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mannatea · 1 year

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(there are spoilers for the original Trigun series in this post!!)

Howdy meowdy. I watched the new Trigun Stampede episode from today and I have a hot take. Like, the hottest take about this series: this reboot is better than the original anime series run like.

I am going to die.

I don’t know how to describe it, but my only complaint about this week’s episode was the lack of the best character (Meryl, who can do no wrong) and also lack of my man Roberto (idiot old man whomst I love). But I have faith. I feel like this series is going to deliver the one thing I have been desperately craving since episode 1, which is Roberto calling Meryl by her name. C’mon guys, the setup is so clean. No way is he only calling her “Newbie” (while she reminds him she has a name every single time) for no payoff. We are getting payoff for this. It will probably be tragic. I don’t care. I need it. And I am so SOOOO confident we are going to get it.

To be clear, I did enjoy the original anime run when it came out, but I WAS AN IDIOT TEENAGER THEN, and most of my care for the series hinged on the first half of it. The western/humor vibes worked well for me in those days. I did do a rewatch some years ago (maybe..10 years ago?) and the tonal whiplash from the first half to the second half of the series was really...offputting I guess. I don’t remember if I even made it through that entire rewatch.

Now, I didn’t start Stampede when it first began airing because, when it was announced initially, I’m pretty sure the speculation around it was that it would be a prequel to the series, and honestly I just...wasn’t interested in that. Not that prequels are bad or anything, but...Trigun wasn’t a series where I wanted that. So imagine my surprise to learn through Tumblr gifs (of course, naturally, as you do) that it was actually a reboot of the series. Which. I was definitely interested in.

But to start watching Stampede, I really wanted to rewatch the original anime run as a...refresher? Mostly for comparison’s sake, because I’m a stupid bitch and I like being annoying about things.

So a few weeks ago, I rewatched the entire original anime run for Trigun and...while I did make it through the series, I wasn’t...impressed. I mean, yeah, it’s old, blah blah, but that had little to do with it. The aesthetics and everything were fine, most of the jokes held up okay, but what really turned me off to the original anime was, YET AGAIN, the whiplash from the first half into the second. I think it could be said that it serves a narrative purpose, and that alone wasn’t really a problem for me, but the series also felt extremely rushed in that second half (especially with regards to the Gung-Ho Guns). I still think Wolfwood’s death in the original anime run was beyond iconic. I have aphantasia and I will still never get that scene out of my brain. It lives in there, completely rent-free. I can’t see it, but like. The knowledge of it. It lingers.

But other than that, I felt like most of the latter half of the original anime run was just...torture porn? Like, it wasn’t whump. It wasn’t hurt/comfort. It was just. Hurt? It went on for so long it was starting to make me uncomfortable. And then of course, the ending was rushed and Vash’s pacifist nature started to grate on me. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with vowing not to kill, especially for a character like him, but I’ve seen Thou Shall Not Kill done more convincingly in other pieces of media.

And I’m sorry, because I know this is already getting long, but suffer with me a while longer, please. This requires so much writing to actually explain what I mean by that.

In Trigun’s case it’s not just Thou Shall Not Kill on the table. There exists this kind of ignorance Black Beauty preaches against. Vash isn’t personally killing people, but their homes and livelihoods are just constantly being destroyed? And some of these towns have like, hundreds of people nursing injuries? So it’s like, okay...you can feel good about not outright killing people with a gun, but...don’t pretend these things won’t also kill people after you’ve left the scene. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening! (I’m not even going to touch the whole “leaving mass murderers alive to take more lives later” thing. That’s even worse.)

Don’t get me wrong, nuance is great! And for a character like Vash, it’s also very necessary, but...at a certain point, it just makes him hard to like or sympathize with as a person. (99% of this is because the anime refused to let us know him or feel close to him.) The anime ending was just ridiculous in that original run. Sure okay, leave that asshole brother of yours alive, even though there’s no precedent in the anime of him doing anything after recovering except instantly killing everyone Vash loves just to watch him suffer some more.

I feel like I need to be extremely clear here in saying that again, I understand Vash’s fear of killing, fear of becoming like his brother, of becoming numb to what it feels like to take a life, and so on, but... holy shit dude, you just put that burden on other people! Or worse, risk the lives of people who need you to protect them! I love a good pacifist (or pacifist-adjacent) character, but there are limits. Right? And the worst part about this isn’t that Vash is a pacifist/pacifist-adjacent character, but that the anime never really took the time to get into his head, or give us any real emotional...connection to him, let alone reasoning for the inaction. Like we can speculate, but there was almost a...distance? between the viewer and Vash. We were never allowed to get too close to understanding him. (WHICH IS A CRIME.)

