Okay so we're at the half-way mark, so I think it's fair to finally air my thoughts on stargaze so far. Overall, my general feel is that the new season is incredibly mid, and probably needed at least another year to cook. Not the worst crime to come to anime, but not the quality I was anticipating coming from stampede. I'll put some bits that I did like in too to be fair, but this will be quite critical, so if that's not what you want to read then please move on.
Let's be nice and start off with the things I liked.
I like that they cut the 'Jessica has a crush on Vash' thing, and made her younger and much more of a little sister figure. Also no complaints about altering her design to make her a poc. I loved them making a running gag out of Meryl hitting Wolfwood with the car. Genuinely great. The emotion in Vash's voice when he sees Wolfwood again for the first time was wonderfully acted. Midvalley being scared shitless by Knives rather than worshiping him like the other guns makes him a nice new flavour of villain. Pleased to see Vash with some black in his hair, so they're adapting that plot point. Animated Tesla was cool to see, though I don't know where they're going with that yet. Puppet designs were cool and feel like they fit with the sci-fi vibe the show has. We got to see Wolfwood on a bike? I think that covers the good stuff?
Okay... so, from what we've seen so far I think the team needed at least another year to run through some more script drafts (maybe another writer too), and polish up the animation/post production. We'll never know what stargaze would have looked like from the original team (and I'm sad about that yeah) but for the new team to deliver their absolute best... they needed not to rush. And this feels rushed.
Visually, it feels... bland, honestly, while stampede was delivering some amazing visuals/cinematography/animation. I can think of plenty of shots/snippets from early stampede that stand out, and... pretty much nothing from stargaze.
First ep of stampede had the slow shot of Vash drawing his gun for the first time, dodging the military police point blank, then shortly after him aiming up at the sky... all gorgeous. Ep 2 had his run through the town (great camera work), ep 3 had Knives with his circle of... well, knives, destroying Jenora. All stand out moments.
Stargaze... idk, nothing really jumps out. It's serviceable, but it's not next level. The lighting is often flat and boring. Hoppered's fight choreography (if it can even be called that) was lackluster, and all Vash really does is step to the side a couple of times then shoot his gauntlet to pieces on the first try. Leonof had a more interesting fight, but it still felt like they needed to put more work into elevating parts of it to make it shine the way it could have. Midvalley fight was mostly yapping and taking turns to shoot/doot, and man, they could have gotten so creative with it... Hell, they could have saved animation budget by having snippets in pure black after Wolfwood is blinded and has to keep fighting, with really strong sound direction to show him tracking Midvalley by sound... It would have been more interesting than what we got.
Ignoring visuals, the writing is... not quite there either. Retconning their own end to stampede sure was a way to start. Could have put his tracker in his earring instead if they still needed a way for Jessica to find him. And Home not bothering to find Vash until they needed him really doesn't paint them in a good light. Saying it was in a 'concerned parent' way or whatever doesn't fix this. The least they could do would be to say that Vash made them promise (years ago) not to go looking for him unless he called them (which would be fair given what we know of Vash, how much danger he gets into, and how he wouldn't want to risk others getting hurt). That way they would have been respecting his wishes, while feeling conflicted about it.
The pacing is... weird, and honestly I don't think 12 eps is enough to cover the main story in a satisfying way. What we've seen is somehow both too quick and not quick enough (because I'm looking at the episode count and thinking... we've got so much to cover... could we really afford to spend this long on eating omelette rice? Yes, I love some chill times for the gang, but we do not. Have time.) We've ended up with basically a repeat of 'on no Leonof is attacking the ship', 'oh no Midvalley is attacking the ship', 'oh no Legato is attacking the ship'. Like... come on. Could we not have left the ship already? The villains just throwing themselves at the same place one at a time is really not good writing. It also makes Vash surprisingly passive, in that he doesn't really 'take the fight to them' after sorting out the puppet situation, he just sits around on the ship until the villains come to him.
They have also in no way justified the 'live and suffer' tagline. July is never expanded upon properly. Vash just... lists some names of people we never saw or heard of before while everyone stand around telling him it's not his fault and they'll shoulder his burdens. Not even a slideshow. I know stampede shot itself in the foot by not showing more of the civilians in July, or letting Vash and Wolfwood spend any time with them, but come on... Not even a brief flashback? They had no trouble retroactively adding Midvalley and Leonof into previous events.
I'm holding out a small hope that we'll get something later on, but it wouldn't surprise me if we just don't. Trimax showed Vash confronted with the memories of people he spent time with, who were so kind, and the moment he erased them all. He loses control. He then daydrinks in church. Gets rocks thrown at him. Has Meryl recoil from him. You really get the sense that he's suffering...
