INDEPENDENT & DEPENDENT PLANTS & THEIR POWERS in trimax
This is a fun little document I slapped together for artists and fanfic writers who wanted a better understanding of Plant powers and how to depict them. Nothing is cited… I am so sorry… but I will make references to what scenes these revelations take place in. My interpretations of more confusing situations will be noted, but otherwise I’m writing it exactly as it’s seen in context. I’ll update this as I read more. BIG FAT SPOILER WARNING OKAY!!!
Last updated: March 28 2023
Forced Empathy
Vash emanates his feelings of foreboding and upset, so strong that it is felt by Wolfwood and he is physically affected by it. Leonof is also deeply affected and startled, and in response he initiates their battle. Vash cries blood during this scene.
Wolfwood gets the same feeling again when attempting to assassinate Knives, and compares it to that previous instance with Vash.
Knives radiates a terrible feeling toward the Plant Engineer in particular, which stops them from continuing their approach. Elendira and Conrad are also present and are not affected, but Elendira can handle it in later chapters so it is not out of the question that Conrad can as well.
Knives emanates a feeling of oppression when Wolfwood delivers Vash to him. Wolfwood describes his aura as feeling bottomless. When Knives wakes up to meet Vash, Wolfwood nearly hits the floor from feeling like he has to faint because the feeling has become much more intense.
Energy within the Gate
The "Seed" or Gate is located in the womb for Dependent Plants, and between the radius and ulna in Independents.
The Gate exudes a tremendous 'flow of energy' able to be sensed by the worms.
Powers can be forced into activation by another plant, and they can share energy by resonating. Resonance is both a literary (to share a message and to be affected) and physical term (a phenomenon in which an external force or a vibrating system forces another system around it to vibrate with greater amplitude at a specified frequency of operation).
Vash is able to remain relatively in control of what's happening with his body until Knives touches his face with his hand and resonates. See above.
Independent Plants can infuse their powers into objects at the cost of their health (Vash makes bullets to nullify Knives's power). Every time Vash shoots a bullet, his Gate opens and his hair becomes darker.
Vash begins to bleed from his facial orifices and pores as his Gate is repeatedly opened in succession and his hair rapidly becomes darker.
Angelic Form & Feathers
Contact with the feathers will transfer present thoughts, memories, visions, and feelings.
Vash is able to know and respond to Wolfwood’s thoughts while sprouting feathers.
When he perceives himself to be in literal physical peril, Vash's defenses activate autonomously and discharge electricity. They react to stimuli with a mind of their own. Legato must use his power to keep Vash under control because he is not in control of himself. This happens first with Hoppered, again while dueling the bounty hunter Jason, and then again with Legato. Vash tells Legato to stay away from him because his defenses are automatic and he cannot do anything about it. He has to beg his own angelic tendrils to not shoot a bullet back at Legato and to not attack him.
Once powered up enough with the Angel Arm (or presumably any power that opens up and charges the Gate), an Independent is invulnerable to physical damage.
Not sure if this is just mental/symbolic or literal but the angels/angelic features turning grotesque is related to emotional distress.
Knives is able to send hair-thin feelers into the stratosphere. All he needs to do to communicate with another Plant is to touch them.
The black outfit that Vash uses in his fight against Legato appears to be an involuntary full-body shield or charged Gate. His shoulders are emitting white flames and Legato describes touching his feathers as scorching. He doesn’t move around a lot when in this form at first and instead is very concerned with what his body is doing.
Knives describes opening the Gate as hot in temperature.
Interconnectedness & Extrasensory Perception
Knives is able to sense a dying Dependent Plant and goes to it.
Dependent Plants have their own will and ability to choose.
Vash knows when Knives has begun to power up his Angel Arm, awoken from a dead sleep with the image of his face in his head. He is aware of the direction that Knives is situated in.
Vash can sense his brother's emotional distress from half a world away, as well as the direction that his cry came from.
Vash has a vision of Knives murdering Conrad at the very spot that he died. Vash and Knives both have a vision of Tessla as children in the same vein
Fused plants can share memories and dreams.
Vash can feel Knives's emotional reaction to having been startled by a Dependent's memory.
Vash was able to feel Knives’s thoughts/feelings when he touched him with a tendril. He understood what was happening to him mentally - his consciousness struggling to stay dominant amongst the fused Dependents.
Vash is able to feel Wolfwood's body dying from touching him, despite him being lively and alert in battle.
Black Holes & White Holes
Knives demonstrates the ability to remove matter in a controlled way by cleanly destroying only half of a wine glass.
