[calugaritsa]

Meryl being mistreated at Bernardelli and replaced with a military man even though she has the most personal experience with Vash 🤝 Luida being shut down at the all-male crisis panel led by a military man even though she has the most personal experience with independent Plants

🔥🔥THE "STOP DISRESPECTING WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE" SISTERS 🔥🔥

[aullart]

What's next after the end?

[fission-mailure]

Thoughts on Trigun Stargaze's final episode: That was a pretty decent finale for a season that otherwise hasn't lived up to the potential it had when season 1/Stampede ended.

I didn't hate Stargaze like a lot of people, but I still hold that it was insanely rushed and really needed to be two seasons: One for the gang getting back together/Legato trying to awaken Knives/episodic shenanigans dealing with the Gung-Ho Guns, and then one for Knives putting his final plan into action/the arrival of the fleet/so on and so forth.

That wouldn't fix every problem, but it would've fixed a solid 60% of the problems Stargaze had, I think.

But as final episodes go, I didn't come away from this one thinking "Ugh, what a terrible ending." I was pretty satisfied with how it ended, all in all.

[newtsnaturethings]

brushbug vash and meryl

[sol-rust]

Trigun Maximum post-canon 🤞(my designs)

[tenthousandguns]

somebody ""joking"" about bombing an anime studio for making content they don't like. hey guys somebody actually did that? and it killed people? can you stop being miserable fucks for five minutes maybe?

[cam-orange]

sorry for any mistakes at the end of cleaning up this whole thing, i think i stopped comprehending words

[hashtagloveloses]

i didn’t realize how much i needed a new version of a story that asks “what if love was enough to save them? what if the cycle of violence could be stopped, this time, for just a little while? what if he wasn’t alone this time, and he lived?”

and i don't mean this in a fanservice way i mean this in a “i find three versions of a story that are clearly in conversation and the final one asks a hopeful question" interesting way. maybe ill feel differently once stargaze is over and i can evaluate all three versions in their completion! who knows! but i would ask that people think about it more than just "it's completely different from trimax and that is bad"

i also really like the solarpunk turn for trigun. it started as a love letter to westerns, and then clear homage to classic scifi, and we thought it would go more grimdark cyberpunk. but instead we're getting a hopeful version of humanity's future. to me, that's really cool.

[wanderinginkpot]

The way some people are talking about Stargaze right now you'd assume Studio Orange, dressed up as 'da devil from da bible', had personally dragged Nightow on screen and forced him at gunpoint to smack each and every character in the face. So, here is my very passionate, very sleep-deprived, more than likely nonsensical opinion.

There is a lot to critique about StampGaze. Granted, there is a lot to critique about '98. Have I mentioned that there's a lot to critique about the manga? "The pacing is awful!" Look me in the eye and tell me the pacing in '98 was good. "The action sequences are confusing!" Look at any fight scene in maximum and tell me, at a glance, exactly what is happening. Seriously, I'm seeing such vitriolic hatred for the representation of characters in StampGaze who were completely absent from the original anime. All of that said, let me make this clear. Comparison is a trap, nostalgia is the enemy of well-rounded critique.

Two seasons. Twelve episodes each. Three times as much source material and the exact same amount of episodes to work with as the original adaptation. That is what it all boils down to. Razlo's backstory was glossed over, I agree. I also genuinely believe Orange could have pulled it off better if only they had more time. Wolfwood's "death" was a dramatic change, I agree. I also believe it was a well-thought-out creative decision by Orange which could have been pulled off better if they had more time. Melanie's interaction with the boys seemed out of place. Time, time, time!!!

Criticizing StampGaze as an adaptation is only one aspect of critique, and a very surface level one at that when you don't also critique it as it's own project with it's own story to tell. And on its own, I think it is abundantly clear in the vast majority of choices made by Orange that they adore the source material and are sincerely making an effort to pay homage to it, whilst also playing exceptionally well with audience expectations and using these as a launching pad for some incredibly interesting characterisation and the exploration of certain themes. Alas, what they need and don't have is the time to do that. In a way, it's an inverse of the main issue I have with '98, which in my opinion was too many episodes with too little substance to work with.