Then with Stargaze, it's mentioned once in some very heavy exposition, everyone reassures Vash, they have a tasty home cooked meal and cut his hair for him, and also nobody on the ship died. And by episode 6, the ship still has no casualties. I thought maybe they were going for a tone shift, and the reason no one died earlier was cos they wanted to shock us with some sudden death/injury at the half-way mark... they even set it up, by having Vash promise to protect everyone... But then no one dies, he's not forced to face the guilt of another failed promise... He is not suffering! Okay, physically Legato twisting him up probably stung a bit, but where's the anguish? The key part of the tragedy of his character?
This is something I think stampede honestly got right by episode 3. We have episode 2 end with a very 'power of friendship' vibe and now the villains are pals and everything is okay. They deal with EG Mine, and it feels like things are gonna wrap up similarly. Then Knives shows up. Kills EG. Cuts the arm off the Nebrashka dude. You see him hauling a screaming woman into his blades while Rosa clutches at her, only for her to erupt in a shower of blood. Jenora gets destroyed. Tonis is gravely injured. And even when Vash promises to try and get their plant back, Rosa tells him to never show his face again. When Meryl asks how Vash can smile, he tells her it's cos he doesn't deserve to cry.
That... all of that, felt like it understood Trigun more than stargaze does. All of that left me feeling that Vash was suffering more than stargaze has done. It made me feel like the villains are an actual threat.
Which, following up on that... oh boy, the puppet arc loses all it's teeth when there are no casualties. When Vash isn't forced to see the people he viewed as family fall to pieces or attack him, and know what that means. The stakes also feel... so much lower with the entire crew hiding away and safe the whole time. Not even going to show a snippet of them barricaded in somewhere, with puppets clawing at the doors while they struggle to hold them back? No? Okay then. The fake outs don't work either cos we know nobody is around except him and Jessica, so everyone Vash encounters is a puppet.
I did like the puppet designs. They did some cool stuff with the gravity trick too, and the fight was a massive step up from Hoppered, but I was left with the sense that we could have got something so much better, especially if it was spread over two episodes. I feel like I would have loved something similar to how Vash returns in Trimax, where he's all tense when he gets to the ship, but then he steps in, and everything seems fine, all the people are asking how he's been and such. And then. The rug gets pulled from under him.
Call me crazy but I think that would have made more of an impression that the classic 'walk through somewhere dark oooh is something behind me' introduction that we got.
Letting Leonof live also feels a lot like just... letting Vash get his way. I mean, he wants to save everyone, but the key thing is he can't, and I genuinely think that Vash trying to save him but Leonof dying (right after Hoppered) would have had more of an emotional impact.
Wolfwood trying to talk Midvalley down was also not the best choice in my opinion. I miss the talk Wolfwood and Vash have shortly after the puppet/nine lives fight in trimax, where Vash thanks him, and Wolfwood points out that he killed people... only for Vash to acknowledge that what he did still saved lives and he's still grateful, and that he can't burden everyone with his own philosophy... That's genuinely interesting. It also highlights some of the hypocrisy of Vash. That has a little more depth than everyone bending to Vash's viewpoint.
I honestly am going to really hate it if Midvalley and Leonof team up with ship 3 to help rescue Vash... 'Everyone can be redeemed' can work in some shows (look, I adore Mob Psycho 100) but that's not what trigun is, it's not the 'everyone sees Vash doing good and is inspired to be a better person' show.
Idk man... episode 6 ending with Wolfwood just chilling on the ark cos the villains don't care, Knives waking up but not seeming to care about the plants that were killed to revive him, the black hair, or any potential harm that was done to Vash... Not snapping Legato's neck or murdering Conrad... just playing piano and taking out some satellites... If they'd given us something gruesome, I'd feel like 'oh shit things are going to get serious now Knives is awake' but nah...
There was so much I was excited to see adapted this season, and everything they've done thus far has left me underwhelmed... There's the occasional good moment, but nowhere near enough to carry it, and nowhere near stampede's quality. So far, orange has absolutely dropped the ball. Will I keep watching? Yeah, I love trigun, so I'll still tune in cos I'll take what I can get, and maybe there'll be some hype moments near the climax, but I would have rather waited another 2-4 years to get the season we deserved. That's... pretty much my feelings on it so far. I'll hold my tongue now until the season is done, cos I don't want to flood the place with negativity every single episode, but I wanted to get this off my chest.
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