Spoilers for Trigun: Stargaze and Trigun: Maximum, as well as some criticisms I have under the cut.
I believe (one of) the most dubious parts of Trigun: Stargaze was the redemptions, specifically who the redemptions happened to.
Midvalley is a good guy now. Leonof gets redeemed. Elendira gets to live out her life and Livio gets to be whimsical with loved ones. You know who doesnât get to be forgiven and live a happy life? Hoppered the Gauntlet. Hoppered was incredibly kind and caring to Vash while Vash wasnât locked in, despite the pain Vash (accidentally) caused him, but he still dies. And heâs heavily physically disabled.
Elendira gets to have a little cry and be comforted by Meryl because sheâs just a lonely little baby creature now. Ignore that the fact sheâs transgender is completely erased in the anime, sheâs just a wittle girl who needs Meryl and Milly to protect her!
Livio is redeemed. Livio is a good guy! Razlo doesnât get redeemed in this anime, and I will stand by that fact. Heâs stuck as a violent, psychotic alter ego to Livio, and he has to be GONE forever or else Livio is bad too because of him. So Razlo has to get kicked out of the front and never be talked about again and never be forgiven.
Chapel doesnât even fully fucking show UP. Heâs a paraplegic, so he gets banished to flashback-land and is gone by the time Wolfwood and Razlo fight. Donât even play with me, you can 3D animate a wheelchair, they arenât hiding him to avoid costs.
Donât get me started on Legato Bluesummers.
I think redeeming the gung-ho-guns could have been done well, whether I think that it was a good story choice or not. But the story doesnât even do anything with them! Livio is on the team, but because Wolfwood is still there, he gets sidelined while Legato threatens Vash. Midvalley and Leonof get to be a little cute playing with the kids, awww, but what purpose does this serve? None of the gung-ho-guns from the first season got to play house with the rest of them, and it feels like a last minute fan-service addition.
I like Midvalley and I like Leonof and I like Livio/Razlo and I like (manga) Elendira. But you cannot pickie-choosie who gets to be one of the good guys based on how ânormalâ you can make them. Livio should not have to magically poof Razlo out of existence to be considered a good man in your eyes. Elendira should not have to be turned into a 9 year old to be redeemed. Midvalley and Hoppered were FRIENDS in the manga, it would have been much more interesting to see their relationship develop with both of them surviving. But we donât get that.
(If I missed anything or you want to add your own thoughts in tags or replies please feel free! I welcome discussion as long as it is civil.)
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Stargaze⌠I have a lot of thoughts about this season, and Iâm still trying to sort through them. Honestly, I stopped watching after episode 8âbut forced myself to come back and finish the finale.
Iâll probably write a longer analysis later, but the ending left me confused, sad, and just⌠empty. Not because it felt rushed. Not because everyone lived except Knives. Not because Vash ends up happy with his friends.
Itâs because they all chose to leave No Man's Land. That felt like a cop-out.
At the end of TriMax, when Vash falls into darkness after killing Legato, heâs pulled back by what Meryl and Milly say:
"Our ancestors dreamed of a paradise among the stars, but instead fell onto this planet of sand. Still anything can happen."
"Facing a harsh reality is something you do here every day. You can't live if you let every little thing get you down."
"It's a nice place, isn't it? We're still alive, so let's see what comes next."
Thatâs what defines the people of No Manâs Landâtheyâre resilient, strong, and fiercely rooted. They donât abandon their home. Not when thereâs still hopeâespecially not after everything Knives created through his sacrifice.
This fic on AO3, âHomeâ by BreezzLee19 captures that feeling perfectly.
Manga translation by the talented team at Trigun Ultimate Overhaul
I plan on writing a longer post about this topic, but I'm curious. How many of those who watched Trigun Stargaze enjoyed the way Livio and Razlo were handled? How many of you didn't like it? Feel free to respond and explain your answers too if you'd like, I would love to hear from people.
(Disclaimer: Please be civil with one another đ Also be warned of possible spoilers should you read the replies.)
What did you think about the way Livio and Razlo were handled in Stargaze?
