#and the big country is the exploration of toxic masculinity and classism

[pennyserenade]

gregory peck westerns are a thousand times better than other westerns because he had sense enough to know you could be a little cowboy and make commentary on the fallaciousness of toxic masculinity that so often plagued the men who loved them, too. i do think some of those men might’ve been too stupid to realize that’s what they were about but i appreciate the effort. i saw it gregory peck

[imustbenuts]

nuts reads trigun in jp 14 - trimax' vol 1 theme is big on family

i mean, thats obvious, but it didn't ping on my radar as much until im sitting here chewing on what im reading.

ive written in part 7 with the first hint of filial piety, 12 with a lost in translation bit about vash calling sheryl and lina his family, and 13 where wolfwood comes across as a guy who is taking someone's child(daughter) away to elope for marriage. the tl;dr of all of this is that trimax' vol 1 seems to be a set up for exploring themes and what "family" can be defined as.

i uh, suspect japanese idea of 内外 uchi-soto is at play here. (ie in-group and out-group but family) it seems to be lowkey tied to that and the themes of 'otherism'. the kanjis for them means, in 内, and out 外.

the uchi 内 is the 'us', and it is most commonly used in the context of home and family.

the soto 外 is the others, the ones who aren't part of the family.

there's absolutely more ways uchi-soto can be used than just family. village, organization, etc.

so while i dont have a concrete answer of how fucked family dynamics exactly are in japan, i can say its at least pretty fucked in a lot of asian countries affected by ww2. this is further compounded by a lot of classism, traditionalism, trauma, shit mental healthcare, absurd rapid economic growth, the whole turd rainbow, that its not uncommon for many born in say 1900s to 1980s to be... pretty messed up.

i mean, the long term results of gunboat diplomacy, opium wars and colonialism will do all of that, yeah.

i think its why knives here vaguely gives me that abusive old asian turd vibe:

domestic abuse is... not exactly uncommon, honestly. again, dont live in japan so i wont pretend to know for sure, but similar culture and the same capitalism trajectory makes me think its got similar trends. also a lot of these DVs can rooted in toxic masculinity, power trips, ego, and anxiety surrounding productiveness/money.

yeehaw:

(quick note: another reading of 内 uchi can be nai. is that why studio orange named him nai....??? 🤔 and gave him a onesies pajamas and made him a hikkikomori?)

so thats knives. he kicks and slaps his little brother around and even cuts off his arm to the point that a lot of vash's behavior can come across as an abuse victim survivor. he shares the uchi with vash and their sister plants, while everyone else alive on NML is the soto. the outsiders.

and then vash seems to define his own 'uchi' as... the entirety of humanity, or at least an uchi with no 'soto'. no outsiders than maybe himself. its debatable if you want to read this as a result of his abuse, if vash inherently leans towards this, or a mix of the two. like how things are depicted in stampede.

i think the characters that highlight these themes nicely are Sensei/Doc and Brad. im skipping and not rehashing stuff from my prev post, but yeah its. all there.

.... Of course I would We're family (身内). And it's all the same to him. Vash The Stampede's concept of "family (身内)" is absurdly wide.

i mean, check out brad's bubble in here where the Family is expressed as 身内 miuchi. more in the tone of "one of ours". nightow could have just used a bunch of other words like 家族 kazoku, 親身 shinmi, 親戚 shinseki that leans closer to blood family, but nah. nightow just picks 身内, with the 内 to highlight the in group out group family culture dynamic going on.

this is then followed up with this panel

man.

i wanna whack knives with a steel chair.