#okay SLIGHTLY motivated by a reviewer who said the twins have equal claim to being right/“the hero”

[nanomooselet]

On Narrators

You know what, fuck it.

I've seen a lot of references to Trigun Stampede having an unreliable narrator, and unfortunately it's activated my media analyst trap card. While there's always a degree of interpretation to these things, there is a difference between interpretation and declaring a banana skin to be orange zest. It makes a difference, especially if you're trying to bake a cake.

That isn't at all what Trigun Stampede is doing. Among other things, it doesn't have a narrator.

Narration, loosely defined, is text (or spoken lines etc) that directly addresses an assumed audience, which may or may not be the actual audience (it depends on the needs of the story). Think voice-overs, think Kuzco in The Emperor's New Groove, think the text panels in a comic or manga that list time and location, or describe the situation. The song of humanity continues to be sung is narration. A narrator is the character who performs narration; sometimes from with the story, sometimes from a position adjacent to it.

Honestly one of the most interesting things about Stampede, in my opinion, is that it makes a point of having neither.

There's no framing device, no presenter, no announcer, no chorus, no soliloquy, not even an internal monologue. There's no direct line to the writers, giving away their intentions. Indeed, the imposition of any text at all is almost entirely absent, save some pointed timing on the title cards, and no character's voice is objective. Zazie or Roberto, who come the closest, can definitely still be wrong - Roberto says Vash is "not long for this world" when Vash is longer for the world than almost anyone else; the man he says would kill with a smile was in fact coerced into becoming a killer. Zazie knows much and is always truthful, but isn't all-knowing, nor operating with complete understanding. And on the other end of the scale you have characters like Dr. Conrad or Knives, where the easiest way to tell they're mistaken or lying is if their mouths are moving. (Outside of brain fuckery. Then you're on your own.) Then there's Vash, who doesn't lie, necessarily, so much as he doesn't volunteer the truth, and tends to dodge giving answers when asked outright.

Now, an unreliable narrator is metafictional, taking advantage of the narrator being a character, and therefore capable of having an agenda.

What makes them unreliable is that they exert motivated influence over what we see - even accidental influence like distorted recollection or misconception. But before declaring such influence is occurring, we need a solid reason to doubt. You don't dismiss an account as unreliable just because it doesn't line up with your own expectations or desires - not without something like a clear contradiction, perhaps, or some conspicuous omission. *

We simply have no reason to believe what we see in Trigun Stampede is anything other than the truth (inasmuch as it's obviously fictional of course). We see some events from multiple viewpoints - here is what Vash experienced, here is what Knives saw, here is what other characters are doing - and what one character sees isn't different from what any other character sees when the perspectives swap. It's just from different distances and angles. The same words are said, the same events play out, and the same reactions are demonstrated by the characters, according to their established values and motivations.

The narrative itself is unadorned and unchanged by their viewpoints. Whether a character is being truthful is simply a judgement you're given to make as the events that occur and their actions reveal more about them.

The term for this isn't narration; it's focalisation, and it's hardly some avant-garde artistic statement. It's intrinsic to telling even the most simple story.

For instance, the way Knives evolves from his initial presentation. His introduction as an adult is as a wrathful would-be god and a merciless killer before his more nuanced motivations and origins are slowly revealed. It would have been different if he'd been introduced first, discovered Tesla and was then depicted destroying Jeneora Rock. He'd come across as more of a protagonist. Instead, because the central character is Vash, we see him first, the humanising struggles of Jeneora Rock's people and Vash's efforts to help them, his anguish when it's rendered moot, and all the ways he suffers as a result of Knives's actions. This is focalisation that makes Knives the antagonist, representing what Vash must overcome. A complex, compelling and perhaps tragic antagonist, but still - not the guy the story is about.

Oh, and that has nothing to do with their respective moral positions, good or evil. It's structural. A protagonist attempts to achieve while an antagonist obstructs, and both by nature will transgress.

Stampede isn't exactly free of ways to manipulate sympathy, and exerts strict control over the perspectives it presents. You could argue it misdirects, or lies by omission - but that's not the same as an unreliable narrator. A narrative is always going to impose some kind of order on events to produce a specific effect, and that does come with bias. But it's the nature of storytelling never to be entirely objective.

I'm not sure that I really have a point, honestly, except that Trigun Stampede is a show that's exceedingly careful to show the characters exactly as they are. It doesn't lie. Personally, I find that more interesting to contemplate than the alternative. We have everything we need to know why the characters do as they do. Certainly far more than some would rather have us know.

* There are two times I think something like this is happening. One is Wolfwood's flashbacks to the orphanage, which are coloured as memories of the softness the Eye ripped away from him. Hence the different art style, and the title of the episode they occur in: once upon a time. It's a fairy tale, more emotionally true than literal to highlight the harshness of his life since then by contrast. There's likely more to that story than Wolfwood is recalling at that moment.

The other, big surprise, is within the memory world. It has manipulative editing, clips taken out of context, video noise, ADR, everything. All you'd need to make it more obvious it can't be trusted is a disclaimer in the corner or inconsistent timestamps or something.