that Vash’s body is covered with scars. Some of his wounds are closed by stitches, others by staples, and some by screws. It’s by a small miracle that he doesn’t figuratively and literally come apart at the seams especially with how much dangerous his life is. The reason why he’s in such a rough shape is because of his dedication to being a pacifist. He’s dedicated to keep his promise to Rem even if it means he dies in the process. Again, doing the right thing can be very hard and even have harsh consequences tied to it.
The final important lesson that can be taken from the world of Trigun is that redemption is possible for anyone. Vash meets a lot of people through his journey to find his brother that have checkered pasts and believe that they’ve screwed up too much to ever redeem themselves. You have alcoholics, train robbers, and even assassins who believe that the only way forward is through self-destructive measures. As Vash encounters them, he teaches them that there’s always a way out, it’s just you have to face a different direction to actually see it. Like I mentioned before, changing yourself and getting out of your bad habits is anything but easy with the one of the hardest things to do is admit your faults and how you were wrong. As Vash shows, some of the best people you can meet in life are those that point out your faults but do so with genuine concern for your future. The road to redemption is literally paved with blood, sweat, and tears but with as many that have been shed to get into the ruts that people sometimes find themselves in, I would say that it’s a fair sacrifice.
It’s funny what all you can learn from a space western about an eccentric gunman who feels faint at even the sight of blood, eh? The series has plenty of action and comedy to satisfy even people who are completely turned off by anime but I hope I have shown that the series is worth looking into aside from its entertainment value. In a genre that’s often loaded with violence, Vash comes off as a bit of a revolutionary for his stances on nonviolence, compromise, and seeing that all life has value to it. In a dried up, dusty world filled with people whose hearts and minds can be described the same way, Vash is something of a wandering oasis, refreshing those he comes across and bringing newfound life to where there previously wasn’t any. He’s quirky to be sure but he believes his world is filled with love and peace and wants others to realize it too. Much like water on the planet, it has to be worked and sacrificed for and these lessons can just as easily be applied to our own lives.
Fatmanonice, July 1st, 2011
“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained.” –Lao Tzu
“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.” –Rene Descartes
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” –Mahatma Gandhi
I’ve been a fan of Japanese animation (AKA anime) since about 1998 and in that time I’ve come across a large number of great series and movies in the genre. One of my favorites is called Trigun. The series was showed in America on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim from 2003 to 2005. This was when I first saw it and, even eight years later, I still think it’s one of the best that I’ve ever seen. I recently watched the whole series again about a month ago and I’ve come to realize that the messages the series presents have a surprising amount of depth to them. The main messages of the series revolve around redemption, mercy, and forgiveness and, when I first watched the series, a lot of them went over my head. Now that I’m older, I’m now better able to see those messages and I wanted to take this time to talk about them.
The series follows the travels of Vash the Stampede, an outlaw who has never stolen a thing in his life and who has never deliberately hurt anyone. He’s a pacifist who has a constant craving for donuts and is about as slick with the ladies as a freshly unwrapped tampon. The problem is that, despite his peaceful nature, he’s constantly thrown into situations where his luck runs out and things go terribly wrong. How did he become an outlaw then? He accidently leveled the largest city on the planet during an argument with his brother. Yes, the event was a complete accident but nobody believes him. This started a long chain of miserably unlucky events for him. Wherever he goes, he’s pursued by bounty hunters so even when he tries to lay low, a wave of destruction follows and innocent people get caught in the crossfire. All these events have resulted in his bounty being worth 60 billion dollars. He has unintentionally hurt nearly every person on the planet and is trying his best to make up for all that has happened.
