Torr

As we know, Border is structured so that agents can fight at minimum risk to their actual lives. Primarily because of trion bodies and bail out, but their fortress of a headquarters & the fact that they’re all volunteers play a role as well. Obviously from a meta perspective this is a world-building choice that allows the story to avoid major character death, as well as the anxiety and complicated emotions that would come from constantly being in physical danger, so that the plot can focus on cool fight strategies and fun casual interactions between the squads. But what I think is interesting about World Trigger is that while the story doesn't focus heavily on these themes, it doesn't avoid them altogether either.

We have seen in the story that, while combat bodies and bail out make it so that agents are not regularly in mortal danger on the field, all of these safeguards are not foolproof. The first humanoid neighbor invasion actually has a death toll as a result of Enedra attacking Border HQ directly, and the arc ends with Osamu risking his life and getting seriously injured in his real body (an action that is taken very seriously by other characters, particularly Jin). In the end, trion bodies are only a protection for a limited period of time, and bail out as an escape is only as secure as your base is. If Border HQ was ever seriously compromised the stakes would start to get very real, very quickly.

World Trigger clearly knows how to write complex emotional conflict -- it's done it with Chika, Yuma, and a few other characters over the course of the manga -- it just does it sparingly. World Trigger could use the trion combat system to completely skip over the concept of mortal danger, but it's chosen not to. I think that's really interesting, and for me it opens the door to speculation about the specific relationship that Border agents would have with physical injury and the concept of mortality, if they can constantly fight and get hurt at (as far as we’re aware) little risk of permanent damage.

This is where Hyuse and Yuma come into play. The relationship that they both have to combat is wildly different than that of most border agents, which is proven by their comments in this chapter and others. We know for a fact that Yuma has been fighting in neighborhood wars since he was a kid and that he has been in mortal peril himself on at least one occasion. Given what we know of the situation in the Neighborhood, I would guess that Hyuse has had similar experiences. Clearly they don’t have any illusions about being impervious to physical danger, and are used to strategizing with this fact in mind.

The only technology that Border has that neighbors as a whole don’t is bail out (and some neighbor groups do have bail out now). Triggers are neighbor technology and they use trion bodies in combat just like Border does. The main difference between Yuma and Hyuse’s experience with combat and Border agents’ is that trion-based conflict in the neighborhood is constant and ongoging, and Yuma and Hyuse presumably have not had the option to opt out and go home.

So given their backgrounds, it’s not surprising that Hyuse and Yuma would come to the conclusion that the squad switch-up could be testing the waters for the possibility that people will be lost on the mission. That doesn’t say a whole lot about them that we don’t already know. However, the fact that they were the only ones to offer up this possibility in my opinion does say a lot about everyone else.

The purpose of the squad switching (in relation to the mission only and not counting the “it’s so that we can make better B-rank squads” thing) seems relatively clear to me; the away mission is going to be a chaotic environment with constantly shifting factors, and the agents on it need to be able to deal with change. Most of the things said by characters in these chapters fits into this assumption pretty well. But part of that chaotic environment is going to be serious danger, and I don’t think that’s been talked about enough. They’re not operating on home turf, don’t have access to all of their technology, and could be entering into situations that are actively hostile. It is an entirely different combat environment to the scattered monster fights and tower-defense setup they’re used to back home. And the away mission ship isn’t going to hold a candle to Border HQ in terms of strength of defenses. Even if the away mission agents can bail out back to the ship (and according to Ashihara that technology has limitations), they could still be in danger regardless, and the away mission should be planned with this in mind.

So the fact that it’s highlighted that only Yuma and Hyuse have offered up the possibility of agents dying on the mission (if I’m going to get all comic-studies-y about it I’d love to note that not only are the panels of the agents who’s opinions are being discussed inherently dramatic in their composition, but at least on VIZ.com the Hyuse and Yuma one is on the other side of a page flip which holds suspense and makes the impact of their statements stronger), as well as their comments being marked as “a neighbor thing to say”, in my opinion confirms that the other squad members might not be considering physical danger as a real possibility. Personally, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that it could be easy to forget that danger to your real body is possible if you are constantly fighting and getting injured in a fake body and can beam safely back to a base that rarely gets breached if that body gets destroyed. If this series had a slightly different tone, I would say that exploring the assumption made by characters that HQ is a safe haven from danger to your real body could make for an interesting plotline. And that's definitely an idea that could be touched on on the away mission as well, if the story wanted to take that route.

As a side note -- it also makes sense to me that those comments from Yuma & Hyuse would get some upvotes from higher ranking agents who have probably had experience in more dangerous situations (particularly Jin; I’m sure he understands the stakes of all of this quite well considering his side effect but that’s another post entirely).

Anyways, in the end this is mostly conjecture and personal interpretation on my part. Obviously WT is a shounen series about teens that remains overall pretty lighthearted, and serious stakes like death don’t get brought into the story very often and I respect that. But I think that the few situations in which we have had to grapple with more intense consequences for things have been really thought provoking, and the setup of WT creates a great jumping off point for a lot of interesting concepts imo.

I do think that there's probably a point to Yuma and Hyuse bringing up the concept of agents dying on the mission though -- World Trigger isn't really one to leave threads hanging and when concepts are focused on it's usually for a reason. And the story has certainly been willing to acknowledge heavier topics in the past even if they're not focused on directly in the main story, so I doubt that they're going to completely skip over it after this. But exactly what it's leading into I couldn't say. It's equally likely that the point of this was to emphasize how desensitized to conflict the neighbors are in comparison to Border, or both that and my previous theory. Regardless, we're probably going to be getting some more complex emotional arcs (à la Chika's mental block) from the characters once the theoretical away mission arc starts, or at least it seems that way.

I can't fit more than one timelapse so have kuga because I enjoyed the process the most.