Millions Knives (Stampede)

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This article is about the Trigun Stampede iteration of the character. For other uses of "Millions Knives", see Millions Knives (disambiguation).

Millions Knives

Japanese name	ミリオンズ・ナイブズ
Alternate spelling
Age
Born
Alias
Race	Plant (independent)
Height
Hair Color	Pale blonde
Eye Color	Pale blue
Gender	Male
Occupation
Affiliation
First appearance	NOMAN'S LAND
Last appearance	TBD
First manga appearance
Last manga appearance
First anime appearance
Last anime appearance
First Stampede appearance
Last Stampede appearance
Japanese voice actor	Junya Ikeda Yumiri Hanamori ^young
English voice actor	Austin Tindle ^[1]

Millions Knives (formerly Kni or Nai) is the main antagonist from Trigun Stampede.

Biography

Knives is Vash's twin brother, born alongside him aboard the SEEDs Ship Five as it journeyed to find a new home for humanity and the Plants, living generators of power, matter and gravity that humans depend on to survive. Both twins are rare examples of Independent Plants, who look and behave human, but possess the ability to survive outside the specialised environments required by their dependent brethren. As infants, the boys were discovered and adopted by Navigational Officer Rem Saverem. She named one twin Vash and the other Kni. The twins matured quickly, growing to appear age seven or eight when they celebrated their first birthday. By that stage, Kni had begun to demonstrate the generative abilities of a Plant and came to distance himself from human traits like eating for nourishment, while Vash remained apparently powerless, but eagerly embraced humanity.

Though demonstrably inhuman and highly intelligent, Kni seemed in other respects a normal child, albeit serious and somewhat emotionally withdrawn. He enjoyed playing classical piano, loved cowboy movies, and colluded with Vash to play pranks. He adored his brother, who was always at his side, and cared for Rem, but resented her efforts to have him appear human by concealing his powers and eating food he didn't need (which he viewed as wasteful). In time this resentment turned to suspicion, particularly as Vash seemed to grow more humanlike under Rem's encouragement, bringing him closer to Rem but alienating Kni as he needled Vash for being useless as a Plant. Kni began to investigate areas of the ship Rem had forbidden them entering, pulling Vash along, and the twins stumbled across a classified databank of the SEEDs fleet's history. Vash gleefully entered the password himself when Kni was stymied, happy to prove he wasn't just a "waste", but both were horrified by the databank's contents.

Along with files on both twins there was a third - another Independent Plant born fifty years before, a girl named Tesla. She was discovered by the crew and treated like a research specimen, subjected her to brutal and invasive examination until her body fell apart. Worse yet, though vivisected and dismembered she was kept alive in suspended animation, as the twins discovered when the tanks containing her remains were unlocked and revealed.

Rem tried to soothe their fears, explaining that she had adopted them and kept them hidden to ensure they wouldn't meet Tesla's fate, hoping that they would become the means by which Plants and humans could communicate and together ensure nothing like that ever happened again. Kni, however, no longer trusted her ability to keep them safe, drawing the conclusion that humanity was incapable of changing for the better, whatever their intentions. When the twins discussed between themselves whether they would be accepted by humans, Vash told Kni he had faith that they would. It was then that Kni believed his course was set: Vash was naïve, weak and needed his protection from humanity's exploitation - which would, incidentally, leave Vash with no one to love but his brother. Kni secretly accessed the SEEDs fleet's navigation with the password Vash had shown him and forced every ship in the fleet to crash on the desert planet that would be named No Man's Land, sparing only the Plant carriers, believing this would wipe out all threats. Rem took the twins to an escape pod, but despite Kni's solemn request she escape with them, she chose to stay aboard the ships to save whoever she could. Kni's resentment of her turned in that moment to stark, burning hatred. After planetfall, Vash found Kni laughing gleefully over the wreckage of the fleet and confronted Kni over the thousands or millions of murders he'd committed, but Kni countered by calling Vash his accomplice. Guilt-stricken and fearful, Vash fled from his brother and vanished into the alien desert.

Kni located a surviving SEEDS crew member, one Dr. William Conrad, and under threat of death recruited him to research Plants and acquire the resources necessary to locate, capture and subdue Vash. Renaming himself Millions Knives to represent his belief that he was a righteous and noble weapon of his species, Knives founded the cult called the Eye of Michael in the third city of July, providing himself with loyal troops and lavish headquarters, and appointed Dr. Conrad as his high priest. He also continued to develop his powers as a Plant, refining his abilities from producing rough metal blades from his hands and feet to the capacity to destroy whole settlements and kill dozens of people in the blink of an eye.

Since that day, Knives has been plotting to complete the extermination of humanity and bring Vash back to his side - a desire only intensified when Vash demonstrated he did indeed have abilities as a Plant, both to produce and, uniquely, to consume, drawing matter to the plane that Plants draw matter from. Every time Knives and Vash meet, they find themselves fighting to determine which of their philosophies is the right one. As of the first episode, Knives has been stealing Plants from human settlements and slaughtering their inhabitants, dooming survivors to death by starvation or dehydration. He exploits his resemblance to Vash to frame his brother for these crimes, marking him as a dangerous criminal in the hopes that Vash will suffer enough to realise humanity will never accept him, driving him back to Knives as his only refuge.

The primary plot of Trigun Stampede is driven by Knives's efforts both to convince, then force Vash to assist in his plans, and by his desire to claim and control Vash's power so he can use it to make No Man's Land a paradise, with the Plants its sole and supreme rulers.

Character

Knives presents a face of calm, cold superiority, and has a flair for grandiose acts of wide-scale destruction. He relishes violence and views Vash's pacifism as an illness that must be cured by whatever means necessary. In his mind, Vash is simply a victim of his own weakness and the manipulations of Rem and the other humans he's befriended. Everything he's done, Knives claims, he has done to protect Vash from them, with the freedom of the dependent Plants from humanity's chains as a secondary but no less pressing priority. As a superior lifeform and the perfect Independent Plant, it's up to him to destroy the disgusting parasites infesting the universe and to ensure all inferior examples of his species come to reflect the perfection he embodies.

However, his icy pragmatism and lofty attitude conceal deep mental instability, as well childish unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions or admit to mistakes. Knives is truthfully driven by fear, not only of what humanity could do to him or to Vash, but that Vash will abandon him in favor of humans, leaving Knives alone. He cannot, or will not, understand alternative viewpoints to his own and develops a habit of trying to isolate Vash by driving off or killing his other loved ones, emotionally abusing Vash to undermine his self-worth, and of lashing out with extreme physical violence when those manipulations fail. Though his anger with humanity's reckless abuse of the beings they need to survive is justified, he sees no problem adopting the same tactics himself with the Plants and Vash under his control.

At heart, Knives is a frightened, angry and deeply hurt child, as well a perfectionist unable to cope when reality deviates from what he expects.