First a disclaimer: I donât think Orange had intention to make any statements with the aesthetic choices and writing choices that they have made. I think they lacked any sensitivity review to their material, more so in stargaze than in stampede, but both hold bad stereotypes. I believe this is an oversight and ignorance on their part and whoever wrote their script. I will also say I do not speak nor fully understand Japanese to say if the translated subs I have watched are the most accurate translation, but I will be referencing them. Pictures are also included, they're squished so you have to click to view the full image.
First of all, I want to address the social classes we see in stampgaze.
Regular folk from regular towns: they look like a standard western style of life and design
Rolloâs town: very specific MENA/SWANA aesthetic and designs, paired with religious devotion in a religion that is telegraphed to the audience as extreme and not good
Ship 3 residents: white and clean clothes, sterile-looking environment, seemingly a paradise in the desert, they have a garden with flowers in it (flora), given that each seeds ship had a garden dome with trees and water streams to start with
City folk: July, busy, bustling, very close to modern day city life and luxuries/struggles
Refugees:
people who have to leave their town to neighboring ones for shelter, water, and food
People sheltering in the outskirts of Octovern in refugee camps, not within the city itself
Immigrants: the Earth fleet seeds ships
As an extension tangent let me also add the races we also have in our story:
Humans (NML) with all of their classes listed above
Humans (Earth fleet), referred to in the show as immigrants
Plants (dependents): âthey are beings of a higher dimensionâ - Conrad Stargaze ep.11
Back to my point on stereotypes done wrong, starting with Stampedeâs Windmill town, Rolloâs home town. I didnât place emphasis here when watching Stampede, but the story was incomplete. Now that Stargaze is finished, I can freely analyze âaccidental trendsâ, and here is what I got.
Perhaps due to budget or due to subconscious stylistic or narrative decisions, the Windmill town is the only one that is drawn with a MENA/SWANA aesthetic. Incidentally, it is the only town heavily associated with what the viewer is meant to interpret as an extreme religion. This extreme religion also asks parents to view their children being sent away as a blessing, it is a blessing to serve God, life begins after death. There is something so finicky about creating a new religion or a fantasy cult. Itâs important who you are applying it to, and the introduction itself. We know the EOM religion is very Christianity-warped, but this is the first episode we hear about it in Stampede, and it is immediately opened with the aesthetic of drapery, etc. What I'm saying is, it accidentally gives off a specific kind of subtext. (Disclaimer: I'm MENA so this absolutely colours my interpretation of any material I consume, and I'm sensitive to these kinds of things.)
Now this is all fine, but then the town gets explored a bit, aesthetically, and itâs very textile based. The patterns of course reflect the Eyeâs symbolism, but they are also heavily geometric. Geometric style textiles and these colours tend to be heavily associated with MENA/SWANA as well. My friend also pointed out that these designs also invoke similar shapes and styles to what is seen in indigenous/native designs in southern parts of North America.
Finally, Rolloâs outfit itself is unique within the show. Unlike many of the kids we see in both stampede and stargaze, the design of his open vest and puffed pants + flat shoes invoke the imagery of SWANA clothing aesthetic, or even just fantasy ambiguously south west asia.
Aesthetically within Stampede, this is fine. Itâs a little bitâŚeye twitch worthy to have the extremist religion be introduced in such a setting. Itâs also a little upsetting that everybody here died, too.
We move on to Stargaze, and we are met with a lot of talk about refugees and immigrants from episode 1. We get into the discussion of what exactly happens when people lose their townâs plant. They have to go somewhere else. For the duration of six months and ongoing, towns one by one have been leaving their homes and belongings and heading to nearby towns or cities in hopes that they can be sheltered. We get introduced to how dire the resource situation is and then we get introduced to the Earth fleet ships, the immigrants. Now, Iâm not sure if the subs Iâve watched are the ones that continue to use that wording as a translation choice, but ultimately, the Earth fleet is often referred to as immigrants (this may be a callback to Stampedeâs OST track 1 âImmigrant Space Explorerâ).Â
This is fine, until Knives starts talking about his great Genesis Flood Big Fall about bringing down the immigrant ships. Itâs not restricted to Knives only, other characters refer to the earth fleet as immigrants, too. We donât see much of what happened during the age of chaos in regards to the people of NML, but Melanie gives us what happened in their area: they took all the plants to pay for protection. Refugees simply arenât welcome unless they can pay something, otherwiseâŚwell, they get none, apparently.
