Trigun Theme/Motif

The Main theme of Trigun is mercy. Vash went one-hundred-twenty years without killing
anyone on a alien/apocalyptic world, even letting himself get shot or stabbed just to let his
opponent survive. He even spared his psychopathic genocidal brother,(Who murdered all his
friends, and tried to kill him) Million Knives, and kept him in captivity for the rest of their lives,
just because he doesn’t believe in killing others. He only killed one person in that
one-hundred-twenty year span, and that was because the person was simultaneously
mind-controlling and threatening to kill his friends at the same time.

Motif 1: Isolation; Because of the massive bounty on his head, Vash must always keep
moving, if he doesn’t, the town he is in gets destroyed by either bounty hunters, or himself.
Because of this, he can never stay around anyone for long periods of time without them dying.
Plus, since he disapproves of killing, his enemies are always coming back to kill him again, and
target his friends as well, causing him to be a lone wanderer.

Motif 2: Loneliness; Because his whole race is dead, save himself, a few that are
trapped in plants(who he can never see) and his nutcase brother, Vash has no one to be with,
or relate to. He has actually watched friends of his grow old and die because of his immortality,
and because this upsets him, he has to distance himself from others.

Motif 3: Kindness; Because of how kind and trusting he is, Vash is easily manipulated by
any of the “real” villains, because all they have to is pretend to be a kid, so he won’t fight them,
or use his tendency to save others before himself, to make him jump in the way of attacks he
could avoid.

He stays in isolation so that others won’t get hurt. He keeps himself away from humans
because they die quicker than he does, and doesn’t want them to die old while he stays young.
And he is kind to everyone, even the people trying to kill him. These all sound like a form of
mercy to me ;0)