#Gray the Ninelives

[evershifting]

rubbing my hands together like a fly it was bitch to fit all the gung hos

[to-eat-laugh-love-in-peace]

With how Tristamp sets up major plot points in advance with the characters that they name drop or have appear and interact with and learn more about other characters throughout the series no matter how short their screen time was or how small their role to play at the time was, I think that Meryl along with Milly might be a bit more involved in the fight against Gray the Ninelives who really only fought against Wolfwood in Trimax.

Like yeah the girls show up but it's really only at the end and as comedic relief they literally just fall on top of them and knock them out, signalling that the fight's really over now. But like just look at how hyped they looked to fight, guns out and all.

But in Tristamp not only has Meryl gotten to meet and get to know some of Ship 3’s residents, becoming especially invested in Luida’s project in growing enough flora to terraform No Man’s Land into a green planet to lessen the burden on the Plants and ensure the survival of both species, making her more than willing and ready to fight for them given the chance,

but also she’s seen Gray as the both the mech suit in Ep3,

and as the nine people who control it in Ep10,

with her having seen and gotten to know more about them thanks to Conrad possibly setting up that she might actually be the way Wolfwood figures out that Gray is just a giant mech suit being piloted by nine people. And then they could work together to take them down.

Which would be pretty cool to see, maybe they could take three each, given that there aren’t a lot of instances that I can recall at least where Wolfwood fights alongside the girls, plus it’d make for good team building with Milly having just joined the gang. Also, after rewatching episode 4, specifically where right before Roberto’s taken by Zazie Wolfwood makes fun of Roberto’s derringer, it just ignited a want, a need really to see Wolfwood have his ass saved at least once by said derringer.

Speaking of which, there have also been multiple instances where allusions to David and Goliath were made in relation to Meryl in Trimax, notably in the few panels that show bits and pieces of her backstory that show how she got her first derringer, which Studio Orange expanded upon with Roberto, that lead me to believe this to be the case even more.

On top of that, I think that she might be reason for why they're simply going to have them locked up and not killed (wonder if seven of them are still going to be killed during the fight in S2) even after the damage they've dealt and the deaths they've caused seeing as she reacted with horror and pity when she learned about them from Conrad,

a sentiment Roberto himself doubled down on,

which while it might have enraged Elendira and sent her to come after them with her nails, leading to Roberto's death, and possibly souring Meryl's feelings about her, the same can't be said for Gray. @tristampparty

[genkooii]

(Don’t repost  / remove the caption or use without permission).

Christmas with the Gung ho guns be like:

[extantformoflife]

worm (from pathologic) appears here with The Hornfreak

[lemongogo]

[pyreflydust]

Trigun Maximum Chapter 16

[tri-pofdeath]

I'm LATE at this point but goddammit i want to talk about the Vash/Leonof fight and the Wolfwood/Ninelives fight, how their visuals contrast each other, and what these artistic choices say about the characters.

So, first and first most, as a general rule the panels in Vash's fight are very light, in wide open but barren spaces that span across several areas in the ship. There is a lot of physical distance between him and the Puppetmaster, and the fight feels very tense and contemplative. For Wolfwood's fight with Ninelives, it's just about the opposite- it's very dark, close quarters, and brutal. It takes place in a small enclosed space that Wolfwood makes even more tight by trying to close a door on Ninelives. To get a quick idea of what I mean, look at these pages side-by-side.

Wolfwood's pages at a glance just. have literally more ink on the pages, and all of the panels are almost entirely filled with the characters within, and with the exception of Ninelive's splash page there, you don't get a chance to sort of , step back and take a good look at them persay. It's all hectic, with sound effects and intense speech bubbles filling a lot of the sparse negative space.

The pages with Vash's fight, on the other hand, are mostly white and a very light gray-tone, with more focus on the environments than on the characters. He spends a lot of the fight assessing threats, looking for the puppets, exploring- it's very suspenseful.

First off, the location and the framing of the panels works very well for what's actually going on with these fights- Vash's fight with Leonof involves everyone on the ship (at least as far as he knows), so the "camera" being far away (like the reader is observing from afar, hiding perhaps) works well, but so does the focus on the notably empty environments. This place is a paradise compared to the rest of No Man's Land we've seen - there's grass! Nice houses! Working ship rooms! This place should also be teeming with people happy to see Vash, too! It's deeply wrong that this place is so empty.

