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chibivesicle · 2 years ago

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‘Times, they be a changin’

After a drop off due to Golden Kamuy ending and my overall disappointment with the last arc. And of course, Ogata’s death, I’ve been wondering where I want to go with these things. I put a lot of GK content out and I don’t want to just shelve it but I don’t want to split myself between fifteen thousand side blogs. I’ve decided that I’ll keep my live action meta over on my ‘I don’t want to be exterminated, upgraded, turned into pudding’ side blog and I’ll keep all my anime and manga opinions here. Since I have been reading manga for a long time and watching anime for even slightly longer.

To reflect this, I’ve removed my last previous Ogata icon and I’ve jumped straight to God; Kuroneko-sama that is. It isn’t that I’ve stopped reading manga or watching anime either and I have just one of the many opinions on the internet.

Let’s go with an easy current on topic target for some mild-meta. Trigun.

Many moons ago, my best friend from undergrad introduced me to Trigun. She had a Vash poster in her dorm room in university that she picked up at Katsucon, which was the first con I ever went to with her. She’s quite the influence!

I watched all of the original Trigun anime on fan subbed VHS tapes that were passed around the anime black market of the 90s and early 2000s before they’d be bumped out of the way by file sharing services and online fansubs. Honestly, I can’t even remember when I first watched it, but I do remember crying at a character’s death and just rolling with some of the more hand wavy sci-fi elements.

Not surprisingly, as someone who loved Ogata as a character, my favorite character from Trigun was none other than Nicholas D. Wolfwood - wandering man of the cloth toting around his cross which is heavy b/c it is full of ‘mercy’.

How much of a Wolfwood fan was I? Enough of one that I paid likely waaayyy too much money in a dealer’s room at either Otakon or Katsucon for this capsule version of Wolfwood with Kuroneko-sama.

I used to have him up on my desk when I was in uni, but he always fell over and at some point, I popped him back into the bubble and shoved him under a bed at my parents’ house forgotten for over a decade or so. He moved to the desert (still in that capsule) and I just dug him out after moving to my current location along with two Ruroni Kenshin figures that are back in a box.

What is with this path down memory lane all about? I was at Anime Expo in 2022 (with exact same friend mentioned above) and we didn’t make it to the Trigun Stampede panel but, I did get an awesome photo of an amazing Vash cosplayer.

With the Trigun 2.0 on the horizon and the Sony merger stuff, all of the older anime titles that were on Funamation have moved back onto Crunchyroll - meaning a lot of titles I loved when I was younger could be rewatched.

And that’s what I did last month! I dusted off my little Kuroneko-sama and Wolfwood and sat down to watch Trigun for the first time in over 20 years, I think.

I was both surprised by what I remembered and what I did not remember. Plus, rewatching something you haven’t seen in years allows you to have a sort of fresh pair of eyes.

First off, for a manga that started in 1995 and had the anime in 1998, it has great female characters. Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson wear normal clothing, have professional careers and are packing heat in a wild west environment. These are the least sexy main character ladies! Milly wears a dress shirt, tie and pants with suspenders along with her long coat. Meryl wears boots, tights, skirt suit and then a cloak (with all her guns) as well.

Meryl is the older skeptic/pragmatist and Milly is naive yet if the most obvious thing is the best answer, then accept it as the truth. They are great characters and I love how they are a great perspective and point of view into the events. Sure, they are completely overpowered by Vash or Wolfwood, but they are neither a non-human-pseduo-angelic being or a man who had his entire body altered [manga] to be a better killer or just a much more on the job experience [anime] soooooo yeah. I’m okay with Meryl and Milly not having to hold their fighting prowess with the boys.

I finally decided to break down and read the manga. Little did I know that Darkhorse owns the current rights and the series is out of print. Gah, I was hoping to score the series cheap used but that will not be the case. I’ve read the original Trigun from the shounen mag that went belly up (3 tankobons, 1 volume via Darkhorse) and the moved into a seinen publisher for its continuation as Trigun Maximum. I went ahead and purchased all the way up to Trigun Maximum volume 5 and have read it all as well.

As someone who enjoyed the anime, I can appreciate the way the anime ended at the time. They were years away from the end of the manga’s run and the anime team needed to come up with a nice way to tie things up. Honestly, I’m fine with how things went in the anime. Well, other than Wolfwood’s death, which made me cry and still pulled at my heartstrings on the recent watch. So far the manga has more details, and is taking the time to fill in motivations of characters like the Gung Ho Guns (why would you willingly sell your humanity to destroy it?). It however, still keeps an air of mystery about Vash’s past and the exact reason why humans got stuck on the planet.

