so because again twt has a character limit and i desperately want to just type out all of my feelings and i have The Anxiety(tm) sharing things when i'm critical of something here we go. i said a shorter tldr version of all this in my initial "i watched/read all the triguns and here's a short review" post but i wanted to go into more depth with why i don't like 98, esp after rewatching it all the way through a second time and also rewatching stampgaze + rereading trimax a couple times as one does when in the midst of an audhd hyperfocus binge.
i'mma be keeping this out of the tags and under a cut, but i'd also welcome (civil!! keep it civil please!!!) discussion, because i know 98 is very well liked, generally - which is why i was surprised at how much i didn't like it compared to the manga/stampgaze - and i'm curious about takes on the things i didn't like. and i'm also curious if people agree with me!
so, here goes; why i didn't like trigun 98
now, the first thing i didn't like is i will FULLY admit to a matter of personal taste, and i understand the rationale for it, so i won't dwell on it. but dear god the added slapstick in 98 made the first half dozen or so episodes painful for me to get through. i get secondhand cringe/ embarrassment really easily for comedic/slapstick moments, which is why 99% of all comedy genre stuff doesn't land for me, so it was. a struggle.
granted, i know trimax has slapstick! vash is a goofy goober sometimes and there are some genuinely silly moments! i love that. it strikes a perfect balance with the seriousness of it all and helps inform vash's character. but it felt like 98 just kind of turned it up to 11 and not in a way that helped. i joked a few times to myself in notes i was making that it felt like everyone was suffering from heatstroke, and it did at that. everyone at first felt that much...denser. they did not need to add the lack of wanted posters just for that mistaken identity slapstick with meryl, and that dragged on way too long honestly. and while i do stand with Certified Freak(tm) Vash, the added over the top horniness was a little grating. like vash darling i know a lot of this is an act but i think you might be overdoing it here.
but, as said, this was the late 90s, and late 90s anime humor had a very specific something to it that was...uh...this. so i don't hold it against the anime for leaning into the trends of the time, and it also helps that once they got into the meat of the plot past ep 6-7 or so it got toned down a fair bit, so it stopped being a problem for me really quickly.
okay now onto the ACTUAL issues not the "kitty is a baby about too much crack and slapstick" issues.
my main issues are twofold: the lack of stakes and consequences for vash's actions or lack thereof, and the wild and rampant character derailment.
the first issue: like, why in the hell did 98 just shrug and go yeah no one died in july or after the fifth moon, absolutely not a soul. and i can't remember if they came out and said yeah no one died at the attack on home either (besides brad but i'm salty about THAT too, why did you kill off our boy) but i wouldn't be surprised. like, that cuts out so much of the weight of those incidents, that oh no one died. it feels like it takes away so much of the reasons vash had to carry so much of a burden. it lets him off much too lightly for his flaws. nothing feels earned when none of the major incidents in his path actually kill anyone.
now, stargaze has this issue too esp in the last 4 episodes (you will not see me arguing against ww's survival but after that is a bit. hm.), but i did appreciate that stampede did have july/jeonora rock cause so much death-- and the weight of us knowing rosa and toniv made that hurt him so much more, too-- and the addition of monev/rollo and the blatant consequences of vash's savior complex was peak shit. all of that is why i can let off midvalley and leonof's survival in stargaze, at least, because in that sense, those two surviving feels earned, it gave me a breath of "after all that death, just this once, he's done it"-- which 98 never ever gives me, because no one died at all anyway, so who cares if more people Don't Die.