Here is what I actually want to talk about though. The âimmigrantâ ship is supposed to save all of the people and the refugees. Knives wants them all gone regardless, wants to wipe out all humans regardless. The âimmigrantâ ships see Knives they say this:
âIs that⌠Donât tell me thatâs an Independent! I canât believe they were born on this planet too! Fusion? How barbaric! Gain initiative! Deal with it! Thorâs Hammer, initiate firing sequenceâ
This is what the earth fleet says BEFORE they attack. When the attack fails, they say this:
âA warp? By an organic, on its own?! How much energy does that thing have?! This is far beyond any Independent we know of! Thatâs a threat to the entire human race!â
To me, that means the moment they recognized this is a fused entity, independent plant etc. their immediate reasoning was âbarbaric, shoot it down with our biggest weaponâ.
So, the âimmigrantsâ said âshootâ and the attacks hit ground and attacked the ârefugeesâ. Here is my pain point. I fully understand Orange wanted to show diversity here, the world has more than all of the âstandard typical western styleâ of people. Except standard typical western is what we see across stampede and stargaze with exception to the windmill village, and now here at the refugee camp specifically as it is being attacked. Suddenly we see people in hijab/headdresses, we see fez/Kufi hats, we see men in more eastern/SWANA style clothes, we get characters styled in MENA vibes.Â
And look, listen, I love seeing myself represented. Itâs nice to pause frame by frame and see the details the animators put in here. There is so much chaos happening in these super fast seconds. People running and falling down, their loved ones or strangers turning back to help them up. Itâs beautiful!!! But! The subtext. The unconscious subtext. The unintentional accidental subtext. These ârefugeesâ, they are being âattackedâ, theyâre the ones shown animated in crisis, they are the faces of the fear and terror of these attacks..by immigrant ships. They get protected and saved by Livio and Wolfwood, who look so out of place somehow.Â
And look, I have always headcanoned Jasmine as Arabic, so studio Orange was on my vibe. This just wasnât the tone of vibe I was expecting XD
Refugees episode 1 & 11: people of NML shown
Refugees episode 12:
Then we cut to the ending, 1 year from this attack. The immigrant ships are leaving. The people of NML are leaving too. We are shown people boarding these ships, none of them have that MENA/SWANA styling, we are back to general standard western.
Again, I will not....fault Orange for choosing aesthetics. I will say, however, that it feels genuinely hurtful to understand the show saying in underlying text that immigrants and refugees have no loyalty to a place they've built 150 years of life and community in. There is seemingly no love or attachment to this place. Even Milly's family who are worm tamers and have forged a deep connection with worms and live symbiotically with them... this family that has built generations on a livelihood that exists only on this planet....are leaving it for new adventure. I don't know. Do you know how painful it was for me to leave my country? I had to, there was no choice of staying. The people of NML get a choice here. I understand this is the 'blank ticket' but...they all chose to leave. It felt like Orange saying that a desert planet can never be loved enough to stay. I think that it's a hurtful message to just... show no love for a place where people put their lives, where generations were built, communities were formed.... and in the end the 'immigrants and refugees' leave it all behind without a care, looking for someplace better to live in and start fresh.
The people who are shown staying seem to be the residents of Ship3, which again rubs me the wrong way, since they feel like a more 'elevated' people where they are 'willing' to stay and work and see the land flourish. I only HOPE there was CLEAR discussion with Zazie and clear ecological studies of just HOW harmful changing the ecosystem WILL BE on Zazie's species. Listen, I'm a biologist, and do you know the nightmare this means to the native ecosystem??? ALL of that GREW in ONE year. Remember how scientists keep screaming that rapid changes in environment are BAD and can cause quick sudden extinctions? YEAH!