The two major differences I see between the anime and manga are as follows:

Anime Vash has that sort of 90s MC perv side being a ham towards women early on when it later has him questioning who’d love him anyways. Manga Vash doesn’t even go there which is something I like - dude’s got a lot more problems. No space for chasing skirts and hitting on ladies.

Life on the planet Gunsmoke is fucking terrible in the manga. You think it is pretty shitty in the anime? Pffftt, that’s nothing compared to the manga. People are worse, humanity is more like how Hobbes would view it and less like Locke. I honestly, don’t know all of the differences yet, since I’ve barely cracked the manga story line but it is clear it is only going to get darker. Yet at the same time there is more hope since the humans who’d kept themselves ‘above the fray’ were able to contact other people and they are supposed to possibly be rescued. If Knives doesn’t throw a giant bloody wrench in there.

In a way, these differences do reflect the shift that the anime gives us. We go from a goofy guy who is overly competent trying to bumble/drift through life and has biblical levels of trials/tests of his faith in his own belief system to come out with a resolution and faith in the future. You feel it when you get to around episode 13 and you realize that shit is gonna get serious and you can’t just go back to zany antics.

What I like about the anime is that we have a range of how characters act and view humanity. Vash will punish himself to not harm others as he sees it as the unalienable right that every living thing has the right to life and it isn’t right for you to take that away from anyone. Not sure how he resolves eating those salmon sandwiches with great vigor unless it is artificial salmon (desert planet out?). Milly is the extremely naive and optimistic, Meryl is sarcastically pragmatic. Of course Knives is the exact opposite of Vash, thinking humans are a scourge and no one is worth their own lives.

And in the middling grey area we have - Nicholas D. Wolfwood. Yep, is it shocking my favorite character straddles the moral grey line? Seeing that it is a rhetorical question, we all know that yes, I love my characters that move between different philosophical spaces. Is Wolfwood a good or bad character? It depends; the narrative and other relationships tell us in the anime that we should see him as more good than bad character. He is a friend to all children and uses it as a rationale why he has to do his job. Without him making money from being a traveling clergyman/gun for hire the children would not have financial support. However, we can see that the closer he gets to Vash the more conflicted he is and keeps verbalizing why he has no option but to kill; or else someone else would be killed.

What I like about him is that his observation skills are top notch. When he first meets Vash, he get straight to the point that Vash is wearing a mask in front of others. He’s trying to get by, not die, but has a lot of anger at the shitty hand he was dealt in life. It is the classic example of I had a crap childhood and ended up stuck in this less than ideal path but I want to protect others from it.

He’s one of those characters who really compliments Vash both visually and personality wise. Vash could never haggle down the price of anything but Wolfwood squeaks by talking his way out of pay full fare for the bus or trying to run a tab (as a drifter). Yet at the same time those two idiots are as thick as thieves getting in petty arguments over stupid shit and feeling resolved to deal with each other. I also like how he’s one of the few characters who pushes back at Vash’s need to take on extreme burdens and that sometimes you have to accept all your options are going to suck.

We are going to get in a stupid fight about how Wolfwood’s motorcycle broke down again. Which he named Angelica II. RIP Angelica I.

We just tossed our water bottle over!

And just this. Like sticking out your tongues at the same time will allow you to capture that last bit of water . . .

Does it end here? God no, it continues to the extent that man who saved them is ready to toss them off his truck.

The manga has a very similar visual dynamic between them. They are two guys with rough pasts and are navigating the present in very different ways.

Anyways, I’m still not sure where I exactly want to go with things, but a deep dive into Wolfwood (anime & manga) may be a worthwhile endeavor. I’ve got a ways to go in the manga and I’m not rushing through it or anything like that.

What I am worried about is the remake/reboot/re imagining of Trigun as Trigun Stampede.

I first watched the preview videos about it. I’m not here to argue if CGI is good or bad. What I do have an issue with is the general character designs - I get it, Trigun is a 90s manga/anime and it looks like a 90s series. I really like the Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, for me it has less to do with the character designs and for how the storytelling perspective is more people driven and less sterile/historical documentary style. I’ve read most of the novels and LOGH:DNT leans much more on the novels/format than the original epic long OVA. The creative team behind LOGH:DNT are really giving it their all.

But for Trigun Stampede the new character designs are seriously rubbing me the wrong way.

