#which is a great fit for trimax where people's main gripe tends to be that nightow's chaotic art style in the fight scenes is hard to follo

[roserocksrapidly]

Not to complain about tri stamp on main, genuinely NOT trying to bash it, but I really don't like how they handled Vash and Knives relationship :/ . And it's not just bc it's different from the source material. Specifically rn thinking about the arm situation.

Rambling thoughts on why below:

On the surface, it's the same- there's a confrontation between the brothers and it ends with Knives cutting off Vash's arm. But like the implications are so different 😭. In stamp, they argue bc Knives just "protected" Vash by killing some humans, Vash's powers start to go haywire in a fit of protective rage, and Knives takes Vash's arm to keep him from black holing everything. But the manga situation frames it in a much more interesting way to me. They're arguing bc Knives just killed humans to "save" Vash again, BUT

1) these humans did actually hurt Vash. It's not all that unreasonable to retaliate when the evidence of their cruelty is right there in a young Vash chained to a pole in the town square. But Vash would never retaliate bc of his pacifism and the fact that he understands why they have done something cruel. He would get pissed at Knives killing any humans of course, but the pre-established relationship Vash has with these people in particular gives the reader a different picture of WHY Vash chooses pacifism. He's not just "uwu all humans are good", he knows intimately that they can be cruel but he believes strongly in their ability to change-- they're cruel bc they were backed into a corner, that means there's another path forward for them, the cruelty is not inevitable, they all have blank tickets. Meanwhile in stamp, those random scientists were not cruel to Vash. Yeah, scientists as a whole shunned him and spoke bad about him at first, but Vash has a well-established, friendly working relationship by that point. Taking away the immediacy of the cruelty frames Knives as the more mature one who sees past the humans' front to see how they're taking advantage of Vash and it frames Vash as the naive one who must learn why he should protect people instead of turning a blind eye to their cruelty. And like I get why Orange probably did this-- it's a more conventional story beat and gives room to show Vash's development from a naive kid to the wiser hero. But idk I just think this is boring compared to trimax's approach where our expectations for Vash to be the naive hero (like wolfwood's expectations) are slowly chipped away as we learn that Vash is actually a deeply thoughtful, mature person. Much more mature compared to Knives, whose philosophy of killing everything that can hurt you is shown to be deeply childish and naive.

Which leads me to 2) Knives in trimax did not cut off Vash's arm to save or protect him. Even if you can argue stamp Knives did it more to save himself than save Vash, there's still external benefits to keeping Vash from black holing everything uncontrollably lol. But there is NO hiding why manga Knives did it. It was a pure, petty, childish fit of rage. Vash tries to shoot him and Knives is pissed that Vash isn't doing what he wants, that he's standing up to Knives. Vash isn't playing the game how Knives insists it must be played and Knives is a kid who can't regulate his emotions so he lashes out when he doesn't get his way. This is one of the most transparent moments for who Knives is as a person. And I think it's one of the most crucial scenes in the series for showing the main point: that cruelty is childish and cannot bring about a better world and kindness and mercy are the harder road that take real maturity to truly believe in.

Anways, all that being said I don't hate stamp. I can tell that Orange does genuinely have a lot of love for trimax and trigun as a whole and they had to make a lot of simplifying adaptational choices to even conceivably fit the charm of a story as deceptively introspective as trigun into 12 episodes. But still, the places they chose to simplify just don't work for me. I think they make the story much more bland, unfortunately. If I were to watch stamp completely blind, I don't think I would be all that interested in the Vash Knives conflict bc it's a narrative I've seen a hundred times before. And I just think that's a shame, because I could write paragraphs and paragraphs more on how interesting their relationship in the manga is and I wish more people could be exposed to that story.