I guess one of the tropes I just really hate seeing in anime, or actually like...media in general, is that “hurt someone until they snap” trope, which is kind of “Rage Breaking Point” to some degree, but in the case of Trigun it’s almost more like...a mental snap? It’s like all the bad guys just try to do things specifically to other people knowing it will hurt Vash, and it’s not just...one little thing once, but over and over and over again. The manga context makes this make WAY MORE SENSE, but I feel like anime runs should be able to stand on their own. Anyway, I’ve seen this in other series’ too, like...if I recall correctly, Rurouni Kenshin had a few “bad guys” who would taunt Kenshin and hope that in getting him to kill again they’d bring out that like, assassin persona he used to have? But in Trigun it always felt just...SO MUCH WORSE. I think it’s because with Kenshin, it was like, they wanted to pull that persona back out longterm for their own benefit, to make use of it, so it made some sense to occasionally put someone he cares about in danger to convince him to kill—and better yet, put him up against opponents where, holding back could cost not only his friend(s) their lives, but also him his own life. But with Vash, it’s outright stated to be more like a slow-burn gratifying revenge they’re aiming for, where the point of it is to just make him feel like complete and utter shit forever, which just...begs the question: why didn’t these guys ever just straight up kill Meryl or Milly?

And I think that honestly was just my biggest gripe with the original anime run. Milly and Meryl are just...regular people. Like sure, Meryl’s packing heat with all those hidden weapons (and we love that for her, you know?) but she’s not superhuman in any way. Like she’s a great shot and can take care of herself, but it would be so incredibly easy to kill her. Like yeah all the innocent lives being taken hurt Vash deeply and make him feel powerless, but anyone with a brain would know that hurting people he personally cares about and has an attachment/connection to would be just. So much worse for him?

It’s not that there’s never an attempt to hurt Milly or Meryl, because that did happen...and in fact, this is how Legato dies in the anime, it’s literally a turning point scene for Vash, but there were also never any physical consequences for either woman? Like, Milly and Meryl always came out of it okay. I guess there’s a part of me that kind of likes that they never got hurt badly or anything, because that was SUCH a trope of the times that Trigun didn’t fall into too seriously, but I also just find it hard to believe that nobody ever...I don’t know...just put a bullet through either one of them. Not even a non-lethal shot!

That said, again Vash did kill Legato when the women were threatened in the anime, so it’s not as if it never amounted to anything, but the whole time I was just thinking like, sure sure, but like...how are these women even still alive at all, actually? If the goal is to make Vash suffer eternally, destroying things he genuinely cares about seems like a surefire way to kickstart that. (And threats that aren’t just for show, like actually shooting them in a non-lethal way to start, would have been way more likely to get a response from him.)

Anyway, going back to my hatred of the Rage Breaking Point trope, or...whatever the hell this was in the original anime run... It’s not that I hate the concept as a whole, but when it feels too much like “bad things are happening for the sake of bad things happening” I do find it offputting. In the manga, Legato’s “making Vash suffer eternally” makes plenty of sense, like, he’s an actual character with a backstory and his own reasonings, but in the anime he barely exists and it just comes off so, so weird. I think if you’re going to have that targeted torture aimed at a character, the story kind of has to balance it out with also containing the reasoning behind it, which...okay, so manga!Legato’s storyline is pretty grimdark and...not...something that should have made it to the original anime. But like, them just...putting him in there with no reasoning at all was...worse, actually. And the anime run did other things really badly along this same vein: including parts of the original plot but not the most important pieces of it, so...it felt incomplete and confusing. Like, here’s another example: Knives crashing the ships. In the anime, this just. MADE VERY LITTLE SENSE. Like you can see why he’d be mad at everyone, but not to the degree of like...committing genocide. You know what I mean? In the manga, it’s much, much clearer why Knives did what he did. Hell, it’s almost sympathetic, even. But when they included only PART of that reasoning in the anime, which is far more accessible to people than the manga is (and therefore more viewed/accepted as canon, especially back in the day when manga was harder to get your hands on), it felt like such an extremely bad choice. It mostly just...confused people at the time. I still remember watching the (honestly very boring) infodump backstory episodes with my siblings, and we all felt VERY MUCH like we’d missed an entire episode somehow, even though that was not the case.

Which brings me back to Stampede, or at least, why I think this reboot has the potential to be better than the original anime run. So far, I think the reboot has done a really good job of getting me emotionally invested in the characters. Like, the humor from the original was fine for its time, and also maybe a good introduction to the series (humor made it more accessible, I guess?) but it also had the unfortunate side effect of like, undermining a lot of the themes and character development that was going on. See also: tonal whiplash out the wazoo come the second half of the series.

Stampede threw 90% of the humor away and in my opinion that was the smartest thing they could have done. There’s still humor in the series, but it’s not over-the-top goofy and feels more realistic considering the context.

They’re also pulling a lot more from the manga, which is is beyond appreciated. Wolfwood’s story, for example, is more or less from the manga.

I know fans are mad about the lack of Milly, and I say this with so much love in my heart, and a cat named after the character, but...Milly did not do much for Trigun like...in general. I still hope she makes a cameo appearance, or eventually takes Roberto’s place (in the event that he does meet a tragic end), but so far I’m honestly not missing her...at all. I feel like the story Stampede is giving us so far just doesn’t have room for, or need of, her character. At least not yet.

They’ve also softened out Vash a lot for this reboot, in basically every conceivable way. He’s just easier to understand and love as a character the way he’s presented in Stampede so far, and it makes it easier to understand why other people like him, are intrigued by him, or even care for him as a person.