Vash: I get that Vash would be considered ‘best sad boi’ if the series were new, but the lack of spiked up hair is baffling to me. His prosthetic arm is obviously not of this world in origin/tech and it really kills the slow reveal of what it can do. Wearing a jacket with the Project Seeds logo on it - sure - most people on the planet aren’t the most educated about all that info. We also have the changing of his type of firearm, which any detail nerd is going to be up in arms about the switch from a long colt .45 to a .22 caliber revolver style handgun. I blame Ogata and his love of the Type 38 over the Type 30 rifle for sniping.

Meryl Stryfe: not only gets a tomboy look but a career change and a shit mentor/supervisor. Let’s give her a newsboy hat, shorts with her old suit coat and a large parka and random gloves with chunky sneakers. Oh and she’s the underling of a chain smoking whiskey drinking misogynistic asshole whose job is to treat her like shit and insult her. She neither looks nor acts like a young twenty something professional. In the anime and manga she’s just a petite woman. But episode one of stampede has me concerned.

Milly Thompson: does not exist? Information about this is vague at best and I’m not going to troll the internet for what the creative team may have told the Japanese press. Milly’s character design was top tier. Her character added great value to the anime and manga so far. She’s not on the promo artwork and Roberto De Niro is - which is a bad sign.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood: Looks like a hipster from Tokyo. And any other ikemen type of character. Or from a Jdrama. Really, he looks like if you took a fashionable guy off the street and threw him into the mix.

We see here, an unbuttoned jacket. His dress shirt is unbuttoned at the top, but also not tucked in. He’s got skinny/tapered pants and exposed ankles. And those black shoes that might be sneakers or loafers?

Now, you live on a desert planet my man. You know what absolutely sucks when you live in the desert? Getting sand and shit in your shoes! How do you do that? Don’t wear shoes that aren’t covered by your pants. I can forgive the lack of hats on the entire main cast b/c they are the main characters and we want to see their faces. But if they actually lived on a twin star planet, Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly would all be wearing hats; you want to keep that sun off your face and block a lot of the crap floating by. Honestly, that’s one design element which is spot for the characters except for the lack of hats - the long sleeves and layers. You wear layers and long sleeves and pants when you live in the desert to protect yourself from the elements.

Sadly, not only does his wardrobe suffer from the ‘upgrade’ but his hair as well as a lollipop instead of his hallmark crumpled cigarette. Smoking kills but Wolfwood is going to die young anyways so do you think he cares that much?

His hair is tamed down the long locks in front of his ears are gone and I’m guessing his nose will be shrunk as well. My most recent watch had me appreciate a few elements of his character design. First off, he’s got a rather ‘normal’ looking nose that doesn’t make that weird point. I like this it gave him a more unique appearance without doing too much. We can also see the long shaggy bit of hair as well as the much messier overall look.

Looking at him more closely, it really seems as though he had a sort of almost retro (for the 90s) 70s look with a scruffy chin. That sort of makes sense since he was designed in the 90s, his style might refer back to the previous 20 or so years for his overall look.

I am a huge fan of the added rough around the edges look with the lines on his cheeks which are more pronounced in the manga.

I also visually read this to be an indication of age. Which in the anime, I read him to be the oldest human of the bunch, over thirty. His observational skills, the way he talks to others, how he rationalizes things at least in the anime. Wolfwood has seen more of life and some of his solid statements really make me think this. I haven’t gotten to his whole backstory in the manga yet which from what I’ve seen - is vastly different than that with him being much younger but appearing older. Which is why he gets the scruffy/blushy lines all the time? Maybe? I’ll get back to this. However, this point doesn’t sit well with me since some types of wisdom require one to reach a certain age to get them so I’m not keen on the concept for appears old but is much younger Wolfwood. But I’ll see how it plays out in the manga before judging it.

I’m not the type of person to get my knickers in a twist over logical updates to characters and their design but the creative team for Stampede went hard.

Honestly, I already found a much more professional review that really highlights a lot of the issues I had with episode 1. The reviewer never saw the original and still highlights a lot of the things someone who’d watched it before would or could be bothered by.

https://www.themarysue.com/even-as-a-trigun-newbie-trigun-stampedes-first-episode-didnt-feel-right/

This article completely captures why I hate Roberto De Niro and why if he dies as a character I will be happy. But not happy enough without Milly!

Anyhoo, I’ll give Trigun Stampede the college try, but they are going to have to work very hard to convince me it is a worthy remake. If only to see Roberto De Niro to die and try not to ask Tanigaki why he’s toting around Punisher - which is a heavy cross b/c it is full of mercy.

#trigun #trigun anime #trigun manga #trigun stampede #vash #nicholas d. wolfwood #meryl stryfe #milly thompson #kuronekosama

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