Second negative stereotype I want to discuss: DID and queer representation. I think I will dive into that in a separate post, but Iâm sure many have said it more than I have already by now. The way Razloâs design, clothes, mannerisms, and language stand out as quite queer and GNC, which I will not lie, I was so enjoying that, but the message intention was âevilâ. Livio cured his DID by willing it so. That is absolutely how mental health works, right? to drive the point, the next time we see Livio he has cut his hair, lost the mail polish, and is wearing the most normal clothes possible. I'll also do a small shout out to his appearance in stampede where he was entirely absent/brainwash-controlled by an "eye" set up by Legato and Zazie.
Third harmful stereotypes: lips. I don't need to comment further on that. The studio should know better. Jessica's lips were also a topic of discussion when she was first introduced.
Ok, it was fun venting my frustration by dunking on Trigaze, but it's over now and I'm realizing I'm more hurt than anything else.
I didn't like Stampede at first. My fave are L,R & Elendira, so I expected to see THEM watching the anime and well, I don't think they were quite the same from the manga. Looking back, though, Stampede dared to take the deck of cards that's Trigun and shuffle them around, creating a new story. Something Trigaze didn't even attempt.
Stargaze seemingly got scared of change, and quickly tried to put back the deck like it was before, wasting time in the panic and the process. And it's a shame, really. I realize I was on board with Worm!Milly when they teased the idea, because, at least, it would be different and a FUN idea.
Instead, Stargaze becomes this weird, uncomplicated, Young Witch in the No Man Lands' Oasis. This version of Trigun where everything is fine, a happy ending... According to the creators' vision. And that vision, according to my very queer and neurodivergent mind, is very sanitized.
Nihilists, no matter their trauma, deserve death. Others, deserve a second chance. Women cannot be evil, unless they're too scared of men to act, so women cannot be born into anything but a woman. Disabilities don't exist if they can't look pretty (that poor blorbo all sad), and can't be fixed never to show again. '''Dangerous''' neurodivergent states like DID can be cured by the power of friendship, by erasing what's perceived as wrong. Even if they have a way home, humans shoud change the planet to their liking, no matter who live there first, so they can always feel at home.
White hair? Good. Wrinkles? Bad.
Grass? Good. Desert? Bad.
A clean-cut little world where everything is binary doesn't bring me peace nor love.
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Genuine serious question to everybody because I am trying to make sense of it all and I feel like I am missing a point. It's driving me a little bit crazy.
Did stargaze essentially say that the second atomic bomb allegory of this adaptation brought back life into an arid planet? Is StampGaze still looking at the twins as walking atomic bomb allegories? Should I divorce that idea when I'm analyzing StampGaze?
Second genuine question: do you think the Earth fleet plants responded to Meryl despite knowing nothing about NML only because it's women to women communication? I am including that the NML plants zapped messages to Meryl and Jessica only vs Vash who has been helping plants for centuries. Orange has a think for "kind, caring, providing" women and has assigned it to every woman in stampgaze.
I need to talk about all of the "immigrant" and "refugee" stuff in stargaze and how they botched that up horrendously and sure as heck inadvertently pulled on harmful stereotypes and tropes, erased the value of NML's people and just..... Why do I even bother at this point. The refugees are MENA/SWANA coded. The people boarding the ships were all western/European coded. The land for terraformed. The people leave regardless. Because having 150 years of family and generations, history, on that planet means nothing. Because a planet like NML clearly can't ever be loved or cared for. Because refugees and immigrants clearly only care about going where life is easy, right? Why should orange bother adapting how fiercely NML was fighting for their planet? Why should they care that Meryl and Milly show love for NML? Fight for it? No, no, no, immigrants and refugees can't ever be good. Let's show only the "Home" ship sticking around since they are the NML elite high society.
Also? "Pain is easily forgotten when it's over?" Way to spit in the face of anyone with trauma or mental health. Oh right, I forgot stargaze had Livio heal his DID and erase his stereotypical evil alter in a manner of seconds. My bad. So sorry.
You know, even Milly's family who are worm tamers, or however you call it.... like they built their lives and generations on working with worms, and clearly have a strong bond with them beyond what normal humans have....... and even they are leaving the planet.
The red syringes are used as early as Trigun Stampede episode 5. The EOM people use it on Rollo and then Conrad uses it again here during the experiments. However, I believe the 'red serum' is just the generic fantasy health potion, and the blue serum (which Rollo also uses in the battle) is only used for the successful enhanced humans.