(granted i'm biased towards midvalley, leonof can stay dead idgaf but mids....i'm so glad mids....i'll take it....)
another problem relating to this is knives....uh...not doing anything. the lack of stakes in that knives is just, what, twiddling his thumbs sipping some wine like a bond villain waiting for vash to roll up was A Choice. what's the hurry vash, there's no fleet there's no fusing with the other plants there's no attacks on plant facilities there's no hard time limit before things explode knives LITERALLY ISN'T DOING ANYTHING besides harassing you for shits and giggles. where is the stakes. where is my reason to care that your brother is bullying you specifically. it's not very nice but like. no one's dead so why am i invested?
so yeah. that was....not great.
and that leads me into my second major issue. who the fuck is that and why are you telling me that is knives.
my confusion leading into the flashback was there, going, okay um this isn't like trimax, but i'll roll with it, and then the flashback happened and i was left staring openmouthed at the screen going WHAT????? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT??????
now. i liked knives in stampede and stargaze. but then i read trimax and ohhhh mygod. oh my god. he's one of my favorites. i wrote two oneshots and an entire au fic with him as a pov character. he's fascinating and he hurts me.
so seeing this version of him, with his heartbreaking motivations of wishing and dreaming and thinking they could be friends with humanity shattered by tesla's horrible fate, this soft hopeful kid broken into rage and fear against humanity-- replaced by this spiteful, nasty little manipulative nightmare child who talked Mary into accusing his bully of rape and then Rowan into embracing his inner incel at Mary and then basically killing them all because...Joey was mean to him? I mean granted, Joey was kind of a piece of shit. But it just has nowhere near the same gravitas and tragedy of trimax, and it just makes knives look like a spiteful horrible little bitch. like, sure, take joey out. that's the bully gone and you're all safe now. but to escalate it to that degree feels disproportionate and unbelievable in comparison, especially when mary rowan sam and rem were all so kind as counterexamples.
and then for him to spend the entire present day runtime a) killing vash's last tie to rem just out of vindictive spite and then b) doing nothing at all except letting legato bully vash until the last episode when he just rolls up sips wine and has a frankly silly gunfight - i remember trimax knives saying he hates guns do you 98 - before...that's it? that...he was just a petty spiteful little brat the entire time and compared to trimax and even stampgaze knives it felt so wrong.
and that isn't even the only character who got done did dirty.
see me, fresh off of the first half of stargaze, having read the manga before the last few episodes drop, watching 98-- and then getting to midvalley showing up. on god, who is that man and what has he done to my boy. my love. my free real estate. my wet cat music man whose conflicted feelings about his actions for knives and desire to get out even if he's also a coward and a hypocrite are why i loved him so much in stargaze and who i also adored in trimax for the same reasons even if he was less of a wet cat. who is this guy who isn't even wearing white who doesn't even have the same hairstyle and whose entire screentime is just silently following legato - who he hated in trimax and stargaze! - around being his yes man and bgm before he has the shortest and most anticlimactic duel with vash? what happened there????
not to mention my disappointment in hoppered's entire beef with vash over lost july being removed because without that who even is he? that conflict was GOOD SHIT. why remove it???? oh yeah bc no one died in july :/
and now we get to the most controversial 98 beef of all time. the one that's gonna get me taken out back and put down like a dog next to the couch.
i didn't like how 98 handled wolfwood. there i said it. yall can string me up now.
lemme explain tho. see, my first experience with wolfwood was stampede, so my first experience with him-- and the moment i went "oh, this man is my favorite character, i am devastated, he now owns my heart and soul"-- was episode 6, where we see his backstory, where we see him at hopeland with livio, him being taken by the eom, and that absolute fucking gutpunch of a smash cut when we see how the experiments aged him up so much so fast. like that cut to him on the table all grown up hit me like a semit ruck and that was the exact moment he owned my soul.
of course, i knew he died and the couch panel, but other than that i knew nothing about him beyond stampede and the first 7-8 episodes of stargaze when i picked the manga up. and ohhhghghghhhgod. everything i loved about him in stampgaze turned up to 11. his trauma, his attitude, his juxtaposition with vash, his ideals and his ferocity and bitterness and his development and growth and everything was just. yeah that's my man that's even MORE my man now.