The people that Vash runs into are generally unforgiving because they live on an unforgiving planet. It’s called Gunsmoke and it strongly resembles the Old American West. Except for a few patches of land, the planet is an ever stretching desert with two suns. Water exists deep in the planet but only a few towns have the resources to extract it. All the others have to buy it from “water tycoons” who sell it like gasoline. Of course, there’s plenty of corruption in this market and, if a town can’t dig its own wells, it’s forced to pay high prices or its people are forced to move elsewhere. To add to the planet’s woes, electricity and overall industry in the towns are controlled by technology that is over 200 years old. The main problem with this is that it is very expensive to upkeep because only a few knowledgeable engineers on the planet know how it even works. This need for money explains why Vash has so many pursuers and why even entire towns have held him at gunpoint. Outlaws, bounty hunters, and common people are interchangeable as they all fight just to stay alive.
Despite his outlaw status, Vash often sticks his neck out to try to help people including those that want him dead. Throughout the series, Vash goes from town to town and finds himself face to face with people who feel that they are on the edge of oblivion. There’s an alcoholic who was once a gunsmith until the guns he made were used in the shooting of his wife and son. There’s a woman who watched as her parents slowly went insane and eventually died after they were forced to live in the rubble of the city that Vash accidently destroyed. There’s an old couple that’s pressured on a daily basis to sell their land by outlaws hired by the local government. There’s a young couple that’s trying to escape a caravan that forces their women into prostitution. There’s an outlaw who knows the mayor of his town once lead a massacre and fights for a personal vendetta. There’s a wandering preacher with a dark past and an even darker secret that he’s been trying to run away from all his adult life. Vash always approaches these people with an unusual air of optimism that’s virtually unheard of in this world. He’s a wanted man but he always puts others before himself despite the fact that nobody truly understands the depth of his suffering.
Vash suffers not only because the events that made him an outlaw but because of his twin brother Knives. The story between the two is a futuristic spin on the story of Cain and Abel. Both Vash and Knives are organic androids that strongly resemble humans and were created to help the people who left Earth to colonize new planets. Only a few people, including their adopted mother Rem, treated them like humans while everyone else feared and hated them. Vash, following the kind nature of Rem, learned to forgive his oppressors while Knives let his hatred for humans grow inside him. In an act of betrayal that continues to haunt Vash, Knives triggered a series of events that led to not only the deaths of a vast majority of the humans about to colonize Gunsmoke but Rem as well. The end result was Vash and Knives being stranded in the desert, depending on each other to survive. Knives openly proclaims that he eventually intends to wipe out the rest of the colonists but Vash, despite being filled with hate and pain from the passing of Rem, can’t bring himself to kill him. They live with each other for many decades until one day they have a heated argument and Vash accidently shoots Knives. Feeling pain for the first time, Knives disowns his brother and Vash runs away ashamed as his brother squirms and cries in pain. Many years later, they meet again and Knives causes Vash to accidently destroy the largest city on Gunsmoke, causing Vash to become the most hated and wanted man on the planet.
Vash once thought that his brother died with the destruction of the city but discovers about half way through the series that he’s alive when he comes across a town empty of people and the name “Knives” written in blood on the town’s fountain. Knives sent a band of professional assassins called the Gung Ho Guns to hunt Vash down, knowing full well that Vash refuses to hurt anyone despite being an expert gunslinger. What resulted deepened Vash’s suffering. Trying to ward them off, innocent people were hurt, more small towns were abandoned, the second largest city on Gunsmoke is heavily damaged and a hole is put in one of the planets’ moons when Vash tries to stop one of the Gung-Ho Guns, a testament to the whole planet every night to how dangerous Vash actually is. This was all according to Knives plan to punish Vash for being “weak” and riddle him with guilt for not joining him on his mission to exterminate humanity. As you watch Trigun you realize that Knives’ cruelty actually isn’t all that extreme. Aside from Vash and the two girls who represent a major insurance company on the planet (with Vash being such a huge liability and all) that follow him throughout the series, a vast majority of the characters encountered have hardened hearts, selfish ambitions, or a lack of compassion that makes the viewer realize that the real villain of the series is more than a vengeful brother or a band of mercenaries.
