#i'm surprised at how much i had to say about razlo in this volume... i ended up finding him more interesting than i thought i would...

[hikennosabo]

trimax vol 10 random thoughts (ch 5-8)

part 1 here.

okay, time for part 2. i don't want to do this, i have a pit in my stomach.

chapter 5:

destroying razlo's punishers... a good strategy!

getting leverage to jump by stepping on his leg, i love it

you could say he. he was. *wheeze*... i guess you could say he was... ...disarmed... [a comically large hook drags me off the stage]

wolfwood and razlo just met today (not technically but y'know), but he can read razlo so well already, taunting him like this.

THIS FIGHT...!!! it's reminding me of vash vs knives in the finale of the 98 anime! one black gun and one white gun, and them being on even ground, making the same moves...

they're an even match when they're just whaling on each other, but wolfwood has tactics that razlo doesn't. also this is an insanely cool move.

chapter 6:

^ how it feels to read trigun maximum (said again)

^ how it feels to read trigun maximum (said for a third time)

he knows wolfwood is dying. we know wolfwood is dying. he can't do anything to stop it. we can't do anything to stop it. (except for refusing to keep turning the pages, i guess)

THEY HAVE NAMES?

vash can't do anything to stop wolfwood from dying, but he can help wolfwood go out on his own terms...

PLEASE, HE'S ALREADY DYING, WE DON'T NEED YET ANOTHER DEATH FAKEOUT FOR THE BOOKS.

livio interfering... i'm not an expert but this is not how DID works. but sure. the drama carries it.

WHY AND HOW IS CHAPEL STILL ALIVE FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

razlo realizes very fast that chapel never cared. despite his verbal denial, i think he was realizing way before this.

DESERVED!!! YES.... KILL!!!!!!

of course razlo can only attack. attack, like how he killed livio's parents. not that chapel doesn't deserve it, but this is the only thing razlo knows how to do.

ough. livio apologizing... "i'm okay now"...

so is razlo just gone now? like i said, i'm not a DID expert, i know re-integration(? not sure if that's the correct term sorry) is possible, but i don't know if this is how it works...

honestly, i feel bad for razlo. he only knew a life of violence, he was manipulated and indoctrinated by chapel, all he wanted was to be needed but his last experiences are finding out that chapel didn't care about him and then livio telling him he doesn't need him anymore. poor guy.

chapter 7:

oh, no, i don't want to read this chapter again. don't make me read this chapter again.

the difference between this and tristamp... stamp had the orphanage much more directly tied to EoM, and a bunch of guys in suits came to pick wolfwood up. this scene is a lot more "normal," a lot less obviously suspicious. idk if i'd go so far as to say stamp!melanie was in on the whole thing, but she doesn't look happy about wolfwood leaving... i do wonder how stampede will handle all this... ANYWAY!

"six years"... lmao. now i understand what people meant when they said the timeline is confusing. it's killing me and i hate it, actually?! nightow ALL you had to do was NOT specify a number!!!

the coins... i constantly forget about them and i find it funny whenever they're brought up... they were so clearly meant to set the ghg up as a shonen battle enemy-of-the-month type thing but then that got thrown off the rails when the magazine ceased publication and everything got turned upside down. yet the coins persist. what are they all for in the end.

also i'm sad. this is wolfwood's paltry attempt at pushing vash away. (also he's been carrying rai-dei's coin this whole time?! lol?! that's also sad... just waiting to give it to vash i guess...)