Luida tells a story of Knives erasing 40 people without a trace.
With his Angel Arm, Vash was able to remove a perfectly circular portion of the Ark as well as phase through (or remove?) his jail bars. The matter has completely disappeared.
Zazie says that Knives is an autonomous being that creates matter.
One of the 'Gates' consumes poison that was injected into Knives and it appears to transform into something else: a blast of energy.
Vash explains: There are two types of 'Plant Power': one that draws energy in, and another that expels it. This is not two types of Plants, but two powers that a Plant has. When the two powers meet they cancel each other out. This is how Vash's modified bullets nullify Knives's power. He continues: No matter how large a Gate Knivess opens, it will always start from the tiniest of cracks. Meaning that it needs a moment to power up.
Vash also threatens Knives that his custom bullets made with his power will suck Knives into a Black Hole.
Bodily Reaction to Energy
After Knives fuses with the Dependent Plant, he uses his powers to take out all of Noman's satellites. Vash's body reacts to Knives using his newfound stronger powers by sprouting feathers. The same happens when Vash is delivered to Knives. The feathers spread over his face and break his glasses.
Fusing
Once absorbed, Knives can use Domina’s body to speak for himself. Presumably in her voice, as well.
When trying to fuse with another Independent, the one with the more powerful Gate will prevail.
Dependent Plants have free will and can choose not to fuse with an Independent, and can break off the connection at any time.
Interactions with Machinery
Domina is hooked up to a life support system via her mouth.
Independent Plants still are an engineered, human created, technological, psychic being and Chronica is able to enter Knives's consciousness through Domina's body from the safety of a computer.
A central reactor of a Plant ship is supporting the bustling Nouve city. Amorphous blobs can be seen running through clear piping until they have plopped into a vat, where humans are fishing it out and placing it into carts. The operators are wearing medical masks, heavy aprons, boots, and gloves. Not very good radioactive PPE imo.
Plants are encapsulated in a sphere within the bulb, and the sphere is connected to many wires and support systems. Within the sphere, the Plant is immersed in a vicious gel.
“The Last Run" is when engineers pull all the energy they can out of a Plant, causing it to die. When the plant is in the process of dying, it will lose control of itself and one last enormous surge of energy is discharged. The Last Run is not what happens when a Plant dies, it is the name of a deliberate procedure.
Humans can talk to Dependent Plants with limitations, apparently through electrical signals. The signal can be stronger when a cable is attached directly to a Dependent. Vash connects to the merged entity by pressing the other end of the cable to his neck, sending harsh and tiring electrical impulses through his body.
Physical Appearances
Not all Independents are blonde and blue eyed but it seems that most are, other than Domina.
Having used up the last bit of his power, Vash's eyebrows have turned black. It's unclear if Knives's eyebrows were also black after he created the apple tree, but they appear to be.
Based on Trigun vol2 and Trigun Maximum vol5 covers, electrical discharge is present when taking a Plant-like form. Vash's skin has turned light blue with dark peeling and cracking, white light and electricity able to be seen underneath. In other renditions, Trigun Maximum vol8 shows Vash with the same peeling and cracking, but his skin has turned gray-white. On Trigun Maximum Omnibus 5, Knives appears with his skin cracking into a greenish blue color.
Sorry to disappoint everybody but they have human genitalia and give birth vaginally. They even have a clitoris good for them. No alien junk in canon. Chronica has nipples. Good for her
From the appearance of Tessla’s innards, Independents are indistinguishable from humans other than the Gate, which is a physical object.
Based on context clues and other than Knives's resurrection (which was artificial technically), there doesn't seem to be any sign that a plant is pregnant before an infant Independent is born.
The first time Knives asks a Dependent Plant to merge with him, it opens its mouth to reveal pincers and tentacles? Uh?
When Dependent Plants resonate, they glow and eject electrical discharge.
When disconnected from the bulb, free floating, yet merged with Knives, the Dependent Plants appear to have multiple human/cherubic body structures acting as a thorax and other amorphous parts as an abdomen. Dependent Plants are fundamentally more alien. When disconnected from the bulb and not merged with Knives, Dependent Plants cannot hold themselves up and are collapsed into a mush of body slime. The parts that are connected to the life support system can be drawn out of their body and appear both trunk and tentacle-like. Ew!
At the end of the story, the humans have created a large Plant Dome in Octovern to contain the unmerged Plants body slop, presumably because they are too radioactive outside of their bulbs.
Aging and Mental Development
Soon i’m tired
