Tag Archives: Trigun

Trigun Stargaze Review

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It’s time for a really crazy finale to the Trigun adventure. In a way it’s fun to see how things went because you really couldn’t predict what was going to happen next but at the same time it did feel like the show was just running through without a big plan at times. Vash also looks consistently terrible throughout so ultimately the negatives did prevail. This is probably the weakest Trigun season all around even if it does end up having some really excellent fights during the adventure.

A lot of time has passed since the last season and Vash is currently knocked out. (which will be his status for most of the season) Meryl and Millie are driving around doing their reporter jobs when they find out that another colony of humans is approaching the planet. They will help evacuate humanity from this crazy plant world and maybe this will finally end all of the craziness. Unfortunately it won’t be easy as Knives is close to achieving his final form and his minions need more plants to power him up. That means they will be shredding a lot of humans in the process. Vash cannot be depended on so Wolfwood will have to fight them off but each fight accelerates the last of his lifespan so this will not be easy.

It is a bold move to sideline the main character from the final season of his own adventure so I have to give the show some props there. What I can’t give it any credit for is Vash’s absolutely terrible showing throughout though. Vash’s pacifism has consistently been a negative throughout the reboot and he just continues to double down on it here. Forget destroying the mass murderers, Vash won’t even hit them with a flesh wound half the time because it’s too risky and might end up costing their lives. Vash is content to just hesitate in every fight and constantly gets himself captured.

One thing you need to understand here is that these villains are going to be very difficult to take in alive. One of them can use telekinesis to move people and crush their very bones. He is shown to be able to impact an entire tank as well as a large group of people so this power operates at a very high level. No prison can hurt him. Another one is a nearly invulnerable superweapon like Wolfwood, we have Knives who is nearly unstoppable, a music fighter whose audio can destroy you from the inside out, etc.

These guys aren’t bluffing either in case you were hoping that could be a slight cope. Throughout the series they have murdered hundreds of humans. Humanity was already nearly extinct when the series started and that number has been severely reduced. Wolfwood wisely tells Vash that every time he spares these guys, he is causing countless other deaths and is proven right over and over again. Despite that, the show forces Wolfwood to have to try and emulate Vash’s lifestyle by the end which doesn’t make any sense. I much prefer Wolfwood as a full contrast to Vash who is ready to do what needs to be done.

The No Kill rule is a good one for heroes to aspire to but there have to be exceptions depending on the circumstances. The biggest problem with Vash is that he doesn’t believe in having any exceptions at all. He just continues to spare every villain no matter how many lives it causes. The worst part is that he is often the last line of defense for a whole group of powerless humans so letting himself get captured directly causes them all to be doomed. There’s just nothing heroic about Vash and I dare say that he is one of the worst anime protags I’ve seen in quite a while. As the show goes on he just gets worse and worse and worse so maybe it’s for the best that he’s unconscious for most of the season.

Wolfwood is the MVP here because he is the one constantly having to fight for humanity. This often means injecting himself with more juice to keep fighting even though it is destroying his future. Unfortunately he is simply not powerful enough to stop someone like Knives and has a tough time with most of the executives. After a point there is only so much you can do with battle experience when you don’t have the raw stats to get over the hump. His weapon is as cool as ever though.

Ignoring the part where he actually tries to say that Vash has a point, Wolfwood operates as the realist that the series needed. He is there to take care of the villains and protect people as much as he can. It’s often not enough and that’s part of the tragedy for his character but at least he is trying. Without him the show would definitely have lost a whole lot of steam.

Meryl and Milly consistently have a decent role in this one complete with action scenes. They are completely out of their depth in terms of power levels though so they mostly have to rely on the villains going absolutely crazy. Meryl’s a fun character with how proactive she is. Every duo needs at least one tough member and that’s her role. Milly is definitely the contrast here and well I wouldn’t say she’s all that good. Not really my kind of character. For a second there, I thought they show did a twist where she was one of the sentient bugs which would have been really cool but it was just an oddly phrased sentence that was clarified right away.

The Puppetmaster is one of the first villains to make a big move. He’s technically pretty tough but only when all of the conditions are right. If you get past his puppets then the guy is doomed. He mainly lasts in the Vash fight since the hero refuses to hurt anybody. He’s definitely the weakest out of the main villains and I wouldn’t trust him around the base. I dunno it just seems like he was flipped way too easily.

Midvalley is another guy who flips quickly. Sure he was working for Knives out of fear but it doesn’t change the fact that he did go along with the villains. He really tried to destroy Wolfwood during their fight as well. The villains tend to get off way too easily in the show. He did make for a really good fight scene though so I have to give him some props there. I always did think that sound makes for an incredibly deadly weapon since it is so hard to dodge.

