#i hope by now you know im on a mission to dissect every single frame of tristamp

[fifthpilot]

Thought a lot about why they showed Vash playing the piano in his final scene. And I've realized just how much we've been given by the anime that tells us that this is how we know he's definitely thinking about Knives.

Vash looks out of it, he's not responding to Lina either, but there are other ways to show him unresponsive or nonreactive, he could have been literally doing anything else, he could have been shown listening to the radio broadcast about lost July; and that would have implied he was thinking about the people he killed. He could have been shown not eating, or staring off at a distance, and that would have implied that he's broken and depressed. But the piano's implications are so important here.

Because the only other person we've seen play a piano was Nai. it's an object so heavily associated with him, but that's not all. We see Nai play the piano in his first appearance, we see him play the piano in ep9 when he's missing Vash, and he plays the piano before his first confrontation with Vash in Jenora rock in ep3, and before his final confrontation with Vash in ep10 (videos linked here since tumblr only let's you add 1 video per post)

The piano is one of Nai's defining symbols, similar to how geraniums are Rem's. But it's more than that, it connects the twins, Because everytime Nai is playing the piano Vash is brought up too, either in the same physical space as the piano and Nai, or in Nai's mind.

Nai, pianos and Vash are always brought up in union. Which makes the implications of the final scene so loud and obvious, the story has been training us (like pavlov's dog) to associate the piano with the twins, not just Nai.

Everything we see has been carefully measured and decided. Which is why all that has led up to Vash's final scene reinforces the implication that Vash is thinking about Nai. Weakly reaching out to him, to their shared connection.

And it speaks volumes about how Vash is feeling, what he's thinking, who he's missing. Especially when it could have gone a hundred other ways and still worked, but only this way tells us that Vash is thinking about Knives.