#hoppered

Initial thoughts: wow, that was so interesting yet Not Enough at the same time

Hoppered was such an interesting character!! I wanted to know more about him and the woman Eriks beyond he was caring for her. Did she ever speak back to him?? Did she tell him her name was Eriks, or was it just something Hoppered started calling her? Was JuLai more accepting of Hoppered and his appearance than the waste towns around it, thereby allowing him into the city? I got major Beauty and Beast vibes from them and I want to know more!!

I am GUTTED by how Vash was left for so long (days? weeks?) in the barrens of JuLai just....like that. You can tell just by his scruff and longer hair that no one has been by to see him in a while, and he hadn't moved himself (well, maybe to crawl out of the hole of JuLai? Idk idk). And he was naked—in a desert with two suns bearing down on him, and freezing nights. Our man was not in a good spot from the get-go. Traumatized doesn't even cover it.

Jessica is endearing herself to me! I get she's been revamped from the manga and not too many people were thrilled with her current presence, but I think it's nice to see 1. Vash visits Home often enough that even the kid(s) know him and love him and 2. Home is concerned with him outside of helping Plants.

What I wasn't thrilled with was that Home said they couldn't check on Vash after JuLai. Why? There better be a GOOD reason in later episodes. Not only did Vash and Nai's fight blow a hole in both the planet and one of the moons, but Vash has been integral to Home since the beginning. To leave him just lying there (again, for a long time) after that put a bad taste in my mouth for them. They better understand through Jessica's retelling just how bad off Vash was because they chose not to go after him for two and a half years.

And, of course, Vash woke up because of Jessica. I would have liked it better for one of the main cast to have found him, or at least a character we'd known more about than a one-episode-intro, but I'm putting that rotten feeling aside for now to see what they're trying to do story-wise.

I also wish we'd gotten more of actual Eriks!Vash. I get it, I get it, Orange is rewriting the timeline and it IS good that we're seeing a traumatized Vash rather than a goofball in the face of huge tragedy, at least right now. I also understand Orange only has so much time to tell this story, and it isn't like the filler episodes we get in 98!Trigun. But still, would have liked to see him wake up and have no actual memory, and slowly regain them back through working with WW, Meryl, Milly, etc.

I love love loved seeing Vash play the piano at the end. He still remembers his and Nai's duet!! It makes me wonder if he practices whenever a piano is around, or if it's just a Plant thing to remember skills like that, even from a very distant childhood.

Overall, I'm still very interested—especially with the looming threat of the Earth ships coming in. Again, I haven't read the manga, so I have no idea what to expect with them, but my gut (and Luida's!) says it's not good.