Trigun (Toraigan) – The Wolfwood Arc, Episodes 9-11

Trigun (Toraigan) (1998)

Time for the third Trigun post – the Wolfwood Arc. (These middle posts are probably going to be shorter than the first and last in the series, I reckon.)

Here, two things seem to be the main focus: introducing Wolfwood and having him slide neatly into the gang, while having Nicholas and the audience continue to wonder about who or what Vash truly is.

At least in the case of Wolfwood, he either knows exactly what Vash truly is or strongly suspects… due to ‘reasons’, reasons which I certainly won’t mention at this point due to spoilers. And while the team is still wandering across the desolate world of Gunsmoke, having Wolfwood join narrows the focus a bit.

This is my second favourite arc in the series too, in part due to something I mentioned in an OWLS post a while back (spoilers in that link), which is the huge impact Wolfwood has on old Needle Noggin’.

Over the course of Trigun Vash often struggles with Wolfwood’s approach to justice but we also see how they respect each other, despite differing methods. For the most part, they have common goals, which tends to ensure they work together well, and so there’s a fun buddy-cop thing that they have going and which kicks off in this arc with episode nine, ‘Murder Machine’.

To widen my scope for a tic, during the course of the series, Nicholas spends a fair amount of time sort of urging Vash toward violence. And of course, Vash always resists this and it takes a few big events to finally drive him to break his own moral code. Equally, I think Wolfwood tries to absolve Vash of some of the guilt he obviously feels at not being able to save everyone he meets, which is something invaluable.

But yeah, that aspect to their relationship hasn’t really kicked off at this early stage – it’s still fun with rivalry and cautious friendship 😀

All right, some more dot points – again, just various stuff I noticed across the episodes:

Linked to my point above, there’s a Wolfwood quote that always stands out, when he says that Vash is “hurtling like crazy and grinning to hide it”
The ‘portable confessional’ is a nice moment of levity
‘Quick Draw’ is one of my fav single episodes to chuck on sometimes when I just want to watch one ep
I think there are a few more hints about ‘Plants’ around here, which I recall really latching onto when I first watched Trigun