#im gonna be honest with you i tried to play nai's half of the duet and it feels impossible. i can get close but i cannot do it

[millionsknives]

episode 9:

the music that nai plays has a lot of major 7ths and 9ths in it - the two harmonics that are just slightly outside of a perfect octave. 2nds (which are technically 9ths) and major 7ths are the two most dissonant intervals you can get in a musical scale but the way the music uses them makes them sound very open and wondrous instead of harsh

i've said this before and i'll say it again!!!! when the twins play their piano duet, you can hear that something is slightly out of sync. but it's not vash's part is out of sync with nai's. vash is playing mostly octave scales in the secondo part that buttress the main 'memory of piano' theme that knives plays with his left hand, but nai's right hand is playing in 3's against the main melody which is in 4's and that's what sounds so weird. he's not out of sync with vash, he's out of sync with himself. and then it resolves when he switches to a more accompanying style and splits the melodic line with vash

the fade out from the boys playing piano together to nai playing alone and reaching across all that empty space to play the part that vash used to play will cause me pain every time i see it i think

what on earth is conrad talking about when he tells nai 'i got what you asked for' (?? i cannot figure out what he is referring to)

it's scary how beautiful knives is. it's also bizarre how much older than vash he looks when they're only like 6-7

the thing that sucks is that nai is completely right. he falls into the bummer category of villain where everything they say is correct but then they just take it to an insane level (genocide) that you can't be on board with them. and vash is entirely ineffective (at least in the flashback), he doesn't even try to counter him when he does have lived experience that challenges what nai is saying. he could tell him 'i've been living symbiotically with humans and plants for 5-6 years and we take care of each other' but he just stands there.

there's a brief moment when vash has nai at gunpoint, before nai gets his face back under control and goes back to being evil, where he looks absolutely heartbroken

a lot of the dialogue is pulled from volumes 7&8 but what is missing is the very key fact: whose fault is it, knives?? whose fault is is that everyone is stuck on a planet inhospitable to both humans and plants that forces humans to use plants horribly to stay alive. and yet without humans the plants would die here too but we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place if somebody hadn't marooned us all on a desert planet in his selfish anger

there are so many elements they borrowed from trimax that they'll never get to use in their proper context (nai witnessing the last run as a child in '23 and it fueling his crusade vs manga knives only knowing about the last run at 150 years old and realizing he's begun to die and has halfway killed vash already. or meryl kidnapped by zazie in '23 vs meryl kidnapped by zazie in vol 4 which triggers midvalley vs ww and milly, vash and hoppered, the whole fiasco once legato shows up, elendira saving the day, etc. which is one of the greatest arcs in the story). i guess it's just the natural give and take of remixing a story like this. if you want to use an element in the prequel as an homage to the manga, you have to sacrifice that element in context of the main trimax canon (which is forever the true canon) or else reusing it in part 2 will seem repetitive.

luida's line "i don't want to justify wrongdoing just to survive" is, i think, one of the most important themes of the story

new thread for my tristamp rewatch notes because the first one was getting too long

episode 7:

livio has no self preservation instinct. wolfwood, although he can recover from bullets and injuries quickly, still ducks and dodges and takes cover in a fight, and uses the punisher as a shield a LOT. livio just stands there and takes everything and leaves himself wide open. made worse by the fact that he wields 2 weapons and will just stand there arms outstretched to fire in opposite directions while his entire body is open and unshielded

it's actually really cool to see the rotating mechanism of the doublefang guns in action. but let us not forget that livio was given these because he was 'not good enough' to be gifted a punisher (source: vol 13) (more on this later)

THE 1 FRAME OF RAZLO YES YES YES HE LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE MANGA

chapel is there also 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕 die old man

i genuinely had no memory of chapel being there. and he's on screen for a while, not just a quick flash like razlo, but it gave me huge pause like wait he's been here the whole time?? AND he has a speaking role?? i must have just thought it was conrad doing the voiceover in livio's head the first time i watched it

which reminds me: the radio program in episode 5 was hosted by 2 people - a priest william and a missionary michael.. obviously william is conrad but i was like who is michael. who in the EOM is big enough in the organization to have the name michael... guys it's chapel.

it's actually so bogus how like.. nobody besides ww has a reaction to livio shooting himself in the head :(

wolfwood is never beating the big brown baby deer eyes allegations, the only reason he keeps those sunglasses on is to hide his absolute inability to mask his emotions. nice try but you're fooling no one, i see your heart on your sleeve mf

i'm convinced his tristamp character design is heavily based on his design in trigun ultimate because of his smooth hair, rounder face, and big eyes. like i gasped out loud when i saw him in this shot, look at those chubby cheeks that is a BABY