Orange's 2024 New Year's illustration featuring Vash the Stampede [x]
Happy New Year from Japan!
2024 will be another year of new challenges for Orange.
Recently, new art department joined us. Along with animation, modeling and VFX, we will be able to bring strong quality to our shows.
Looking forward soon in showing what everyone is cooking!
Thinkin about tirgun98. I love the breathing room Vash gets in 98 after he kills legato and so much of the end of 98 really colors what I love about the concept of trigun in general. the part where Meryl hides on the other side of the door and let vash have his privacy. that scene where he spills the donuts everywhere in the middle of a crowded market. those are like fundamental emotional moments for me that I take with me to the other trigun iterations. and while i think after reading trimax last in my trigun consumption I glance at trigun 98 and like most manga first fans squint at it- I can't help but haul that around as mythos when I write I tristamp or trigun soup AUs. I think some of my favorite short fics I wrote were from before we the viewers knew that tristamp had a different timeline and I tried to merge all the plot beats and vibes with 98. those speculative fics are kind of special to me- even though in hindsight I don't love that they are tagged both canons, but at the time we didn't know! I write mostly tristamp+ now but I am hauling around the way 98 made me feel the first time I watched it. and I think for me, tristamp while so very different feels the way I remember 98, even though when I rewatched 98 now I'm like oh wow this is so a product of its time I don't think it would hit me the same at all if I watched it for the first time today.
two people come to a realisation that day: one with joy, the other with sorrow. both are doomed by their realisation.
thinking about the idea that wolfwood just gets so devastated how vash, someone he cares about so much, could treat himself like that, and gets overwhelmed by the realisation that he can't do anything to stop him. how he loves this person but he can't do anything about it. how he loves this person and he can't do anything about it either.
and then there's vash who completely on the opposite end—found someone who cares enough for him when he doesn't anymore, and he can't do anything to stop it. it's too late, he knows it, the person will now shed tears in his stead.
(he realises it's too late to stop him, or himself. the gears on the clock turns again. and again. and again. it never strikes.)
things you said when you were driving
"I'm sorry about your friend."
Wolfwood jumps, nearly knocks his head against the glass of the window he's leaning against. He didn't even realize Meryl knew he was awake. He'd crawled in the back, curled up against the door, and did his best to stay quiet for the drive away from July.
It takes a second before he understands what she's even talking about. Because she's not saying Vash's name. And Vash wasn't just his friend, anyway.
(Maybe he can't even call Vash his friend anymore. Maybe he's not allowed to do that.)
"From the sand steamer," Meryl offers gently, eyes briefly catching his in the rearview mirror. "I never got to talk to you about that."
There just wasn't time. Wolfwood's ashamed to realize he hasn't even thought about Livio since it happened. His body feels like it's been running on solid adrenalin alone at this point.
(How could he forget? Is he more of a monster than he realized?)
He has to clear the lump from his throat before he can speak to her. "It's... thanks," he says simply, unsure how else to respond.
Meryl sticks her hand back between the front seat and wiggles her fingers. He gawks at it a moment before taking it and her tiny hand grips his firmly. She's warm against his palm.
"We should get flowers for him too," she offers, voice quieter. "With Vash and Roberto's."
Wolfwood chokes down a noise that feels an awful lot like a sob and squeezes her hand back. "Yeah," he rasps quietly. "That'd be nice."
She doesn't let his hand go until they reach their stop for the night.
vashwood cd charms and prints are finally here!! for those of you who preordered these, orders will be shipped out starting next week!
i only have a couple of discounted b-grade charms left from this round but i'm excited to announce that i'll be able to open a second round of preorders for the charms!! b-grades and preorders pt 2 will be available starting nov 11, 3pm PST ✨
It's not senseless, unquestioning devotion. Wolfwood won't hesitate to call Vash an idiot when it's a fact, he's not gonna lie down and go along with what he disagrees with. But in all of his life, Wolfwood's barely had a shred of agency and choice. And it's reached the point that he hates it, is almost afraid of it in his spin-off chapter. But he saw Vash, in all his gentleness and kindness, in all his trauma and his hurt, and Wolfwood thought, that. That's what I want to follow. That's what I'll brave freedom for, no matter the cost. Because he's worth it. And even facing what seems to be the end of his life, even knowing that following Vash led him here, Wolfwood doesn't regret it.