StampGaze is a lengthy and passionate love letter to the manga, unfortunately forced to cram itself onto a single double-sided A5 page. There are plenty of valid critiques of this show, but dismissing the entire project as "trash" simply because X character isn't an exact recreation of their two-decade-old counterpart is, in my opinion, a rather reductive way to look at things, especially if, for the sake of the comparisons people like to draw, you are not also extending that same energy to the iffier aspects of other adaptations. StampGaze is its own unique story. As such, it has its own unique takes on certain characters and plot points. These creative choices, in isolation, are not the spark which lights the giant, heaping garbage-fire some folks are making it out to be.

I will not deny anybody the right to dislike a show, or to have a favourite. But please, for the sake of Love and Peace, can we all take a second to remember that Trigun Soup is a blessing. A myriad of flavours and varieties, all with their own merits, and you are allowed to prefer one without completely disparaging the other. Passionate critique should not equate to complete dismissal. It's all good soup!

[ayumei88]

Interesting to note; Conrad thought Nai'd be mega-pissed at the plant-grafting and even Elendira comments on Knives' hypocrisy.

Could the Tesla/Nai dream sequence in EP4 and her eye on his blade in EP7 imply that it's not actually Nai in control right now, but Tesla? Or that Nai's feelings/morals are getting mixed up w/ Tesla's?

It's implied in Stampede she is still alive, but has been absorbed by/grafted onto Nai, and the blade/moving eye combo was representative of that, right?

Tesla - who only knows fear, pain and isolation - finally has some amount of freedom and is rightfully ANGERY and therfore only cares about enacting revenge by any means possible, even if it involves using her sisters.

Sympathy/empathy for her sisters? Nah, they brought her into existance, they're partly to blame for all she went through. They left her in a world full of hurt & horror to live & suffer, where she wasn't given any help or sympathy from anyone or anything and with no other interactions other than the humans that made her what she is now.

Nothing else has a right to exist other than her, and the one & only person who seemed to care: Nai.

[venjamyra]

okay i had a long week, so now im finally writing out my stargaze ep 2 thoughts!!!! some manga spoilers are mixed in

this is like 4 analysis posts rolled into one but whatevs

first things first, whats been on my mind this whole week.... hoppered did all that for vashs sake right?

obv hoppered did it for himself, too. taking care of vash and calling him eriks was a way for hoppered to relive what he had lost.

and hoppered pulling the trigger while vash held the gun was hoppered's way of joining the people who died in julai, joining the real eriks and meeting what wouldve been his fate if he didnt happen to be outside the city when everything went down. in a suicidal way, this is also hoppered acting for his own sake (and a reminder that vash killed all those people, unintentionally yes, but this gives a face to it, we see him pull the trigger, we're reminder why this effected him so heavily, and yet again, its not of his own choice)

but what im talking about is building the weapons, fighting vash, using jessica as a means to kick vash into action, that was for vash's sake, right?

last ep i was right in thinking he was building his weapons, but i thought it was maybe for revenge. this feels. distinctly not like revenge imo. he tells vash to live and suffer, but he also tells him to wake up. to me it feels less like a curse (keep suffering because i hate you) and more like... advice? keep suffering because its the only way to be more than a catatonic shell, and you should live, you should suffer, dont let life pass you by so numbly. it might be a little bit of a curse, too

a few things make me think that hoppered wanted to get vash out of that fugue state, and that's why he fought him. one is jessica says this

followed by saying something about their home and apologizing because she probably isn't making sense to hoppered. Then, we get an ominous piano key and an ominous eye

i love all the glimpses under hoppered's mask, they're so cool

to me, this shows hoppered is thinking about what jessica said, it somehow sets him off. the idea of leaving vash the way he is makes him get this determined/upset/decisive look? and then the next scene is him making the ultimatum for vash.

another thing that makes me think he was trying to get vash to wake up for vash's sake is hoppered was remembering eriks and how she seemed to maybe improve slightly but never really come out of that fugue. with all the parallels with vash and eriks, this is maybe showing hoppered feeling regret he couldn't get eriks out of the darkness, as he calls it

