A post in the Epic Journey.
Chapter Number: 3 (vol. 1) 34 pgs.
Chapter Title: The Snow White
Focus Characters: Triela, Hillshire, Marco
Short Summary: Triela accidentally kills a guy who Hillshire is trying to question. When Hillshire says she should not shoot without his permission, she comments that if he wants her under control, he should pump her full of the medication. Hillshire and Giuseppe discuss the trouble of training the girls on minimum dosage. Meanwhile, Triela is suffering from major cramps as she is on her period.
The Triela-Hillshire team does a mission as a favor for Section 1 to take Mario Possi into protective custody so he can testify against the mob. Hillshire knows Marco from his time as a police officer and tracks him down. Marco escapes while under Triela’s watch and immediately runs into gang thugs. Triela dispatches them and then discusses things with Marco. Marco realizes that he may be the cause of Triela’s cyborgism since his story of exporting babies with the mob matches up with hers of being found in Amsterdam, but he doesn’t say anything. He tells Triela that he is avoiding custody so that he can see his daughter and Triela lets him go.
Awesome/Important Quotes: – “If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you just pump me full of the medication?” – Triela
– “They took out my uterus, so I wish I could switch with you, Triela” – Henrietta
– “Look, my blood’s as red as yours.” – Triela
– “I like the feeling that I get when I tie my necktie and the clack clack noise my leather shoes make.” – Triela
Quick/Minor Notes: – A study in facial expression. When Triela tells Hillshire that he should pump her full of medication if he wants her to follow instruction better, she seems like she’s being spiteful. Hillshire is ready to hit her, but her face becomes dead serious and he knows that she’s right.
– Hillshire notes how Triela is a “smart girl” who is “very attuned to a man’s desires”. It’s his way of calling her manipulative, which she is, but she is in a way that makes things work. It’s not like she’s spoiled or bratty, she just knows how to take control of a situation from a psychological standpoint.
– Yu Aida loves to represent Triela and Hillshire as a cop duo, always doing all the things cops do in movies while they discuss a case. This is joked about later in the series.
– Interesting bit of foreshadowing – we know that Marco was exporting kids into Amsterdam with the mob, that Hillshire busted him, and that Triela was found in Amsterdam. It’s not hard to piece together that Marco and Hillshire’s last encounter likely involved Triela, as is proven later in the series through flashback.
Major Points: – Triela always seems the most human of the girls, and it’s no surprise she has the most human body parts. When she has her period, she tolerates the pain because it proves that she is alive. Henrietta then states that she wishes she could trade since her uterus was removed. It’s interesting because Triela talks about how things would be easier f the conditioning decided everything for her, but as the chapter goes along we see enough evidence that she is clinging to her threads of humanity and that they may be the reason she is still able to be happy in her situation.
– The dilemmas Triela faces are based largely around the way Hillshire trains her. She comments on how ‘Henrietta is just like Giuseppe’s sister while Rico is just Jean’s tool.’ She then wonders what position she is supposed to be in . If Hillshire was constantly kind to Triela, she could probably understand why he doesn’t give her as much medication, but since he wants her to follow directions specifically, she wonders why he doesn’t give her more. In the end, they seem to act more like a stepfather and stepdaughter. The father is new to parenting and really isn’t sure how strict or kind to be, so Triela has to give him a little leeway and realize that he himself isn’t totally sure what he’s doing.
This is best represented with Hillshire confessing that he doesn’t really know what to buy Triela and keeps getting her teddy bears, and her realization that he isn’t just buying them out of a mechanical sense of duty but really is well-meaning. She cuts him some clack and asks that he just gives her another teddy bear.
– When Mario tells Triela he is there to see is daughter, Triela says ‘I guess a kid needs a father’. her face is unclear of what exactly she thinks, but we can kind of guess that she understands the concept of a father and why they are important, though she has never had one and really thinks of herself as independent. I think this kind of supports the idea of Hillshire as a surrogate father, even if just contextually.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 