#fmtbc

[fifthmooon]

god forbid vash the stampede does anything

[moorelikeme]

16t Annual Most Powerful Voices Gospel Expo! Great MC @williemoorejrlive ! Great Show @imericacampbell Great Job @american_heart_association @ahastl @ftmbc_youth #AmericanHeartAssociation #EmpoweringSTL #FMTBC #FriendlyTemple (at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church St. Louis)

[fifthmooon]

*slaps trigun manga volumes* this bad boy can fit so many horrors in it

[fifthmooon]

oh hes PISSED pissed

[fifthmooon]

interesting, horrible, painful etc. parallel that has come to my attention, both moments from trimax vol 2

Wolfwood having a nightmare and vash living his worst nightmare, both unable to hold the people they love the most.

[fifthmooon]

how much might he be regretting now saying that to wolfwood back then. Now that the experience of killing once feels so harrowing for vash, how much worse must it have been for wolfwood. How there might have never been any hope to start with and thats why he always had to make a choice. How little of a coward wolfwood actually was, how big of a coward vash might have actually been, and how did it have to come to this for vash to make a choice. How sorry he is for everything.

[fifthmooon]

gah...the difference between these two moments..vash kind of accepting that wolfwoods time is up vs actively asking for it not to happen..

[fifthmooon]

Something about the characters that haunt the trigun narrative and how nightow (and the overhaul translation team) use the emphasized HE (hims and his' too), first in relation to knives, and then once vol 10 is over, in relation to wolfwood. Among other things it indicates who is directly present in the plot, but more than anything It creates an effect that shows whos important to the characters and the respect they have for them.

Vash speaking about knives in trigun vol 1 and speaking about wolfwood in trimax vol 11

As knives is more present he loses his mysterious aura, slowly becoming plain 'knives' and sometimes 'million knives', in contrast to wolfoods immediate change, where his name is barely spoken (if ever) again once he dies. They loom over the story in different ways but they are always reminding of the characters motivations and show how much power they have over their actions.

[fifthmooon]

This is what i love about manga. Being able to see the artists style and drawing evolution, and callback moments like these are so cool not only through a skill perspective but in this specific moment i think it adds to the narrative experience.

Reusing the early drawing would have been out of tone i believe. The second drawing looks softer and a bit more serious, which is also supported by the context (and as we all know flashbacks during a fight are usually no laughing matter). It has been a long journey since we met wolfwood and now we truly know who he is and what he really wants to fight for. It's a revision of all this time, showing wolfwood under a new light since that first meeting. It's a different drawing, and man, that we are seeing now, accompanying nightows own artistic journey.

[fifthmooon]

i love this page because ignoring the horrors it reads like wolfwood is an elendira fanboy like holy shit it's her she's so fucking cool.....bro bro it's her it's elendira the crimson nail i've been following her for ages do u think she will give me her autograph..ohhhhh my god.....vash get up...! dude..!!!

[fifthmooon]

theyre just so...

[fifthmooon]

shes everything hes just legato

[fifthmooon]

(vol 8 ch 4 / vol 10 ch 2)

these two moments..coming right at the last second to support and reassure his friend, using his powers to protect wolfwood and what he loves, never giving up on him..he is not lost and he has a friend

[fifthmooon]

[fifthmooon]

Every time i read this line i think it is saying so much more, and telling of how this whole story will end. It's obviously inside the topic of death and the loss of loved ones that is present across the manga through multiple characters, but i also think that it is speaking directly of Vash and Rem, and how eventually (not yet), he will learn to live with it, or at least in a bit better way, because right now and for 150 years, Rem's death has been weighting down so much on him that he hasn't been able to really live with it. He has been living horribly, carrying the weight of her death and values, fighting tooth and nail for humanity even when everything was against him.

That is until he shoots Legato volumes later, and with this, he finally lets Rem go, now completely losing her. Wolfwood is also gone, and Knives too, and the circular aspect of the story, how it ends in the same tone as how it started, reflects this - with Vash the Stampede learning to keep living despite losing them, and his life returning to (his) normal.

[fifthmooon]

I really wanted to highlight these panels for the artistic choices that nightow made

While reading, all of these panels show up in a very impactful manner when talking/showing knives and rem. These spreads were all preceded by "standard" pages, where lots of dark greys and blacks are used, creating a big contrast with the turn of the page where nightow only uses line and a few light grays and omits backgrounds creating these angelic and abstract images. They reflect a lot of purity and power, each in their own way, enchancing especially the otherworldliness of the plants.

This carries on into the panels knives and vash share, where reborn knives is this blank canvas, white and pristine, while vash wears black, full of details and scars in connection to humans and their lived-in-ness (?). It's interesting how the roles of black and white (bad/good) are visually reversed and how they carried this too into stampede!