ALSO ALSO we get "the darkness is crushing me" then hoppered is startled as a light comes into the shot, and then we see vash walking in, backed by the sun. vash is a light in the darkness, hoppered wants there to be hope, there to be recovery and a future for people who've had wrong done to them. and vash wakes up, he doesn't let the darkness keep its hold on him

maybe because vash is, well, vash the stampede, hoppered started making the weapons with the idea of getting vash's fighting reflexes going. its definitely a complicated response, but i really think he did what he did so that he could help vash. otherwise, well, he could've gotten revenge and died in a much simpler way... :(

we still have time to see if hoppered was ever connected to the gung ho guns in this version, but for now .... i think he was purely internally motivated to do what hes done, which is such an interesting angle. and hes so nice, like he still has an inclination toward violence (the razor from ep 1, the bloody knuckles, the gauntlet weapons) but in comparison to most people in the world of trigun, his violence is probably pretty par for the course honestly. ultimately, the way he treated eriks and vash-as-eriks kindly and gently and imo, specifically wanted to help vash out of his catatonic state... hes so kind. a really great addition for a story about the kind nature of people in a cruel world. its not straightforward but it is kindness, as well as anyone can get.

vash thinks hoppered is kind too...

this scene got me. "I've been in a long dream. In it, Hoppered, you were kind to me. You could have killed me at any time. Why didn't you? I could accept death at your hands."!!!!!???????? omg. what a moment. i wonder how they'll translate that for the dub. vash continues on "I may have been thinking that, somewhere in my mind. But not now. Not anymore. I can't let you kill Jessica." so he doesn't feel that way anymore, but the fact he thinks hoppered is a good enough person that he could kill vash and vash would've accepted it?? so sad and compelling!!!

GOD STARGAZE JUST MAKING ME CRAZY FOR HOPPERED NOW WTF!!! IM NOT MAD THO JUST SURPRISED!!!!

--

okay so the rest of this is a kind of play by play as i'm rewatching the episode and it is a cool bit of world building that the unnamed scientist at the beginning says "It's a miracle. A fleet that left Earth a century or a century and a half ago just happened to be headed in our direction and just happened to pick up the transmission from our home." I think this is interesting because it means that project seeds was not just one set of ships sent off, it was ongoing. So this isn't a rescue mission from Earth, it's a sailboat finding people stranded on a deserted island because of the smoke signals they're sending off.

it does make me really curious what the ending is going to be like? because in the manga, we see the Earth federation (i think thats the name) going after vash and bringing supplies to people on the planet. they get tv and stuff. but this fleet passing by doesn't have supplies to leave on noman's land, it is offering to bring people off the planet. and so far we really haven't seen anyone who would want to stay. which is sad imo. you can't tell me there isn't anyone who has some connection to place on noman's land. the rock formation they played in as kids, seeing the worms light up the sky like ep 4(?) of stampede, twin suns, and never seeing any of it ever again... not sure if they'll explore that angle but there's gotta be someone who wouldn't want to leave. i guess there's the cryosleep stuff where they'll wake up in a new world but... idk. its sad to me

to me, i see a few paths from this, either 1) everyone leaves noman's land at the end, 2) some people leave and some people stay 3) they achieve some kind of harmony with plants that makes noman's land more hospitable and equitable 4) the arriving fleet also settles on noman's land, or some combination thereof. i just came up with #3 as I was writing this and actually, I think that might be what happens. That's my leading theory so far. and if they do that, #4 might not be off the table.

also i love luida sm. "We can't say for sure that we'll be saved. Don't let your guard down. But for sure, there is hope." pragmatic queen

I think leonof and his puppets totally in shadow is a really cool way to introduce him. very whimsical but ominous.

ALSO THE REM PARALLELS WITH BRAD???? THAT GUY IS SO GONNA DIE. JESSICA EVEN SCREAMING AS THE ESCAPE POD GOES OFF LIKE VASH DID WHEN REM SENT HIM AND NAI OFF??? ITS A DIRECT PARALLEL okay i'm done yelling now. orange just likes killing old dudes. rip roberto, (preemptively) rip brad

hoppered helping jessica... awe. again, he just seems so nice

I like this quick scene where hoppered finds vash, and how broken vash looks. i mean hoppered finds him at his lowest, naked and catatonic??? its a really important moment, especially with the parallel we get a few minutes later with the real eriks

(shrinking this bit so you can ignore it if you want) the one thing i will say is i'm a little disappointed at some admittedly small details in these two shots of vash. for the first one, vash's mouth and nose are at the wrong angle for his head and eyes, causing his face to look scrunched unnaturally. i drafted a post with more details on that but idk if i'll post it because like. who cares. maybe i'll just redraw it in my style to satisfy that itch, that feels like a much more positive option.

for the second one, i don't like how stiff vash looks. I'm not opposed to him being tense, but his head is held up off the rock, his legs look like they're supporting his body weight, his arms could be read as holding his torso up a little. I don't feel like he looks collapsed or limp, he looks like he's doing a weird wall squat or mid scrambling backwards. this is also weird to me because i really like how they drew eriks in the basically same situation. idk why vash has these little mistakes.