Then we have Elendira who spends most of the show in the background. It’s a little too late by the time she is ready to act. Decent powerset but it’s obvious that she is not on the level of the other executives. Vash or Wormwood could take her down with ease but for the most part everyone ignores her so she gets to land a lot of cheap shots. I feel like she mainly exists so that the crazy professor has somebody to talk to back at the base.

Then we have Knives’ most loyal follower: Legato. This guy is completely broken because his telekinesis appears to work at any range and he is also an exceptional close quarters fighter. He seems to be the most powerful fighter in the series because his abilities even work on Vash so they would probably work on Knives as well. It would just be hard for him to land the killing blow so it would be a long drawn out fight. I appreciate that Legato is just super evil. He’s not misunderstood or anything like that.

Legato just really thinks that humanity should be destroyed and every action is towards that goal. The guy is straight forward and sometimes you need a character like that instead of just throwing more ambiguity everywhere. If anything Knives is lucky that Legato was so loyal that he was never thinking straight. Legato just couldn’t believe that Knives had any imperfections and so he wasn’t expecting a cheap shot. Although he didn’t exactly seem broken up about it in the end….

Razlo sort of comes out of nowhere near the end but he does actually have a full character arc and all. He makes for a good opponent and is a solid counterpart to Wolfwood. It all goes a bit fast but on the whole I thought he was a good character. The heroes needed one more fighter with how badly they were outnumbered and he was really useful. It would have been nice if his powerset was a bit more different than Wolfwood’s just so he could stand out more but I was glad at least something good happened for the guy. Most of the show is rather brutal for Wolfwood.

As for Knives, well you could say that he’s the biggest double standard in the show. He wants to destroy humanity for what they are doing to the plants, yet he has to murder tons of plants in order to stay alive. During the first half of the show he doesn’t know this is happening so I can give him a pass on that but then by the end of the show he doesn’t care anymore. He considers this an “ends justify the means” kind of situation and so he keeps on absorbing them in order to get great power. It just makes his whole message hollow.

If you have to destroy all of the planets in order to save them from the humans then your goal doesn’t make sense. The show also has the audacity to try and make him sympathetic by the end which is crazy. Maybe I could take it seriously if he wasn’t having his group torture Vash for months on end and just generally murdering everybody. You have to have some kind of a standard here and this guy was evil through and through. I would have just focused on how crazy he was.

The show has a very interesting concept with the plants being sentient. Imagine if all of a sudden every vegetable was sentient but only 2-5 people in the whole world could hear their voices? Most people probably would just call them crazy and keep on eating vegetables. So for the 5 people I can understand why they would want to amass an army to stop the plants. That’s about where my sympathies with Knives ends. Once Knives begins to “eat” the plants to gain strength then it completely undercuts his arguments.

It also makes Vash look bad as well since he still tries to reason with Knives up through the very end. I can’t help it, the whole show is about bashing Vash so he seems to come up constantly. Vash had multiple chances to end this or at least to put massive holes into Knives’ plan and refuses to do so. Vash is just suicidally empathic the whole time and that’s not a good trait for a character to have. You can understand that the situation absolutely sucks for all parties while still making a move. I forget which character calls Vash a coward to his face about this (Probably Wormwood) but that character was right. It is cowardly to sit back and do nothing because you just don’t know what to do. Particularly in a situation where people are actively being hunted and killed the whole time.

Also while it can be funny in an ironic kind of way, I do think the show has Vash being kidnapped way too often. It just kills the pacing of the series when this same story beat is trotted out over and over. Keep in mind that Knives is unconscious for a lot of the story too so the show just has nowhere to go at times. If you’re going to do that then you need to have a super interesting debate going on and that’s often not the case. I don’t really care about the researchers or the villains talking about the plants all that much. The show just didn’t add enough interesting hooks during the slow moments which also hurt it in the longrun.

The animation is pretty good for a CG title. It does use a whole lot of bright colors so the fights stand out and there is a ton of movement. Trigun definitely pushes the medium pretty hard and so I can definitely recommend those fights quite a lot. The soundtrack isn’t quite as impressive. The opening’s all over the place although I wouldn’t call it bad and the in-show ost is good enough. The animation definitely stands out more than the soundtrack in this case but it works well enough during the battles.

The show can definitely be pretty violent so you’ll want to watch out if you’re expecting a lighter adventure. The scene of Legato throwing a bunch of people into the equivalent of a human blender was particularly disturbing. It’s not like the show is regularly violent but it just has those occasional scenes that really stand out. Vash getting tortured for example isn’t particularly violent so it doesn’t hit as hard even if you can tell that it’s all super painful though.