The Stampede scene is obviously based on those manga frames, and the implication seems to be that, no matter how much Vash loathes their existence because theyâre a threat to humanity, and no matter how deep his self-destructive tendencies run, he just wanted them to run away.
CW: mention of suicide and abuse.
This is the narrative choice I have been trying to understand since the moment I watched this episode, because I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it.
Is this meant to be their version of the moment in TriMax when young Vash starved himself and tried to kill himself out of fear after getting his hands on something sharp?
Back then, Vashâs mind gave way under the weight of what he learned about Tesla. The knowledge was too much, and the fear that followed overwhelmed him so completely that he turned that horror inward until self-destruction felt like the only possible answer.
So is Stargaze trying to place Vash in that same psychological position?
He has just learned the part of the truth that was kept from him about Rem, and he was swallowed by negative emotions moments ago. On top of that, the narrative frames himâthe victimâas though he is at fault for not knowing, and for not trying to understand his brother sooner. It keeps presenting that ignorance as though it were his failure. At that point, it becomes hard not to read Vash as someone drowning in guilt. Maybe even so overwhelmed by it that he reaches the conclusion that the best course of action is a suicidal pact with his brother.
Self-blame, in particular, is a well-documented post-traumatic response. It can function as a way to create the illusion of control over something that was never in the victimâs control to begin with. Victim-blaming is psychologically corrosive because survivors already tend to search for ways to make themselves responsible for what happened. It is often easier for the mind to say, âThis is my fault. I should have known. I should have understood. I should have stopped it,â than to face the more unbearable truthâthat someone else chose to violate, manipulate, and harm them.
And if that is what the scene is doing, then it is genuinely insane to me.
Even Knives looks shocked by that. The fact that Knivesâthe abuserâhas to snap Vash out of it and stop him only makes it feel even more twisted.
Because it makes it seem as though Vash reached the conclusion that the only way to protect humanity is to surrender both himself and his independence to Knives. And this is not some noble reconciliation. It is the logic of a victim who has been driven into believing that the safest solution for everyone is self-erasure.
Modern trauma theory often refers to this kind of response as âappeasement.â
Appeasement, in psychology, is a survival-based behaviorâan instinctive strategy used to manage threats by pacifying, pleasing, or yielding to an aggressor in order to avoid further harm.
More broadly, it can also be understood as giving the opposing sideâin warâwhat they demand in order to prevent further conflict.
In abuse dynamics, that can mean giving the abuser exactly what he wants because, in Vashâs case, the victim has come to believe that his own resistance is what keeps everyone else in danger. That terrible âsolutionâ begins to make a kind of traumatic sense: if what my abuser wants is me, and if giving myself up will stop the suffering of others, then maybe that is the price that must be paid. It was my fault for not trying. For leaving him alone. So this can be my atonement as well.
What makes it unbearable is that the narrative seems dangerously close to treating that as proof of love or understanding, when in reality it reads much more like trauma, coercion, and the devastating endpoint of self-blame.
Vash has offered himself.
But instead of accepting, Knives refuses.
Vash clearly did not expect that refusalâyou can see it on his face.
And why would he? Knives has spent so long making everything appear as though it was done for Vash, insisting again and again that all he wants is Vash by his side. And when Vash finally offers him exactly that but in a twisted manner that is so unlike him, Knives realizes that something is wrongâlike, terribly wrong and decides to play the savior by stopping him, to end Vashâs suffering, because he is the cause of Vashâs suffering.
So if this is truly where Stargaze wanted to take Vash, then the writing is not depicting healing, understanding, or even tragic brotherly love. In truth, it is depicting a traumatized victim reaching the point where death, surrender, and loss of self begin to look like the right answer. And if the only thing that interrupts that spiral is the abuserâs refusal, then the story enters deeply troubling territory: the victim is not saved by reclaiming his will, but by the abuser rejecting the sacrifice.
Until the very end, it is still Knives who decides what happens.
Before, Vash had to live with the knowledge that he survived because Rem died. And now he has to live with the knowledge that he is alive right now because Knives sacrificed himself to give him that.