The barrenness of these places is also reflective of how much Vash has lost very quickly- he gave up his life with Lena (and as far as he knows they're either in danger or Gone, they were used against him) , he hasn't seen Meryl and Milly in years and I imagine is unsure if he Will again, and has to

Meanwhile with Wolfwood- this is a fight between two people on the same side. Their peers, and they're mad as hell at each other (well, Wolfwood is more mad as hell in general, but y'know.) If Ninelives gets out of here and it gets back that Wolfwood has properly totally betrayed Knives, as far as Wolfwood knows, that could be very bad for him.

Not only that, much of Wolfwood's current inner turmoil has to do directly with violence and his humanity, and he is having a hell of a time coming to terms with that. Vash's words have had a real effect on him, and even if he's not necessarily taking them to heart, they're certainly getting under his skin

(This happens before the fight, but still, the mindset of "completely pre-occupied and haunted by a moral crisis" is how he goes into this ) Wolfwood is definitely one to go all in on fights, but even this one is especially brutal and violent- he's definitely taking things out on Ninelives. His fear of Vash/Knives, fear of what happens next in the grand scheme of things (ik that's vague but YKNOW) , the whole aforementioned Moral Crisis- It's definitely notable that Vash is Not present and there are no witnesses to this fight except for Ninelives, his equally damnable peer who went down the same awful path (working for Knives/Legato) that he did.

also. not related to the bigger point I was making here but I have to say, I really really love inkwork and Nightow does a lot of cool stuff with like, high-contrast lighting or really stylish use of spot-blacks in Vol 3 and 4 and I am putting them directly in my mouth. Look at that WW up there!! Look at this one!!

The way a lot of him is just left Implied bc the light is that bright but you can still tell exactly what's happening, even with such an extreme angle as this is just, chefs kiss, beautiful

AGAIN while i'm here I want to talk about this page too, right before their fight starts, this is GREAT. The movement in this page is great- the explosion smoke leading into WW's cigarette smoke, which leads into him throwing aside the cigarette and getting ready to Fight. And how the side of his jacket blends in to the background of this big panel? SO COOL, very stylish and fun, I can only imagine Nightow felt like a god when he planned out this page

[bubblesandpages]

The Gung-Ho-Gun’s are all just Dr Conrad’s OCs. It’s why he has the chronic need to correct people whenever they get the Ultra Cool, very, very Badass names he came up with for them wrong.

[remsavehim]

Damn should I scan and up load these? I’ll make a poll.

[avee-anne]

I just saw something in one of Trigun Stampede's reference sheets and I'm going to talk about it under the cut because it's pretty disturbing and it may count as a spoiler to the series (post-JuLai).

If you've read the manga, you would know that Gray the Ninelives is a robotic suit controlled by nine men of short stature. It's a bit different in Stampede because instead of grown men, the ones controlling Gray the Ninelives turns out to be the lab-grown clones that Conrad showed to Meryl and Roberto.

They're Gray the Ninelives.

[mydetheturk]

midvalley my beloved!!!!

[why-its-kai]

Full resolution detail scan of the illustration of the Gung-Ho Guns by Yasuhiro Nightow printed in the “Monthly Satellite Times” newspaper insert included in the Trigun Stage 8 Laserdisc release.

Scanned and newsprint paper texture removed by me.

[lordsmaf]

Oh shit, is that Gray The Ninelives?

[beelzebby666]

This fight makes me INSANE the BODY HORROR. 🤌

[needle-noggins]

they had to nickname Midvalley "the Hornfreak" to remind everyone that he's just as dangerous and crazy as the rest of the Gung Ho Guns. He looks like a regular guy in the 90s going to the jazz bar but you can bet your bottom dollar his saxophone can hit notes that will vibrate the blood right out of your body and liquefy your bones. They called him the Hornfreak because they HAD to make it clear that he belongs in the gang of BDSM gear-clad murderers.

Like yeah, this is our buddy Gray the Ninelives, who is the amalgamation of like nine people or something, and that's Elendira the Crimsonnail, she can summon nails at will and impale you, and then this is Midvalley the Hornfreak. He'll freak your horn for sure.

[rennyrose]

(80s Dystopia AU) Quick Concept and scene for Gray the Ninelives-