I will end on a solid note for the season which is that it does have some pretty interesting debates within it. At what point should you be allowed to take a life? Not in self defense, but proactively taking a life in order to help others out. I think it’s really an interesting topic and I like those discussions but Vash basically refuses to consider any argument other than “Never!”. That’s always the worst kind of response to this situation and gives me Attack on Titan flashbacks. At least try and discuss the topic. The villains also make it super easy by giving the ultimate layup situations in front of Vash like actively murdering people right in front of him and Vash is still hesitating the whole time.

There’s one episode near the end where he finally relents and attempts to shoot a villain. It just took the villain ages of choking a character to death and burning countless others before Vash makes a move. So I was glad that Vash made a decision but it should not have taken quite that long. He’s got to be one of the most stubborn characters I’ve ever seen. The show’s apocalyptic atmosphere is also pretty interesting. At times it doesn’t feel like the characters are taking the extinction of the human race for the dire threat that it is, but it makes for a tense backdrop. The heroes are also on the backfoot in this adventure throughout. It’s just not always able to capitalize on this. I also would have liked to have seen the insects do a little more but I get that they didn’t really care who won. Insects will continue to thrive no matter what but they could have been a great wildcard.

Overall, This show was really annoying throughout. The pacing could be really slow at times too. Maybe uneven is the better way to put it. You would go a whole episode of Vash acting crazy while the others walk around, then an episode of nonstop fighting, rinse and repeat. I think there was enough time to cover everything evenly but the episodes had weird priorities at times. I’d say the show has virtually 0 replay value as well. It’s the kind of show where I would definitely Youtube the fights but I wouldn’t want to go through all of the melodrama again. The ending is also deeply unsatisfying. If you’ve made it this far in the Trigun mythos then you should finish it up but don’t expect a great ending here.

Overall 5/10

Trigun Stampede Review

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It’s been a long while since I saw the original Trigun so it was fun to check out this modern remake of it. It’s a very short series so it can’t quite tackle everything that the original could but does well in a compressed kind of way. Directly, I would say that the original did just about everything better than the remake but at the same time it’s been long enough where my memories of the original might be better than my experience was. I see that my review of the original wasn’t exactly glowing back then so it’s always fun to see how things have changed. Regardless, this one does a good job…even if it is CG!

The show starts by introducing us to Vash and Knives. They were raised by a nice lady named Rem but Knives ended up sabotaging the ship and basically causing everyone to die. Vash barely survived the incident and now he has to find Knives and put a stop to him before he hurts anyone else. Along the way Vash also repairs any generator that is run down and needing repairs. See, the world is effectively powered by these things and without them you can’t really get power, water, electricity, etc. You basically die without them. One lady was trying to grow plants so that they could create oxygen but everyone thinks that she is super crazy.

Also, unfortunately Vash is a wanted man with a huge bounty on his head. So he has to always be on the run. Despite this, he has managed to remain as a pacifist for all these years and really tries to never fight if he can help it. Obviously this is not an easy task by any means so definitely kudos to him for doing his best there. The problem is that when he is put into a situation where he needs to fight, he doesn’t always do well. Will Knives end up winning because Vash refuses to do anything?

In a nutshell that is my biggest issue with the remake. I felt that the first show had a much better balance of how Vash should be. Yes, he was a pacifist who never wanted to murder anyone but he was much more willing to fight and at least stop the threat. Knock someone out or capture them at least. Here, he spends a lot of time running around and dodging which lets innocent people get shot or put into harm’s way. Whereas the original Vash was a super prodigy who could stop anyone, this one feels like he gets by on pure luck most of the time. A great example of this is in the very first episodes.

So you have a crazy guy who wants to throw bombs around and destroy the town. Vash is messing around like always but you figure he has a great plan and won’t let anybody get hurt right? I mean he can’t just be acting up like this if he has no plan?….well that’s exactly what happens and it is supremely annoying. This is just disgraceful considering that we are counting on him here. In fact he runs out of bullets and it is only thanks to some quick thinking by Meryl that the town isn’t blown to kingdom come. It may seem like a minor thing but it’s quite major when you think about it.

See, a key part of Vash’s character is that all life is precious. He doesn’t care if you’re a law abiding citizen or a mass murderer, he’s going to try and protect you. He does this by honing his gun skills every day and making sure he is the absolute best so he can win every fight in a non lethal way. In the old show the only exception is Knives who Vash does fully intend to take down for good. He doesn’t have the same drive here at all unfortunately. So with Vash being clowned on here, it undermines his motivation because now he’s not going to actually save everyone. In fact, instead he’s just going to end up causing many more civilian deaths on a high order. This is not the way to go, not at all.