So with all that being saidâdo you still doubt me when I say that this is Knivesâs story?
¡ ¡ â ¡âśÂˇ â ¡ ¡
I needed to let this thoughts out and you can say itâs my personal take for now. Iâm sure Iâll get back to this soon, because boy!!
I donât know if my wording is enough to fully express how insane this is. If you have deeper knowledge of psychology, feel free to correct me or back me up here.
Btw i didnt like the fact that everyone left nml at the end. It made knives creating flora fall a little bit flat... And like. That's their home. It sucks it's hot it's dry but they were born there. Isn't humanity's ability to survive on and even love and try to improve a place that kinda sucks a much more powerful than image "everyone left on spaceships, the end"
It's so stupid that out of all people, it's Luida and her folks that stay? The people who stayed on their ship the whole time and never actually engaged with the struggling people of NML. đ
It feels very tone deaf, especially with the terminology being used to refer to everyone not from Luida's ship as either the refugees (NML) and immigrants (the earth fleet) and they just seemed to blindly imply that people like that don't have any loyalty to a place where generations lived, loved, and built communities.
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I need to talk about all of the "immigrant" and "refugee" stuff in stargaze and how they botched that up horrendously and sure as heck inadvertently pulled on harmful stereotypes and tropes, erased the value of NML's people and just..... Why do I even bother at this point. The refugees are MENA/SWANA coded. The people boarding the ships were all western/European coded. The land for terraformed. The people leave regardless. Because having 150 years of family and generations, history, on that planet means nothing. Because a planet like NML clearly can't ever be loved or cared for. Because refugees and immigrants clearly only care about going where life is easy, right? Why should orange bother adapting how fiercely NML was fighting for their planet? Why should they care that Meryl and Milly show love for NML? Fight for it? No, no, no, immigrants and refugees can't ever be good. Let's show only the "Home" ship sticking around since they are the NML elite high society.
Also? "Pain is easily forgotten when it's over?" Way to spit in the face of anyone with trauma or mental health. Oh right, I forgot stargaze had Livio heal his DID and erase his stereotypical evil alter in a manner of seconds. My bad. So sorry.
razlo would fall under the Violent Alter trope in a vacuum i think, like separated from any of the context and extenuating circumstances of the world he lives in, but within the world of trg it makes perfect sense for him to be that way.
no man's land as it exists with everything that happened after the fall necessitates so much violence just for the sake of survival. young kids learn to pick up guns early, become heads of their households before they hit their teens. livio and razlo's situation is an extreme case but i really don't think it's any more or less violent when compared to the rest of what's going on within this setting. livio very well could have died, neglected, beaten to death by his parents without razlo's intervention, and the latter's method of saving him was one born of desperation, emerging from such a limited scope of experience and using only what he had available to him. he was a kid. evidently the only way he could think of how to stop livio from living in fear and despairing, how to protect livio and himself, how to keep them both safe, was to kill those who were hurting them--their parents--with a kitchen knife.
nightow definitely could have done without razlo killing the puppy at the orphanage but i also don't believe that comes out of nowhere or is there for any kind of genuine shock value at all (for even as much as it does unfortunately perpetuate an exhausting and harmful trope about the mentally ill and especially of those with dissociative/schizophrenic disorders) when you consider what razlo has already lived through and the kind of framework he's been operating under. i'm not gonna elaborate and go into depth with my thoughts on that on this post cus i already wrote them out a few months ago, but the tldr is the puppy endangered someone and razlo is a protector who doesn't have any other methods of doing the protecting besides what he already knows: violence.
all that to say, even with his story's shortcomings, razlo is still so easy to understand and sympathise with. he's a severely abused kid, one that exists at all because another kid needed someone to help him when he was unable to help himself, when no one else would. physically abused, manipulated and groomed, augmented into a living weapon to serve those who he thought would need him, who would keep him and livio safe after they were victimised for so long. he had his whole world pulled out from right underneath him when his mentor/paternal figure made it clear he was little else than a tool for him to use and discard as he thought necessary, willing to kill him (and livio) just to get at someone razlo barely even knew.
easiest thing in the world to look at all that which is presented clear as day in the text and go "oh my god this dude's had an unbelievably rough go of it, poor guy" and yet studio orange still went out of their way to malign him, reduce him to that Violent Crazy Alter with no real attempt at an explanation of the how and why he behaves as he does (completely unlike how it is all provided very explicitly in the manga, which pulls absolutely zero punches), and totally exclude the very important, informative history and relationship he has with one of his abusers. they went out of their way to make him as shallow as possible.
