Episode 3
i dont have any trigun mutuals so i'm just gonna ramble my thoughts into the infinite void of tumblr. and im sure others have touched on this same topic but
it almost seems like vash is getting softer with every new installment of trigun? like incredibly consistently and incredibly specifically.
let me explain.
How to take care of your anger plants🌱
I think that after the rage subsides, what remains for Nai will be endless sorrow.
Trimax Vol.2
Hello! I’ve been lurking in the book club so far but I wanted to jump in the ring and add my own thoughts to the mix. Fun fact: I actually binge read the manga about two weeks, but read it so fast I didn’t absorb much. I’m taking this as an opportunity to read it more slowly and really savor it, and hopefully understand it a little more. My first experience was fun, but I was also a little confused by the end.
I certainly can’t compare to some of amazing analyses I’ve read so far, but here are some thoughts!
2009 Anime Expo Interviews with Yasuhiro Nightow and Satoshi Nishimura - please credit the news sources if you repost.
- these are video interviews on Youtube that I have written transcripts for. Links and transcripts below.
Trigun creator Yasuhiro Nightow interviews - living document.
Links below will be updated periodically and with each update I will reblog this post.
There is also a tag #nightow interviews to help organize them on my blog.
Happy reading!
I haven’t seen anyone point out these two pages from the very end of trimax vol 2 yet!
I’m so not normal about what is happening here and the build-up to it drives me insane!!
so, they briefly meet before 5th moon. then it’s been only a few weeks AT MOST since wolfwood found eriks and brought vash back. they’ve had time to come to know each other, but normally you’re not capable of looking into someone else’s soul after a few shared desert nights and a handful of fights.
and then this is while they face off against leonof. they haven’t spoken a single word to each other for most of the chapter. wolfwood actually has all the reason to be afraid of vash after being confronted with how inhuman he can become when faced with so much grief that he projects a wave of death aura around him and cries blood.
and STILL, in that split second as the floor beneath them bursts open, they hold eye contact. and wolfwood sees every unspoken word in that gaze. with just one look, vash is able to convey his determination, the plan to face off against their foe, and the reminder that-despite the boundless cruelty that was done to vash’s found family-wolfwood should still not kill anyone.
wolfwood gets frustrated, but he also UNDERSTANDS.
it’s been mere weeks and these fools are already on some soulmate behaviour bullshit.
these two are so different, yet so similar; fates intertwined irrefutably. and even now, even before all the moments and thoughts that show their true devotion to each other, it’s already so obvious. to me, this is the first scene that really drives home that vash and wolfwood have a unique harmony between them that could promise them forever. what makes it complicated is how one has been forced to spill so much blood while the other is tortured by the love he carries.
I have these two pages filed in a drawer called “scenes that make me crawl under the bed and cry for hours”.
Not sure how obvious this was to everyone else but i love the first chapter of trimax vol.1 and how it quickly sets up for vash's return using the cooler fake vash not only as the chaps antagonist but as the ghost of our vash. We get to know how much vash fears himself and his power and here he gets to confront a terrible version of "himself", one that is actually a threat to other people and isn't restrictive of using violence. And the way eriks confronts this fake vash is by losing face, not only preventing the situation to escalate more, but as a way to atone for his acts as vash the stampede years ago. I believe that in the middle of this situation he is also thinking that he deserves the humiliation and be punished for the fifth moon incident. The fact that he was shot too doesn't come up later but it wouldn't be crazy to think that he would be okay with that.
I love this panel becasue i think it encapsulates all of this, vash seeing himself, only wanting to get rid of this part of him, as if he was hostage not only to the fake vash but to himself too. Here fake vash stands tall, as the narrator and humanity portray vash the stampede (and all those cool poses that nightow draws) - someone to be feared and a creator of calamity.
Fake vash also serves as an omen for the chapter resolution, and, oh, what a coincidence, wolfwood is here too. Wolfwood hands him back his gun, and he really doesnt want to go back, but as wolfwood says: someone's gotta show their fangs or someone else's gonna cry. Once vash makes his return by defeating fake vash, he now has the chance to right his name to humanity and to himself.
vash "i am afraid we cannot mansplain, manipulate or malewife our way out of this one" the stampede and nicholas "manslaughter it is" d. wolfwood
@lgbtqcreators creator meme: [5/8] lgbtq+ celebs "I had to free my own mind of what, at that time, what I felt like masculine adrogynous energy looks like. I was living in my own binary, and I was like there's no way that I can be androgynous with bigger boobs now. How I feel inside is the thing that I needed to work through." — JANELLE MONÁE
I was probably just oblivious to this info but this knowledge makes me so happy????
(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.
Hey holy shit @dravencore you hit the nail on the head
Honestly, people who don't give comic/graphic novel/manga media enough credit should really sit down and READ THIS STUFF sometimes. Sure, a lot of it is mindless fluff or action, but that's true of ANY media. And then you have stuff like Trigun, which has SO MANY INTERPRETATIONS and touches on so many really heavy, dark, but also IMPORTANT socio-political topics and themes, and it's not something that you could really get much of if your only exposure to the thing was the 98 anime!
The manga goes SO FUCKING HARD, I had NO IDEA how hard until I read it, and I'm so glad I did! And I'm so excited to see how Stampede handles the things going forward, because they were willing to take the SA themes and pull them out of the subtext and just throw them RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. They aren't holding back their punches!
Seriously, there's enough depth to Trigun, you could have an entire college-level media analysis course dedicated to IT, ALONE. And I would gladly take it! I took a class on Vampires in mythology in college, I know there are weirder courses out there! Just get a professor who's willing to give this stuff a fighting chance and let them run with it!
You know one of the big running themes is exploitation and I know this is jumping ahead in the manga but
A) LEGATO like if you didn't think this manga was also about CSA/SA and taking away someone's bodily autonomy oh hey here have a blue haired boy who was used and abused and only knows one (1) way to deal with his trauma and that is by letting himself continue to be used and abused, but this time by a Master he has chosen (it's totally different Legato would say but it isn't it really isn't he can't break the cycle) and killing ppl. (But he's nice to kids sometimes so he gets one positive point for that) (also he has so much more depth too I can go on for hours abt Legato wtf)
B) and this
I'm not even going to comment on this it's barely subtext at this point, that the abuse Legato suffered and what Vash has gone through is meant to be viewed similarly.
(P.s. that direct parallel of those images with Vash and Legato in the same position hit me like a semi first time I saw them fuuuuuuuuck)
Legato is the adoring, groveling brother that Knives wishes Vash was. I think that’s part of the reason why Knives is so eager to violate him. He’s seen it work on Legato.
Thinking about how in Trimax Conrad is meant to be a direct parallel / mirror to Rem, and how they relate & project onto each other over the Tessla incident when he accidentally wakes up from cryosleep, and how he serves the role of the first human (after Rem) to accept the boys, vaguely making him a sort of absent father figure to them. And then thinking about how Legato is meant to be a parallel to Vash (”I see now. You’re just like me. You don’t long for this world.”), and how Knives literally grafted his brother’s arm to him, and how Knives’ horrific abuse of Legato is that of an adoptive guardian / older brother trying to control him so that, unlike Vash, he doesn’t leave and betray him. And then thinking about how Conrad and Legato are the two people that Knives surrounds himself the closest. Like he is maybe perhaps trying to rebuild his original family through vague replacements. I’m going a bit insane.