This keeps on happening in the show where it feels like they made Vash too extreme in his pacifism to the point where he’s just enabling the villains after a while and it nearly costs him everything. So while I grew to enjoy him in the old show, I didn’t really care for him here. It just helped to underscore why Wolfwood was a much better character. Wolfwood is the pragmatist here who does what needs to be done. Lets face it, he had a much worse childhood than Vash had. Wolfwood was tortured and experimented on for ages while basically losing everything. He’s blackmailed the whole series and still manages to help people out from time to time.

The biggest difference is that he will actually murder the villains when they are going too far. Wolfwood directly saves a lot of lives this way. Sure he may not be as heroic as Vash but to the people he saves that won’t end up mattering all that much. In a fight I think Vash would probably still have the edge here if he was going all out but if they’re both in character then I’m betting Wolfwood wins more times than not. He’s simply willing to go further and his healing factor is extremely good here. I actually think he seems more powerful than in the original version with how fast he heals from everything. He’s a great character through and through.

Meryl is a solid character here who is very gung ho and always ready for action. She disobeys orders several times in order to help the heroes out which I appreciate. It’s usually a problem if you follow orders too closely because then you lose sight of the forest for the trees. So I’m glad that didn’t happen here as it would have been a real problem. She may not be able to fight at a high level just yet but she does help out on multiple occasions and is a fun character to have around. She does a great job of being the B plot.

Meanwhile her partner Roberto is also a lot of fun. I admit that I can never take him seriously when he pulls the gun out on the more powerful villains but it is a fact that he has more experience than Meryl and helps her out on many occasions. I often disagree with his decisions but he does some of them in order to protect her. He’s rather jaded and seems to have lost faith in humanity a long time ago. It’s easy to see why with how messed up the world is in this series. It almost does seem like humanity is determined to mess up every planet in its way so you can see how that’s a big problem. So at this point he just wants to pick up his paycheck and keep his head down but having a partner like Meryl makes that impossible. They have a great dynamic going there.

From the flashbacks you have Rem who was a very solid character as well. It’s a shame that things didn’t go better for her. You could tell that she did her best to make the right decisions. Ultimately I wouldn’t put any blame on her, sometimes you do everything right and things still end up going badly. That’s just life in a nutshell after all. Finally you have Knives who is as sinister as ever but I did think that the show gave him more points this time around. Yeah he’s the antagonist but when he’s going up against the humans you’re rooting for him because of how crazy they are. It feels like every human immediately goes off the rails as soon as any accountability vanishes.

We see them torturing the plant life and Knives’ fellow friends all the time. Most of the humans don’t seem all that remorseful. We even have a whole episode to show how quickly they turn on Vash and the others when the going gets tough. Humanity can’t be trusted in this series and that’s a running theme. Vash simply chooses to help them out anyway. It definitely underscores what a nice guy he is but sometimes to a fault. Knives’ decision to massacre them all is extreme as well but is it much different than what the humans would do?

To the humans, Knives is simply a sentient plant. They wouldn’t bat an eye in murdering him the way they wouldn’t for a bunch of aliens. So to Knives the perspective is really the same here which makes sense. Whenever you make a villain like this with a solid backstory and make the humans relatively unlikable, it’s a little hard to root against him. Particularly when there are no solutions presented to combat his logic. He’s definitely one of the standout characters here and the show really made him a huge threat here, he’s even more powerful than in the first show.

Hamilton is one of those villains who reminds you why Vash is a little too lenient. If someone didn’t show up things were going to get dicey again. He’s one of the most underwhelming villains though. I couldn’t take him too seriously in a world where Knives and his gang exists. Legato barely gets to do anything in this series and he’s many times better. The guy’s gravity powers are really intense and he’s the kind of character who strikes fear into your heart the moment he appears. That is absolutely the kind of guy you want to have as a big antagonist.

Elendira appears for even less time and leaves more of an impact than Hamilton. I think there’s a whole lot they could do with her moveset. In general Knives’ group are very interesting and I would like to see more of them. You probably need to give Wolfwood and Vash at least one more powerful ally so they aren’t too badly outnumbered though. Otherwise that would really put them in a tough spot.

Then you have the villains who are victims like Rollo and Livio. Rollo is probably the most tragic character in the series. He was only a kid but due to Vash’s carelessness he had to go through a whole lot and really lost his mind. He’s a complete victim because he never had a choice in how his life ended up. Definitely sad all the way. Same for Livio who may have gotten to be older but he was molded since he was a kid so I’d say that the same thing applies to him. If anything he may have gone through even more pain than the other characters. It shows that the villains have to be taken out before they can do this to more people.