"this is the way you want it? are you sure?" i'm just fucking inconsolable at this point.

of course this attempt at sincere emotion is deflected. you boys are so, so, so, so, so stupid.

i can't do this man. i can't review the couch scene. i'm crying too much.

the prayer. this especially is getting to me. we've seen wolfwood pray a few times, but now it's vash's turn to pray. we've never seen him do that. and while vash was there to answer wolfwood's prayer... there is no one to answer vash.

what if i climbed into the microwave right fucking now.

ourgh. out of all the images in this chapter, this is the one that stuck with me the most. even more than the couch images. ugh, i can't even fucking write.

chapter 8:

i don't know where else to say this...? lol but livio's personality is different, he's cute now. is this because he broke out of the EoM brainwashing or because he integrated with(???) razlo? (once again: IS this how this works???) or is it both? either way he's a lot more expressive than he was before...

other people have already talked about how we didn't see the burial. i'm also thinking about everything else we didn't see. vash buried wolfwood, and he also cleaned up outside, brought livio in and laid him down, gathered ingredients and started cooking...

how long did he sit on that couch for before he moved. how much and how hard did he cry. we didn't see that either. we don't need to.

knives. he's smearing blood on his face again.

his laughter... i don't think he finds this funny like "haha funny" necessarily, i think he's just losing it.

vash defends the orphanage and knives doesn't even push it. he just moves on. hmm, i'm trying to articulate this... vash's display of power used up more of his life, which knives noticed obviously, and vash is willing to go that far to protect the orphanage... knives still doesn't want vash to die, and... he's laughing out of disbelief, or something like that. i don't know.

vash and livio sharing a meal together is... it's nice. but vash is still clearly very angry. with livio, with razlo, with himself too probably.

i don't know. i'm not angry with livio or razlo at all. they were both victims of chapel same as wolfwood. this is all chapel's fault in my mind, lol.

oh.

we're gonna see this in stampede too, aren't we. wolfwood will die for a third time and we're gonna see vash holding the punisher.

the fact that this volume doesn't even have the goofy author extra... we're just forced to sit with this. man. the book club wasn't kidding, it's so much worse the second time around. the first time i cried a little but i was mostly just taking it all in. the second time i was like actually heaving and sobbing. reading this volume twice within a few days was a BAD IDEA.

AND WE STILL HAVE FOUR VOLUMES LEFT. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GO ON AFTER THIS. four entire volumes without wolfwood...

[revenantghost]

Hi, I'm so curious what you realized about Wolfwood's freaky vision when he delivers Knives to Vash and what it means in Tristamp!

Ok ok ok ok so, we're theory-spinning here, so keep in mind this isn't firm or anything, but! (For context to anyone reading this ask, I mention in the tags of deludedfantasy's lovely post that I had a major revelation about all this)

Alright, so Wolfwood suffers this horrifically gory vision in chapter five of volume seven, and you point out that Wolfwood doesn't think it's Knives giving him this vision. Which Wolfwood's been around both Vash and Knives's terrifying, horrible empathetic powers. He's been frozen in place by both of them, and both events are deeply ingrained in his psyche. He would know if it was the twins, they haven't been able to hide this plant ability from him.

But we do see a beyond horrific and brutal vision like this one other time.

And I remember this because it haunted me, the sudden gore made me nauseous: much later during a fight, Livio (I believe it was Livio from what I remember, but if it was Razlo and I'm misremembering, let me know and I'll correct myself) suffers a very vivid image of his spine being ripped from his body while he's still alive. During his fight with Elendira. Who Wolfwood is surprised to see and doesn't seem to have had much experience with (Chapel seems to be the GHG contact?) when he meets her way back then, so he wouldn't be familiar with her evil presence.

It's the only other character we see have this effect on people outside of the twins. Which makes me think... okay man, what the fuck, what if Orange isn't even reaching a little to make Elendira some sort of freaky plant creature??? (The trans rep is *sighs and places face in hands* yeah, but that's for another post) Nightow was a part of the design process, this is a change he would have had to be all for. But what if this aspect of her character design wasn't a big change--what if it wasn't a change at all?

We joke and lament about how none of the GHG's ridiculous powers are explained, but. We have context for this one power. We've seen it multiple times, in fact, and it's something only independent plants can use. And, truly, out of the late-game GHG, Elendira has the most lacking backstory, it drives me up a wall. So, I'm not saying this was the intent, but... it's actually possible tbh.