Author: Donald Cleary (donald_cleary@csumb.edu)

This is a piece of a story from an anime series called Trigun. Mankind has thrown itself out into space because it destroyed Earth. Hundreds of colony ships each hold thousands of humans in deep freeze. On the lead ship exist two boys that spend much of their time in an artificial park. This park has lots of grass and a few trees along with an insect community.

One day the boys watch as a butterfly gets caught in a spiders web. They both realize that the spider wants to eat the butterfly. One of the boys knows his brother is soft-hearted and wants to save the butterfly. He reaches down and crushes the spider in his hand. His brother turns and hits him. The boy says he killed the spider because he knew his brother wanted to save the butterfly from the it. The brother says he wanted to save both of them.

At this point it seems the two can be labeled. The one that killed the spider is a realist. He knows that something has to die so that others can live. The one that wanted to save the butterfly and the spider is an idealist. He doesn’t want anything to die.

As the story progresses and the colony ships draw near to a habitable planet, the realist brother sabotages all the ships and makes them crash into the planet. He doesn’t want any humans to survive because he knows they will only wreck this planet just like they did the last one. He believes humans are a parasitic virus. No one knows just yet that he’s the one that has sentenced hundreds of thousands to death. One crew member puts the two brothers in an escape pod and goes to the bridge of the ship to try and reverse the damage that has been done. As the brothers are entering the atmosphere of the planet, they see that some of the ships stabilize their reentry and will survive an impact into the planet. The realist brother tells his idealist brother what he did and vows to destroy the humans when he has the chance and picks his own direction to travel when they land. The idealist brother was told by the crew member to take care of his brother and he holds himself to it.

The human survivors make the planet their home. Years pass and the realist brother has gathered many assassins around him. He sends them out on random killings to flush out his idealist brother. He tries to force his idealist brother to accept the fact that humans are selfish. If the idealist continues to try and save everyone then the realist must use his assassins to kill the idealist. In the interim years the idealist has learned to fend for himself on the graciousness of the many human settlements. He can defend himself against all the people that want to kill him. The idealist butterfly doesn’t want to kill the spiders that his realist brother has sent against him. The idealist brother must take care of his realist brother. The idealist finally sees the only way to take care of the realist.

The idealist realizes that he is so evenly matched with his brother that he must take any advantage that crops up. He must wound his realist brother so badly that there can be no possible retaliation. Only at that point can the idealist bind the wounds he has made upon the realist and carry him upon his shoulder until one or both of them die. The idealist has to be reminded of what he stands against so that he never falls into that reality.