Overall, i'm a little sad because this could've hit a lot harder with some small changes, but i like the moment with vash, just irked by some of the execution

Okay moving on, I think its tragic ship 3 knew vash was alive, but didn't know he needed help. To me that implies they are used to vash coming to them if he needs help, sending a distress signal, or maybe checking his vitals (because they did pick him and the rest of the gang up in stampede without vash having to seek them out, right?). the vitals thing is interesting to me because of the idea of him being physically fine but emotionally wrecked. poor baby...

also i already talked about hoppered and how i love his character here, but i have to talk about his lying to make things seem better than they are because i find it so endearing and sad. last ep he told vash-as-eriks that the people in town were nice to him even though they weren't. Here, he tells real-eriks that "I talked to them. Don't worry. They'll never bother you again. In fact, they promised." and then we see his bloody hand, where the implication is he probably killed whoever hurt eriks. and then later, "Don't worry, I'm not hungry. You can have it all." 🥺😭

vash's reactions..... "Shoot. Do it like you did in Julai." 😭😭😭

"What you took from me was half of my entire being" (i don't really think this line will come back when wolfwood probably dies this season, but wouldn't that be cool? terribly sad but cool)

and then vash lets hoppered get a hit on him 😭😭 vash's face makes me so sad

i saw some people talking about how vash killing hoppered is adapting when he kills legato in the manga, but i disagree. here, vash did not pull the trigger willingly. vash killing hoppered (hoppered making vash kill him) is more a face to put to julai and everyone who died. vash has already killed the entire population of julai, just not willingly. if we get vash killing legato, which i feel like we will, it would be the first time vash decides to kill, instead of someone (this time literally) forcing his hand.

and then meryl hits wolfwood with her car!!! i love that she's obviously so excited about vash being spotted but still wants to give milly lots of advice its so cute. and milly being so cheeky 'yeah, but you still gotta look forward, too.' *pointing at wolfwood*

their dynamic is really on point.

there's a million screenshots of this because its great. i'll add one more lol. wolfwood's va did great on that scream!! its so funny i feel bad for laughing! also the car is swerving at the end so I think meryl hit the breaks at the last second, she was just going too fast to stop lol

[ayumei88]

The little things I enjoyed about EP3:

Spoilersss

The puppets were so well done! All of them, even the background puppets, were animated and using different ways of attacking Vash!

Puppet Nai can't create knives so instead he holds a shiv when attempting to stab Jessica

Vash flinched when Leonof likened him to Nai :(

They animated zero-G recoil when he shot at Leonof; attention to detail!

Found it funny Leonof answered Vash's rhetorical question of "show yourself" with "I refuse! Why do you think I use puppets!?" Pah!

Really liked how assertive Vash was. Whenever Leonof states his goal is to take him to Nai, Vash was so quick to say "No, never" each time. Proud of you dude; know your rights! You deserve autonomy!

Lots of varied camera angles and panning; liked it when the camera was behind Vashs' hair but focused on Leonof

Liked it when he shot the knife arm into one of the puppets' head, then grabbed another one to impale the others. Vash can be so brutal, damn

Translation difference from JP that I think makes things more hurty. Vash doesn't say "just checking you're not a puppet" to Wolfwood; he says "just checking you're human" which is why Wolfwood says "what does that even mean?" Wolfwood doesn't think he's a human though does he :(

They're really using Meryl a lot to showcase how varied and dynamic the Studios facial expression tech is. Look at how many different expressions she makes towards the end of the episode!

Jessica's shoulder strap kept falling down

The plant changes a little red/purple in hue when the gravity field is put back to normal

You can see Vash has to fight differently because his gun is different and because they're robots; I think almost all his shots were headshots?

I adore the polygun dynamic already. I craved more interaction between all of them in Trimax so I'm very pleased with this set up.