so...when i got far enough through 98 to realize that 98 wolfwood had almost none of that-- that his backstory was totally different, and it explained why though he butted heads with vash something about it felt hollow. because it was. granted there was still a tragic backstory, but no eye of michael, no experiments, no melanie and hopeland, no livio...it felt like the core of him had been cut out, and what was left was a guy who was superficially wolfwood, but without the parts of him that i loved most. it didn't feel like wolfwood to me. he wasn't even hired by knives there, not until the episode where he died and even then, it was chapel (who was #notmychapel either lmao, give me my horrible old man back), so there was none of that internal conflict, either!
like yeah, his death speech did make me cry and hurt my heart, but like with vash and his lack of death/consequences, the lack of conflict up until that very last moment - the thing with zazie which felt kinda contrived and rushed given it happened literally the ep before he died - made it not really feel earned in the same way as in trimax and stargaze's did. like sure stargaze faked us out, but it hit enough of the same beats as trimax that if he HAD died there it would've hit the same. i sure know i was screamsobbing my throat raw lol.
it's just...98 wolfwood feels like a hollow wolfwood. none of the things i love most about him are there. and it sucks because he's still surface wolfwood, his personality hasn't been replaced with a pod person like knives or completely removed like midvalley. so it feels that much harder to say "i don't like him" because he's not not him, he's just...more shallow.
also livio's removal was the worst thing ever you put that cowboy back this instant. also where's elendira. girl we need you. their absence was ROUGHHHHH.
another issue i have is. everything about the angel arms and plant powers was STUPID. why is it tied to the gun?? why is vash's arm transplanted on legato???? that feels like it undermine's legato's character!!! (we stan a king who stuck his wires in 1300 whole ass people when he was a kid on top of Everything abt the finale) why does knives do the exact same thing vash did he's KNIVES for a reason??? it was so stupid. like. what. why. what.
and. this is petty. this is SUPER EXTREMELY PETTY i know.
but for all that there are complaints about stampgaze's pacing uhhhhhh 98 did it first.
yeah, stargaze had to cram most of the manga into 12 episodes bc of corporate meddling, but 98 did the first 20 chapters in like 17 episodes and then had to cram 97 chapters into the last 9. and didn't do it very well either.
not to mention-- and admittedly this WAS petty i will outright admit it-- that vash took just as long to shoot legato in 98 if not longer than it took him to shoot legato in stargaze. i timed it. checkmate.
is stargaze perfect? hell no. i fully agree that the last 4 episodes fell off pretty hard in quality due to the pacing, and legato my poor boy got done did extremely dirty (though i suspect the pacing issues contributed to his screentime getting fucked and them needing to deal with him in a less than ideal way), and i honestly have a very large amount of questions over the idea of nai letting conrad anywhere near him or elendira or plants in general when he knew exactly what conrad did to tesla the entire time (like yeah sure make up for your sins old man but that nai let conrad Do Things to him??? and other plants??? what) and there are some plotholes if you think about the timeline of livio/razlo and razlo's existence too hard. but like.
i still love it more than i like 98, because for the most part the soul of the characters i love so much is still there. stampgaze is what made me love midvalley, love wolfwood, and give me the tools to end up loving livio and knives as much as i do. stampgaze is what made me love vash to pieces and be so so fond of meryl and milly. i got around to reading and rereading trimax, and i got to see them in the manga and go oh, that's them, there they are, now i love them more to see those same characters in their original context with how they were originally written to be, which stampgaze just added to. i got to meet livio in trimax (and oh my god, livio. stampgaze doesn't do him nearly the justice he deserves, he's up there in top 3 with vash and wolfwood and top five with those two knives and midvalley), and that made me so happy to see him in stargaze, to see him get to fight alongside his brother.
98 just felt.....hollow. those characters just weren't there. vash was there for the most part, sometimes, and the girls were, when they didn't have heatstroke, and as a polygun shipper outside my diehard love of vashwood i absolutely have no issue with the added emphasis on vashmeryl and millywood, but...no one else was. and with the added slapstick, the removal of consequences, and how diminished and empty both the role of home and the entire finale felt compared to knives' genesis flood/attack on the fleet...
yeah. my least favorite adaptation.
please my kingdom for a faithful trimax adaptation pleaseeeeee.