Trigun Maximum Volume 7: Happy Days

Out of the Trigun manga series, this is my favorite book closely followed by #12. In #7 we get to know the brotherhood between Knives and Vash, and the mysterious Rem. It's my favorite because it casts a human side on Knives (via Tetra) and allows us to join Vash in sympathizes and strangely still loving humanity-hating Knives. He's not so far off his rocker as we might have thought in his hatred.

The cover image of this volume is of Vash, Knives, and Rem, the light softened and the image carrying the sentimental feeling of an old memory. These "happy days" are the subject of the entire first half of the manga, a pleasant memory of the first year of Vashs life, progressing steadily into a nightmare as he and Knives uncover the deepest sins of the crew and are torn apart by them. Flashing toward the present, Vash and Knives finally meet in what Vash fully expects to be their final confrontation. But can he beat the monstrous power that Knives has amassed? Less tightly paced than some other volumes of the series, Happy Days also lacks a little of the intensity seen in other action packed installments like Bottom of the Dark and Break Out. It holds up with a sense of dread and a horrible realization of the lengths that humans will go to, something Nightow's lovely inking plays off well. The volumne also does a good job of illistrating the difference in the philosphy of the brothers. Faced with the same crisis of faith, more that a hundred years later, standing before a grossly powered up Knives, Vash can still look him in the eye and declare that all they need to do is walk away for a while and come back when humanity is ready to accept them.