A MILLION LITTLE PIECES

Stargaze ( SO FAR ) is not that. Adapting a manga doesn’t mean you had to stick to the manga 100%, but it does mean you don’t completely write out or retcon extremely important characters and or moments that are central to the piece of work across all adaptations.

Lina is very central to Vash’s story, and to tease Lina at the end of stampede, only to completely remove her and replace it with a character who’s ALSO been rewritten to fill her place? That’s not being ‘lucky’ that’s getting shafted. Hoppered is a fine character, but this wasn’t his place- and his death shouldn’t have happened yet. Him dying takes away the very important choice Vash makes when facing Legato- and for Vash to have almost no reaction as well when killing Hoppered, even if it was just Hoppered making him pull the trigger?

Now, we are only 2 episodes into Stargaze, but the start does not leave a promising taste in my mouth. No, stargaze was never said to be a 1:1 faithful adaptation of Maximum, but it clearly still wants to be one anyway, but without the important story beats that make people love maximum- as well as only fitting it into 12 episdoes.

This isn’t even going into the massive quality drop between Stampede and Stargaze, the jarring shifts between 2D and 3D, the inconsistencies story wise ( Lina, Vash losing his arm in ep 12 of stampede but somehow having it in stargaze to conveniently be tracked with ) and other questionable choices that were made all the way back in stampede. ( elendira, for example. )

There’s still time for Stargaze to suddenly pull itself around and be the adaptation studio Orange keeps touting it to be, but as it’s going it’s not. So I think it’s perfectly fine if people are upset about it, in fact, they’re more than justified to be given such a lackluster and borderline unfinished ( imo ) product, especially when stampede had a LOT of promise. It’s not “lucky” that we get a shit season, thinking like that is how anime studios and companies keep making low bar animes and content that ride off nostalgia for quick buck.