Finally there is Zazie who is a great wild card but doesn’t do as much as I would have liked. So you have the humans who crash landed on this planet a while back and the sentient plants who are trying to do their best to survive. There is a third party though, the creatures who already existed on the planet. They are led by Zazie although that might not be the right word. Zazie is the collective consciousness of these creatures and as a result he wields a ton of power. At one point he explains that whoever he decides to help will win the war which is a great speech. And then…Zazie doesn’t do much for the rest of the series. I really wanted to see him get a bigger role, maybe take on Vash and Knives. I suppose in a way you could say that he doesn’t have to do anything since he will exist as long as the planet does but that’s too passive. I want to see him do that because you can’t have one of the best scenes in the show and just vanish. That doesn’t work for me.

Stampede is interesting in how it’s a remake in a lot of ways while also working as a prequel. Now there are some obvious reasons you will note as to why this can’t totally work as a prequel after watching the whole series but the ending does add 2 ways that make it work. So the best way to think of this is as a completely different path that will be leading to new events. It’s as if you started a game and skipped most of the content in an attempt to speed run the final boss. Now the game is catching up so a bunch of the old missions will appear. It’s a really unique way to handle things and all in all I thought it was very interesting. It puts the sequel at a bit of a disadvantage since a lot of the best scenes are already here but I’m curious how it will go.

The series feels a bit darker than the original. The original had time for a lot of light hearted episodes and sequences in addition to the action but here because of the sped up format the series focuses more on the dark backstories for everyone. I feel like there are very few moments where the characters get to just hang out and have a good time. There is always something serious going on. At times the show can go a bit far with all of the violence and dark themes. You have quite a lot of people being tortured or dying some rough deaths. Most of the characters don’t really end up in a happy place by the end.

In fact, most of them have sad endings here. The very ending is actually really sad as well with how things went down. So get ready for a very emotional series. What helps at least is that the series never feels exploitive. It can be really heavy for sure but without overplaying the issue the way other titles were. So brace yourself to be sure but this series is still focusing on having a captivating story first and foremost. Perhaps one where you are rooting for the plants over the humans but that’s all in how you see it.

Now for the animation, a big thing here was that the show was going to be CG. Of course you know that means it won’t look as good as hand drawn but if it can still at least look pretty good in general then that wouldn’t matter right? I can satisfactorily say that it does look sharp. I would still say not as good as any of the hand drawn shows on the market but they tried pretty hard here. They do a good job of showing off Knives’ abilities here for sure. Vash’s arm cannon doesn’t look quite as good but that’s more on the story direction than the animation I would say. There are fun fights here and so in general they did the best with what they had.

For the ost…another forgettable one for the most part. The opening isn’t bad as it reminds me of the Tower of God opening. It fits the tone of the overall show. The tunes aren’t bad and there was one battle theme I liked but they could have gone a little harder on this end I’d say. Give me some really tense tunes and a bunch of opera type music. I think those would have worked really well with the show and made it even more exciting. Especially with the show’s deep themes you could have some Death Note kind of music in there and it would work really well. Maybe next time I suppose.

A final thing to note is the show spends a good amount of time on Vash’s backstory here. More so even than in the original show I’d say as outside of the whole situation with Knives we see how Vash was able to hang out with some humans for a while and how he actually knew peace for a while. It’s easy to forget but as a plant he is effectively immortal and he’s been around for a very long time. That can get awful lonely especially with the level of guilt that he is carrying. It gets really emotional with the group that he hung out with as well especially with so many secrets around. The whole show can get sad a lot of the time and this part is no exception. Again it shows how impressive it is that he is still so cheerful all the time and how he hasn’t broken down yet. I can at least give him that credit.

Overall, Trigun Stampede is a pretty good show. At times it can get a little on the violent side which just makes you mad at Vash every time since he could have done more to prevent these scenarios. Realistically you can’t blame him for everything though, Knives also deserves the lion’s share of the blame at the end of the day because he’s the one putting the gears into motion but Vash should have been better. The show has a good plot and it is very engaging though. The banter between Vash and Wormwood is as good as you might have guessed and I liked how many different parties got involved by the end. It’ll be difficult for a future season to match this one now that a lot of the big plots are completed but there is certainly room for the sequel. A lot of the internal debates like the rights for the sentient plants can continue to be a thing. Of course it does feel like a losing battle as long as the people in high positions tend to be humans. I’d recommend checking this one out and if you like it, then watch the original for the more fleshed out version.

Overall 7/10