People can be unforgiving; that goes without saying. In times of desperation and loss, people can become truly bitter and cold, making empathy practically impossible. People even sometimes go out of their way to make others’ problems worse for them to vent their frustrations. Vash knows this all too well. Most of Vash’s life has been spent trying to convince people that he doesn’t deserve the title of the most dangerous man on the planet only to be constantly rejected. Even when he saves entire towns, people are suspicious of him. Even when a town’s children treat him like a big brother, people are fearful of him. Despite this, Vash insists on doing good for the people who openly persecute him.
Many things can be learned from Vash the Stampede and the world of Trigun but there are three key points that I think are particularly important. The first is the importance of mercy, even when presented with people who don’t intend to show it at all. Vash is an impeccable gunslinger but he only disarms, never kills. Even when his life is threaten and he’s ambushed by scores of attackers at once, he makes sure that nobody is killed even if his attackers are infamous outlaws who kill for sport. Despite easily having the skill to easily dispatch of anyone who attacks him, he shows control because he doesn’t believe that he should be judge and jury. These are the same people who have made him miserable and an outsider nearly his whole life so why does he show mercy to the merciless?
One of my favorite scenes in the series is when the wandering preacher I mentioned earlier is having a conversation with one of the insurance girls. He carries around a giant cross covered in a tarp and the insurance girl tries to lift it. She asks him why it’s so heavy and he replies “it’s because it’s full of love and mercy.” His response provides a fantastic analogy for love and mercy. Metaphorically speaking, both are “heavy.” It’s hard to love and easy to hate and it does create a burden on the person who shows compassion instead of apathy. To show love and mercy to even the unlovable and merciless is far from an easy path to take. Vash’s life has been a testament to this but there’s a reason why he continues acting the way that he does.
There are some things in life that are worth taking a beating over. In one of the episodes, one of the insurance girls walks in on Vash while he’s not wearing a shirt and it’s revealed that Vash’s body is covered with scars. Some of his wounds are closed by stitches, others by staples, and some by screws. It’s by a small miracle that he doesn’t figuratively and literally come apart at the seams especially with how much dangerous his life is. The reason why he’s in such a rough shape is because of his dedication to being a pacifist. He’s dedicated to keep his promise to Rem even if it means he dies in the process. Again, doing the right thing can be very hard and even have harsh consequences tied to it.
The final important lesson that can be taken from the world of Trigun is that redemption is possible for anyone. Vash meets a lot of people through his journey to find his brother that have checkered pasts and believe that they’ve screwed up too much to ever redeem themselves. You have alcoholics, train robbers, and even assassins who believe that the only way forward is through self-destructive measures. As Vash encounters them, he teaches them that there’s always a way out, it’s just you have to face a different direction to actually see it. Like I mentioned before, changing yourself and getting out of your bad habits is anything but easy with the one of the hardest things to do is admit your faults and how you were wrong. As Vash shows, some of the best people you can meet in life are those that point out your faults but do so with genuine concern for your future. The road to redemption is literally paved with blood, sweat, and tears but with as many that have been shed to get into the ruts that people sometimes find themselves in, I would say that it’s a fair sacrifice.
It’s funny what all you can learn from a space western about an eccentric gunman who feels faint at even the sight of blood, eh? The series has plenty of action and comedy to satisfy even people who are completely turned off by anime but I hope I have shown that the series is worth looking into aside from its entertainment value. In a genre that’s often loaded with violence, Vash comes off as a bit of a revolutionary for his stances on nonviolence, compromise, and seeing that all life has value to it. In a dried up, dusty world filled with people whose hearts and minds can be described the same way, Vash is something of a wandering oasis, refreshing those he comes across and bringing newfound life to where there previously wasn’t any. He’s quirky to be sure but he believes his world is filled with love and peace and wants others to realize it too. Much like water on the planet, it has to be worked and sacrificed for and these lessons can just as easily be applied to our own lives.
Fatmanonice, July 1st, 2011
“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained.” –Lao Tzu
“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.” –Rene Descartes
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” –Mahatma Gandhi
Morality is an abstract idea and with it people "abstract" their own ideas from the basic concept of it. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." Sometimes it's scary how roundabout philosophy can be and how, if you go deep enough into it, you come to conclusions you never wished you had reached.