Do you think Wolfwood was checking his store of vials because he used one when he got annihilated by Meryl? 😆

Milly is perfect: genki but so insightful. I think when introducing herself to Vash she noticed how embarrassed/nervous Meryl was so she carried on introducing herself when Meryl did too to make Meryl feel less awkward

Wolfwoods' little smile when Vash was able to cry and be supported by everyone :')

[littletigerburningbright]

Trigun Stargaze continues the absolute peak excellence of Trigun Stampede. Seriously, only two episodes in, and it's already one of the most emotionally powerful animes I've ever seen. I can't recommend it enough. Vash breaks my heart into a million pieces. And the animation is stunningly gorgeous. The way it explores the cost of pacifism, not just in a broader sense, but on a personal level, to Vash himself, the way it isolates him and causes him so much internal conflict, so much self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness, it's just so powerful. The entire sequence between Vash and Hopper was devastating. Vash is such a beautiful example of the tragedy of selflessness and the struggle endured by those carrying the weight of empathy and compassion. His catatonia at the beginning, brought on as a result of what happened in Julai, and with his brother, makes so much sense with who Vash is. The burden of knowing, even in his attempt to save that city, and Nai, it was still decimated, and his brother, he believed, still died. And of course Vash blames himself for it, and Hopper blames him too for the death of Ericks, and the hardest part to accept is that it's not entirely untrue. Vash is in some ways responsible because he refused to kill Nai. God, it just totally tore me apart to see Hopper screaming at Vash how he took away one half of his very soul. But then how it's saving a life in Jessica that finally brings Vash out of his catatonia, again, makes perfect sense, because the one thing he values above all else is life. Vash is such a genuinely kind character, he's truly a hero, but the way the story explores his refusal to kill and dares to frame it as almost destructive at times, is incredible. Because that really is the question between pacifism and violence. It's not a simple, black and white answer of right versus wrong, and being a pacifist doesn't automatically lift you up or set you free. You can't always save others if you refuse to kill. Sometimes it's a refusal to kill that can lead to people dying. So many of Vash's attempts to save lives result in those same lives being lost, and that's part of what makes his story and his character so tragic. He values life so much, and tries so hard to save lives, but the very manifestation of those values, in the form of his pacifism, often results in failure on his part. Despite his best efforts to preserve life, so often those lives, one way or another, end up snuffed out, and you can just see him taking the weight of that guilt onto himself more and more as the story progresses. He's paying both with his body and his soul for his refusal to kill.

[fartmobile]

Drawfee doodles ☕️

[avee-anne]

Tbh I don't think Lina’s sudden absence in Stargaze is due to poor communication between the Stampede and Stargaze teams. Many Stampede characters were credited with their full names even before their proper introduction in the show, yet Lina was only listed as “girl”, which suggests they knew she wouldn't be a full-fledged character.

Considering that most of the “retcons” we've seen so far come from that one scene with Lina, I am inclined to consider the theory that the entire scene was meant to be Vash’s dreamlike perception of the world in episode 2. The loss of his prosthetic arm, for example, would explain why he only presses the piano keys with his right hand.

I'll still miss Eriks, Lina, and Sheryl’s dynamic in the manga of course, but I can't deny that Eriks being taken care of by Hoppered is also a very interesting change. I guess we'll have to see next week where the story goes from here.

[ayumei88]

Having seen EP1 of STARGAZE and seen the preview pics for EP2, I think there may have been a little miscommunication between the two teams as the interview below states that both STAMPEDE & STARGAZE were being made at the same time.

Trigun Stargaze Creative Team on Bringing Vash’s Story To Justice After 30 Years

Yasuhiro Nightow and Studio Orange tease what’s to come in 2026’s TRIGUN STARGAZE, the anime’s concluding chapter.

Bet they'd already started animating/VA-ing or had finished scripting EP1-3 of STARGAZE by the time STAMPEDE EP12 aired, and as can be seen in the BTS of STAMPEDE, storyboards aren't the final say; things can still change/moved around until it gets animated.

Just tryna come up with reasons for the discrepancies between the two series >_<"

[spibder]

recent tristamp news has me. RLLY thinking abt tristamp vash 4 once. very super messy attempt at theoretical timeskip vashu </3

[doomed-yaoi-is-my-drug]

We could have had it ALLLLL-