#kind of ummm. the tokyo ghoul anime of recent adaptions iykwim <333

[lostjulys]

okay finished ep1 of stampede. collected thoughts........

i think it does great at what it was setting out to do. personally i don't have a beef with the cg animation, i think it looks great, that's not a big deal to me. i think it's intended to be a sci-fi western shonen anime that's designed to be easily consumed & enjoyed, and it succeeds at that imo!! and that isn't necessarily a bad thing; the studio's said that they weren't trying to tell the same story as the manga, and i think they'll do a very enjoyable and competent job at the story they ARE telling.

that being said!!!!!!! personally ummm i do not like it lol. i think um. i think having half the big reveals happen in the first episode & even in the first five minutes of the first episode cheapens it immeasurably. key to the manga, imo, was the blend of dumb loony tunes deep space planet future gun action + slowly increasing moments of sincerity & storytelling that drew a whole lot with some very small, subdued lines, and drew in more mystery with every reveal. i think the idea of going into trigun and immediately getting told, very carefully and literally with small words so we understand clearly, that this is a Sad Tragedy about a Guy who's a Plant and Has a Fucked Up Brother, and he's Tragic, and This Is Rem And She Died, is... low effort storytelling. or, at least, storytelling that's blatantly aimed at pulling in lots of viewers with a big emotional hook in the first episode. i hate the "project seeds" patch on his jacket it genuinely feels that they took all of the "show don't tell" from the original manga & went "hey what would happen if we just, told everything as explicitly as possible instead of showing it :)"

also, i'm really not a fan of the... smoothening, of the redesigns? i don't like that vash looks like a teenager instead of a young adult who's still visibly an adult-he isn't a teen, and it's a weird narrative decision to frame him as one, imo. i don't like millie being softened into the anime it girl instead of, again, a whole ass adult with a job. i have a visceral hatred of the whitewashed, black haired cuteboyification of wolfwood? i want to knee whoever made him white in this adaption in the nuts. the implications of him having a lollipop instead of his cigarette are.. probably indicative of where the tone of the show is headed. and millie's gone, because clearly even comedically gnc women are unmarketable when they're more than just a one-off joke. (sorry. i'm genuinely trying to give it the benefit of the doubt but.. lol.)

millie is gone, btw, and she's replaced with an experienced, cynical older man who's CLEARLY more intelligent and competent than meryl. (he's her bodyguard. which is a fascinating decision, given that... she's the hyperindependent sharpshooter with a coat full of derringers?). this is. possibly my least favorite decision out of many questionable decisions, including that of replacing vash's iconic silver freak ass gun with some apparently random different handgun? as well as the decision to namedrop knives in the very first episode and the general specific emphasis on the "space" part of space western (genuinely such a loss, imo...).

all in all, there's a loss of... intentionality of design that was present in the manga. it feels like the showrunners took the premise and form of trigun and spun that into something new. which is fine! which is fun and enjoyable! but it's a pale, somewhat lackluster imitation of what it's spinning off, there's no way it's ever going to hit as hard or be as meaningful as the original manga.