Meryl’s career change is also something I’ve seen people getting upset about, and I really don’t understand that criticism at all. Like, journalist/reporter type work just makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE for her as a person. The insurance thing was dumb as hell and always felt like such a weak excuse to me, and it’s hilarious how this one small tiny change makes SUCH a huge difference in making her motivations make sense.

Like, obviously she already cares about Vash as a person, and is intrigued by him, mayyyybe is developing feelings for him (I’m sure It’s Complicated™), definitely wants to get to know him more/understand him better, but these things feel natural in the environment they’re presented in. Like, in the original anime, she kept running into him almost by chance, and while it was funny to see her getting annoyed (and eventually realizing he is, indeed, Vash the Stampede), it didn’t really offer anything but humor. And like I said earlier, the humor getting thrown into the garbage was a great idea for Stampede as a reboot. We don’t need funny ha-ha’s shoved down our throat. We need to care about these characters. We need to understand their motivations. We need to FEEL SOMETHING for them when they are forced to make choices, when they learn something new about one another, when that connection feels solidified between them as teammates and eventually friends.

And in the original run, once Meryl accepts that Vash is, indeed, Vash the Stampede, and not just some dumbass she keeps running into, her sole motivation in following him around becomes just...preventing disasters so that her company doesn’t have to pay out insurance? And it’s like, okay...nobody in insurance loves their job that much. Nobody in insurance getting paid the beans she’s getting paid is going to put their life on the line TO THAT DEGREE to help management make more money lmao.

I think a romantic could argue that she also follows him because she’s worried about him, especially as she comes to realize how awful people tend to be toward him even though he’s not a bad person or anything, but it still starts with her following him because of insurance reasons. Again, that’s a laughably weak motive.

This career change was probably one of the best things they could have done for Meryl as a character. Unless the reboot completely flops at the end, I think I’ll stand by this.

My only worry regarding Meryl’s career is that the series almost sets things up like there could be one of those dreaded Yucky Miscommunication type situations, where it looks like she’s hanging around him just for a scoop, but it’s juuuust out of reach enough that I don’t really think it’s anything that would actually happen. So far the writing is too solid to make me think that will come up. Thank God.

Another popular gripe against Meryl is that she’s not the senior on the team now that Milly has been replaced by Roberto, but I think this move was to help introduce us to the world and story with Meryl as a fresher-faced, motivated person who wants that big break enough to actually do stupid stuff (like follow Vash against Roberto’s advice). It’s also important to note that even though Meryl isn’t the one technically in charge, she’s still the one moving the plot along regarding herself and Roberto. Like, he discourages her from following Vash, because it’s dangerous and their jobs aren’t worth their lives, but when she makes it clear it’s what she wants to do, anyway, for more than just job reasons, like, he doesn’t abandon her. I think this speaks to his relationship not only to Meryl, but also to Vash that he allows this to happen, because he could have so easily just...left her to her own devices. Or even physically restrained her to prevent her from going against his advice, if he was so inclined.

I am also very much hoping that Roberto’s place in the plot fills a hole that I think the original anime run had, which was that Vash had so many issues regarding relationships to other people. He ended up filling the void of friendships with several people, but never found anyone to fill that “parental” role after losing Rem. I don’t think Vash has like, “mommy issues” really, but I do think that he would benefit a lot from any kind of parental-esque love and approval, and Roberto so easily could fill those shoes... I want it. Badly. Because I care a lot about this version of Vash and want him to have that.

I don’t really want to comment on Meryl’s perceived helplessness right now (this seems to be another common complaint), because in the anime run, her insane amount of hidden derringers was not revealed too early in the series, but I will say that giving Roberto a derringer has me slightly worried that they might have given him that...part of her character design. I am placing my trust in the writers though. At the very worst I could see her borrowing that gimmick from Roberto should anything happen to him (and like I said several times now, I think something will).

But I also want to think that we’ve come a long way since the late 90s/early 2000s when it comes to female character writing, and Meryl doesn’t necessarily need to be “strong” or “capable” in the same ways as the other (specifically male) characters are to bring something important to the table. Let’s not forget that, at least to our knowledge she’s...just a regular person.

Worth considering, by the way: in the original anime run she more or less agreed with Vash’s pacifism so there might be something alluding to that eventually in the reboot. I think especially in Stampede, this is something they can use to connect; not many people understand or agree with that aspect of Vash’s character no matter how much they otherwise like and respect him, so her being able to do that could be really good juicy character stuff down the line.

I’m sure there are other criticisms out there but I can’t recall them offhand and I’ve toyed with this stupid post for like, hours by this point, soo...I’ll end it here.

Again, the reboot is promising to be better than the original anime run. And so far I already feel it is. I feel a connection to the characters that I never felt so strongly for the original series. Today’s flashback episode was not boring for me at all, and I even cried a little at one point, which is something the original series never managed to get out of me. Imagine that.

If you want my opinion on anything in particular, feel free to send an ask. Sorry this got disgustingly long but you know how I am.

#trigun #trigun stampede #trigun meta #long post #i can't believe i've done this

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