Project Seeds

Project Seeds was the name of the project in the manga/anime Trigun that sent the human race into space looking for a new home.

Detailed description

Purpose for the project

According to the anime and manga, when the Earth ran out of natural resources and could no longer support human life, the decision was made to send a mass of humanity into space to search for a new planet. Hundreds of massive ships were constructed. Most held humans in cold sleep chambers, while the rest of the ships carried the technology they would need on the new planet. The mission was called Project Seeds, since the human race was effectively sending seeds into space to ensure its survival.

Project Seeds also had a nobler goal. Realizing what they had done to Earth, the human race decided to not only start over on a different world but to treat the world right this time. The leaders of the project wanted to create this new world into an Eden, a place where "people can live like people, with no wars or fighting." To accomplish this goal, the Seeds fleet was laden down with highly advanced technology that could terraform any world into a lush paradise, as well as provide humans with all the tools needed to survive on their new planet. The main instruments of change would by the arcane and hyper-advanced "plants," which could provide power as well as project a protective force field over an area to keep out unfavorable natural elements, such as sand. Plants are not described in detail in the anime; in fact, much of the information about them comes from cryptic dialogue, vague hints, and flashbacks. The manga goes into more detail, but essentially the "plants" are giant, upside down light bulbs containing genetically-engineered, near-immortal, ethereal humanoid beings which produce the power needed for the plant's functions.

hip description

The Seeds ships were organic in appearance, at least when viewed from a great distance. They were of varying sizes but all were tremendously large, especially the command ship which housed the crew charged with searching for suitable planets. The estimate can be made that the ships ranged from 0.5 km to 2 km long when intact; ships seen outside of Episode 17 of the anime (described below) are always in varying states of ruin and partial destruction so any estimation is not to be taken as fact. Most examples that can be seen in the anime and manga indicate that they were not not artfully designed; they were lumpy in parts and often had strange, mushroom-like protrusions near the rear. This is not to imply that the ships were built with no single design in mind. Though they look strange, the ships that are visible are often grouped with ships that look identical. This indicates that there were different classes of ship, possibly depending on what they were built to carry, be it supplies, technology, or sleeping humans. The ships did not appear smooth from afar; either the designers were only concerned with functionality or the situation on Earth was so dire that there was no time to beautify the design of the ships. The strange protrusions could be guidance mechanisms or housing for the "plants" that power the ship engines. There is evidence for this; as the ships descend to the planet surface thrust jets can be seen coming from the protrusions to slow the ships as they enter atmosphere.

One of the Project Seeds fleet ships.

The End of Project Seeds

The arrival of the fleet at the desert planet Trigun is set on, and the subsequent end of Project Seeds, is described in episode 17 of the anime, Rem Saverem. About a year before the fleet reached the planet, the crew awoke from their latest bout of cold sleep (apparently they had found several planets already, all unsuitable for human habitation) to find two apparently human babies on the ship. It is never fully explained where they came from, but the manga gives hints that they were found near, if not in, one of the shipboard "plants." Rem Saverem, one of the crew, refused to let the crew kill the unexplained babies and raised them as bet she could, naming them Vash and Knives.

It soon became apparent that these children were not fully human. In the year the crew was awake before the fleet came to the planet, the two twin brothers grew to the apparent age of ten, though they looked identical to normal humans. They were also highly intelligent, able to learn tasks incredibly fast and later perform them quickly and correctly without fail. What caused the end of Projects Seeds, however, was the fact that these children were just as impressionable and naive as human children at that age. Rem Saverem tried her best to raise them with morals, a sense of conscience and justice, and to imbue them with pacifism (Rem was a staunch pacifist), but the situation was complicated by the fact that one of the five-person command crew, Steve, was distrustful and afraid of the twins because of their apparent inhumanity (their accelerated growth and superhuman intelligence). He acted upon these feeling by being secretly abusive of Vash and Knives and calling them monsters, though this behavior did not apparently start until the fleet first came within range of the planet. This affected the pair in different ways. Vash had taken Rem's teaching more deeply to heart than Knives, allowing him to keep his faith in the human race.

Knives, however, took Steve's behavior for granted, and began to believe that all humans were innately abusive and arrogant. Coupled with his knowledge of humanity's poor treatment in the past of Earth, and his knowledge that he was not human, this led knives to believe that he and his brother were of a race superior to humans, and that humans should be exterminated so they could not pollute and destroy any more worlds. He began to see them as a kind galactic plague, and decided to eliminate them.

To this end, Knives eliminated most of the crew using unexplained powers apparently innate to his species, and then altered the guidance program of the fleet through the master controls on the command ship, causing the fleet to leave it's orbit above the planet and dive into the atmosphere. His actions were unknown to Rem or Vash at the time, so the three of them went to the escape pods to evacuate the ship. At the last moment, though, Rem decided to stay aboard the ship to try and save the fleet and the humans onboard. As Vash and Knives plummeted down to the planet's surface in the pod, Knives revealed his actions to Vash, who did not share Knives' view of the situation. He (rightly) blamed Knives for Rem's death, as well as the crew, and for the near extermination of the human race. Fortunately, Rem managed to right the fleet's course enough so that a fraction of the ships were able to land or crash without being destroyed.

In the end, the humans aboard the ships who survived were able to forge a new life for themselves on the desert planet. Due to the loss of much of the fleet, however, much of the leadership and technical know-how required to set up society and government and install and use the "plants" to terraform the world was lost. Humanity clustered around the wrecked ships, using the remaining functioning "plants" to provide water and keep the sands back from the growing towns, and began a struggle to survive. The advanced technology of the fleet was dubbed "lost technology" because very few knew how to actually use the technology, and none knew how or why it worked. They did possess enough knowledge to keep the "plants" in good repair.

In short, the human race survived the disaster, but was pushed back technologically and because of the struggle to survive the original intent to preserve the new world and conserve its resources was thrown aside and eventually forgotten. Vash and Knives set off wandering the planet, Knives to complete his extermination of the human race and Vash to live his life and stop Knives.

So Project Seeds, an attempt to preserve the human race, met with partial and bittersweet success.