Meryl runs into Wolfwood who wants nothing more to do with the situation and refuses to give concrete answers on Vash's whereabouts. Meryl kicks his shin and goes off to find Vash herself, telling Wolfwood that she's disappointed in him.
Knives begins the process of "fixing" Vash, forcing open Vash's Gate by diving into his memories and stripping away everything from Vash until he recognises and remembers nothing. As they go through different memories with Knives breaking down Vash's mental walls, a red geranium appears with Vash calling out to Rem. The twins are then transported to when they were still living with Rem, and the incident that broke Knives's faith in humanity.
Tropes that appear in this episode:
- As the Good Book Says...:
- Nai came to the conclusion that humanity will never accept them and will be doomed to repeat their wars and mistakes by reading the Bible. He compares Vash directly with Christ, telling him to "don your crown of thorns and prepare to die in your precious sinners' stead" — if Vash won't willingly give up on humankind, Knives will have him suffer as they do until he has no other choice.
- As Vash's Gate opens, Knives proclaims the world will be cleansed by flood and brimstone, the battle of "Har Megiddo" (Hebrew for Armageddon) is begun, and that he will "let mankind's empire turn to salt", all from the Book of Revelation.
- Conrad refers to the Core in the higher plane as "the beginning and the end", also from Revelation.
- Blood from the Mouth: As the process of Knives forcing open Vash's Gate and entering the higher plane nears its completion, Conrad suddenly begins to cough blood. He explains that he's been alive a long time, and Knives won't allow him to die until his goals are accomplished.
- Botanical Abomination: As Vash's Gate is forced open, he produces roots that spread out over July, crushing everything and everyone in their path. They even starts to form the figure of Rem over the city, with strange and impossible purple flowers sprouting from it.
- Dark Secret: Rem knew about the mutilation of the Independent Tesla and hid it from the twins before they stumbled upon her remains. This implies Rem teaching Nai to appear more human when their ship's crew came out of cryosleep was to make him look less like a potential specimen.
- Disappointed in You: Meryl tells this to Wolfwood as she walks off to look for Vash herself when he refuses to have anything else to do with him.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Knives isolating Vash, stabbing him with his blades and breaking him down mentally to control his powers himself is one thing. Then there's Vash "blooming" flowers and his Gate opening in a rather yonic shape that Knives enters to reach the equally suspiciously-shaped "core", which he also penetrates with his blades. All of these scenes together make Knives's actions towards Vash come off as intimate or sexual assault, not just of Vash but of all the dependant Plants in the tank with them. Many of his lines — "calm down," "I'm going deeper now," "I won't let you get away," and referring to Vash as a pet on a leash — add even more disturbing overtones to an already disturbing sequence.
- There's also a dash of eugenics/medical rape in forcibly impregnating the Plants because Knives believes they must be like him to be perfect, and that in their "imperfect" state they have no souls.
- Dramatic Irony: Knives taunts Vash within the mental prison that he will lose Meryl and Roberto's favor if they learn about his involvement in the Big Fall. The twins have no way of knowing Zazie spilled those beans two episodes ago, and that was not the conclusion either of them came to.
- Gaslighting: Knives's abuse of his brother reaches a horrible apex — Knives seizes control of Vash's Gate and traps him in Knives's own memories, finally breaking him down by convincing Vash he's the one to blame for the Fall, because everything Knives did he claims to have done to protect his brother.
- Empty Shell: Once Knives completes his goal with Vash, Vash turns grey and loses all color and emotion, looking up at Knives like a puppet and drifting downward, unmoving, when Knives removes the blades keeping him upright.
- Fate Worse than Death: Tesla wasn't even given the dignity of death. Her body remains cryogenically suspended in a vat, with her status going from FROZEN to ALIVE when the twins raise it from the floor.
- Flower Motif: Red geraniums always connect back to Rem, and they guide Vash throughout his memories. Then there's the purple geraniums with teal centres that Vash grows on the vines coming out of his Gate.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Knives stabs Vash with his tentacle blades in order to make a connection with him, and is noticeably more gentle than he usually is with his other victims. Not that it looks any less painful or terrifying for Vash, who desperately tries to fight them off, cries out as they pierce his body, then goes limp.
- It's All My Fault: After relentlessly hammering in the times Vash has failed humans and all the reasons they'll never be able to co-exist, Knives feeds Vash one final conclusion: that all of the suffering of the people on No Man's Land is Vash's fault, because Knives did all that he's done to protect his brother. The compounding guilt breaks Vash as he screams and collapses to his knees.
- Little Girls Kick Shins: After hearing how Wolfwood doesn't care about leaving Vash in Knives's hands, Meryl gives him a swift and well-deserved kick in the shin.
- Love Makes You Evil: Everything from the Big Fall, to the other murders he's committed, to forcibly taking away Vash's autonomy and destroying his mind, Knives claims to have done for Vash's sake, believing this is how he can truly protect his brother from the humans who will exploit him.
- Mind Rape: Knives is essentially forcing Vash through the process, breaking him down emotionally and mentally, taking away any autonomy Vash has. By the end, Vash becomes nothing but an empty husk that Knives can bend to his will, which delights Knives.After all this time, I finally have him back!
- Mythology Gag: The scene of Knives throwing his head back, spreading his arms, and gleefully telling Vash to unleash his power and eradicate humankind are all taken directly from the manga — the pose from his revelling in the sight of the Fall, and his dialogue from the Fifth Moon incident.
- Off with His Head!: Knives slices off the head of memory Rem as Vash holds her and begs her not to go.
- People Jars: Poor Tesla is contained in several jars when the twins find her. She's also still alive.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Vash desperately clings onto his final memory of Rem, begging her not to leave him. Knives coldly says he'll save Vash from the delusional fantasy of love she built (or, in dub, that the person he needs most is his brother).
- Robbing the Dead: Wolfwood nicks the packet of cigarettes Meryl leaves on Roberto's body after he notices his had run out.
- The Reveal: There was an Independent Plant born before the twins, a girl named Tesla. The humans who discovered her left her in pieces (though details of how and why have not been revealed). Rem was unable to prevent what happened and adopted the twins in an effort to atone and protect them from sharing their older sister's fate. Discovering Tesla's mutilated body, cryogenically preserved and yet still alive, traumatised the twins and destroyed Nai's faith in humanity. Rem swore to the twins that she would never allow it to happen again. Vash believed her. Nai did not.
- The Scream:
- After seeing Tesla's body parts and eye staring back at them in the tanks, Vash and Nai let out a horrified scream, alerting Rem who runs over to try and comfort her boys.
- Vash breaks down screaming when Knives convinces him that everything, the Big Fall and all suffering on the planet since, was his fault.
- Significant Birth Date: After achieving his "perfect" Vash, Knives gleefully tells his brother "Happy Birthday." It's confirmed to be the twins' actual birthday, July 21st.
- Spotting the Thread: Vash realizes he's in a dream when he sees his prosthetic arm has been replaced with a flesh one — Knives's ideal Vash never lost his arm to his Gate, and certainly never needed or trusted humans to build him a prosthesis.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: It is not, of course, Vash's "fault" that Knives did anything he did, even if Knives claims he did it for Vash, but Knives forces the responsibility onto Vash anyway as a way to undermine his brother's trust in his own judgement and keep him in the place he should be: safe, under Knives's control.
- Womb Horror: The other Plants in the water with Vash and Knives start to bloom and reveal their stomachs are protruding, making them look heavily pregnant. They look just as horrified as Meryl does.