I think I have one little semi regret in me. I see all the people enjoying trigaze and I'm genuinely happy for them enjoying it. I wanted to be enjoying it, but I think on a personal level I'm just unable to look past the ableism from episode 1-2 onwards. I also really dislike this Brad and Luida for personal reasons (no, I don't care that they're different from the manga, I genuinely dislike them as characters in stampgaze for who they are and what they have done and how they are always forgiven, it's very personal and I cannot ever forgive them). So the fact they had more prominence in this season was a souring aspect for me, but still not as much as the ableism was. It was bothersome at the start. Episode 8's ableism had me dissociating for the full week, it was actually harmful for me, go figure.
Anyway....all of this to say, I'm finding a weird balance of caring/not caring so that I can enjoy the episode as it airs, and that's worked today, but doesn't stop the fact that some aspects just come back and make me upset again. I'm loving the moments that I'm loving though, I'm loving some of the creative choices, and I am having a lot of fun predicting what will happen next and analyzing aspects of each episode and the season as a whole as it goes. This is what I wanted to have fun with from the start, it's just upsetting that it got so...dampened, I guess, is a nice way to put it. I do hope we don't see any more ableist choices soon, and that the ending is fun.
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This is my favourite episode of the entire season, this was peak. Stargaze Episode 9, I was cackling and laughing all the way through, it was a joy. They are finally (committing to) going off script!!!! Go be wild!!! Go be free!!! Show me what could happen!
I need more Milly and worms and for my theories about that to be right, but we shall see XD where is Zazie?
What a ridiculously awful downgrade in Lazlo's characterization. To go from him crying bawling sobbing in Trimax when Chapel takes a shot at him bc that was the ONE person in the WHOLE WORLD that Lazlo thought maybe cared about him & saw him as a valuable priority. Versus. him in Stargaze like "im gonna shoot a woman and bunch of kids for literally no reason MWAHAHA" ugh. Ughhh UGHHH Nightow literally made it clear from the first scene Lazlo is in that he's a person with feelings, just an unhinged one who takes all this pain & laughs at it & comes back for seconds because Livio can't handle it. NOT that dogshit evil murder alter trope that was already tired back in the '90s. Only for studio orange in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six to go "yeaaah no see that's cool but what if we actually just did the evil murder alter trope"
#it seems he also doesn't even know livio exists????????? much less cares about/protects him?????? <- prev tags NO YEAH TRUE. Facts. I WAS mad that they don't know about each other but I forgot to detail my opinion on why that's a dogshit choice, thank you for reminding me!
So in Trigun Maximum, Livio and Lazlo are a fairly decent representation of a system (for the era, of course) partly BECAUSE Lazlo has an actual role in helping Livio cope. And it's a role that alters are known to take on in real-life instances of DID/OSDD/plurality. He's a protector! Because of their shitty circumstances (it's not just the intense childhood trauma causing Livio and Lazlo pain, they're still constantly facing new and repeated trauma in the EoM) Lazlo also displays some prosecutor behavior (acting out in ways that wind up actually putting them both in danger), but fundamentally he is there to take on hardship and keep sensitive "crybaby Livio" safe and alive. He even writes notes to Livio, presumably to make Livio aware of his presence (because back when the body was a young child at the orphanage, Livio really was confused by the switching and didn't know who was doing the stuff that he was getting accused of). And those notes highlight Lazlo's role as protector: "I'll be your fangs."
All of this is so much more interesting than the ugly, harmful stereotypes Studio Orange chose to perpetuate. I know plural fans of Trigun who were so upset and disturbed by that episode and I just. I really hate it. There was a beautiful opportunity to update the source material's depiction of plurality (which real people already find relatable and comforting) with all the new information and research we have nowadays but instead they chose to take it in the worst possible direction.
